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Administrative Mishap [Supergirl/Worm]

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OxfordOctopus
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Aug 3, 2020

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Threadmarks  Sidestory  Apocrypha  Media  Informational  View content

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 25 - INTERLUDE 4 [MULTI] View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

May 27, 2021  #2,986

EPISODE 25

[INTERLUDE: MULTI]

[ALEX]​

Alex was tired of finding people she cared about laid out across medical beds. The trend had manifested itself at
roughly the point where Kara had started going out as Supergirl, and regularly featured Kara as the main focus of her
anxiety. Still, with time, other memories had started to join the ones involving Kara, ranging from Addy looking
petulant as Alex explained the idea of a concussion to her - “I know what it is, I am more than capable of ascertaining
if I am concussed—” - to Kara again, skin flecked with green motes from the kryptonite radiation, and then J’onn,
withered up and dried out, a husk, drained of life, hanging on by a frayed thread.

The only positive was that this time around, J’onn didn’t look like a corpse. Instead, as she turned to look at him from
the readouts on the computer, he just looked... tired. Ashen and downcast, J’onn J’onzz had the mien of someone
who hadn’t slept in over a week, and going by the verbal report of his recent medical troubles, that was entirely
possible. Over the last week and a bit, he had been experiencing a progressively worsening collection of symptoms
—nightmares were how it started, but it had evolved into short-lived paranoid hallucinations, seeing enemies where
there weren’t any.

Then, there were the physical changes. He had described his shapeshifting ability as becoming both easier and
more difficult to manage, something about how the quality of it had changed, and how he had been having fits of
body-wide pain that would last for minutes at a time before vanishing without a trace. A burning sort of pain, he had
described it, like acid.

Alex had an idea as to why: his blood was turning white. Nominally, Green Martians had green blood, at least in their
base shape, and it had certain properties unique to it, in comparison with, say, human blood. On average, it was
thicker and more like sap than the human counterpart, and had a profoundly unpleasant smell when exposed to
oxygen. This white blood? Was even thicker than that, and stickier. She had sent some of the samples in for testing,
but... as far as she could tell, the progression of his green blood turning white was ongoing, a gradual change, yes,
but a continuous one.

Keeping her own facade placid and neutral, Alex swivelled in her seat to fully face J’onn, who laid across from her.
His expression was weary, and she knew that, even if he didn’t already know the specifics of what she was about to
tell him, he could probably tell it wasn’t anything good.

“Your blood is turning white,” she explained bluntly, keeping her voice flat. “It’s negatively impacting the blood flow to
your brain, not to mention the other parts of your body. I’m unsure as to the specific qualities it has on its own, but
it’s slowly converting the rest of your blood with it. Is there... is there anything like this that you know of? A disease,
an illness?”

J’onn pushed himself up from the medical bed, features creasing as he shook his head. “No,” his voice was still the
same rumbling timbre, low and rough, but fatigue dogged the back of his voice. “If there was... it would be unlikely to
be present on Earth, and while a virus from this planet is a candidate...” he trailed off, looking at her.

Alex breathed out through her nose, feeling the early fluttering of panic in her throat. “It wouldn’t be affecting you,
with your enhanced immune system.”

“I was going to say it’s convenient and unlikely that I would get a blood illness after being given blood,” he replied,
voice darkening.

Alex blinked, the thought catching her. “Do you think M’gann had a genetic disorder?” she inquired. “I asked if
Martians had anything like blood types, and she said they didn’t, so it can’t be a transfusion reaction.”

“...It may be something like that,” J’onn said, eyes drifting away from her. He sidled forward until he could swing his
legs out over the medical bed, leaning down to start fitting his feet back into his boots. “Alex, you already know that
there are two types of Martians on Mars: green and white, correct?”

Well. Of course she did. “You told me about it after revealing your identity to me,” she pointed out. “And I’ve done my
own research into it.” Mostly because she had always felt his insistence that she knew everything about Mars was to
try to prepare her for if the White Martians tried to do to humanity what they had done to Green Martians: a
genocidal campaign of xenophobia and concentration camps.

“We evolved somewhat separately,” J’onn replied, a touch tightly, beginning to tie his laces. “Green Martians came
into their unique pigment and stature through remaining on the surface. We adapted to survive the harsh climate, in
a sense. White Martians remained below, and developed down different lines for different adaptations, but while we
look very different, Green and White Martians are to each other what neanderthals and humans are to each other:
cousin-species, capable of intermixing, and not separated by too much, genetically speaking.

“The reason why our physical appearances are so different is that White Martians experience a... something that is
roughly equivalent to albinism. It appears differently among us than it would you, and it also affects growth patterns,
but it’s a similar mindset, Alex. Their adaptations are to benefit the most from being in pitch black, underground
environments.” He took in a breath, head craning up to look at her. “One of the major differences it has from your
form of albinism is that it turns their blood white, from my species green. Or, I suppose it could be argued that our
blood is turned green from their white. It was never clear who came first. It clots differently due to a slightly different
chemical structure, and it interacts uniquely with the body.”

Something like horror was beginning to crawl into her throat. “But her blood was green, when I took it.” She had
checked, she—she had made sure it was the right blood.

J’onn’s eyes flattened again, darkening. “Had she taken a Green Martian form at the time of the blood being drawn?”

“She had,” Alex confirmed, hands clenching.

“When we shapeshift, we come to match the physical qualities of the thing we’ve taken the shape of, Alex,” J’onn
explained, sounding a bit more angry than tired at this point. His eyes met hers, but whatever he was trying to
convey, Alex couldn’t identify. “This includes blood colour, but fundamentally what we are doesn’t change, even if the
colour is different.”

The horror in her throat clawed its way up into her skull and made a home there. Her head spun at the implications,
had she... had she given J’onn the blood of the species which had killed his own? Had M’gann played a part in that
genocide? Was her blood killing him? It seemed like it might, she couldn’t tell at this stage, but all of the theoretical
breaking point moments for J’onn’s body being unable to use the blood seemed so much more real and—how did
she miss that?

J’onn’s hand landed on her own, jerking her from her thoughts. His eyes were softer as they gazed at her, though his
mouth was no more than a thin, narrow line splitting across his face. “It’s not your fault,” he replied, softly. “This was
outside of your control, you did not have any idea of what was happening.”

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Nausea swelled in her breastbone and her mind retraced those memories she
had of watching M’gann’s blood slip into J’onn’s body, feeling so desperately hopeful and relieved that she wasn’t
about to lose anyone else.

Now? The memory had a bitter stab to it, warped by circumstance. It was like watching a horror movie, screaming at
the people on the other side of the screen to just move, the monster is there with you, but with the pleas falling on
deaf ears.

But then—wait. “Addy had to know, right?” Alex blurted, grasping onto the thread as quick as she could manage.
“Had she been tricked? She brought M’gann, and her psychic abilities—”

The look J’onn sent her was steely, but resigned, and it stomped the words back down her throat before she could
muster the willpower to finish them.

“I don’t believe she knew the specifics,” J’onn murmured, finishing tying off his remaining boot. “But it’s entirely
possible she knew and did it anyway. M’gann... she stuck around, after Addy had her brought in, though I was barely
conscious when we spoke. I didn’t give much mind to it back then because Addy’s responses can be extreme at
times, but she mentioned to me that I had to keep an eye on her, that she was desperate and afraid. She said that
Addy would do anything for me, and that I had to take better care of myself to make sure she didn’t have to.” The last
few words were thick with bitterness, take better care of myself almost spat out.

“But what if she did know?” Alex voiced the unspoken question, watching J’onn’s eyes flit back to her face.

“...I understand her motive, but we will have to talk about that if that is the case,” he finished, a non-answer if Alex
had ever heard one. “But that isn’t the current issue, is it?”

It was a transparent segue of a kind, away from figuring out if Addy should be called in for questioning about how
much she knew about it, but she let him have it. “We have a White Martian on the loose with free and uncontrolled
access to vulnerable aliens,” she agreed, leaning back in her chair, feeling the material creak beneath the force of it.

J’onn inclined his head, scooting forward until he could plant both feet on the ground. “White Martians are many
things: slavers, religious fundamentalists, and militarized xenophobes, but they’re also experts of infiltration. It’s...
possible the bar may be compromised, if M’gann is a bigger part of a larger military undertaking.”

Yet... “You don’t sound like you believe that,” Alex pointed out.

J’onn breathed out, long and slow. “No, you would be right. I don’t think M’gann was planted by the White Martian
military, I think she’s likely an exile from the planet of some kind. If she was a plant, she wouldn’t’ve given away her
identity as a Martian to me as she did in the first place, and... she wouldn’t’ve given blood.”

“What could get you exiled from Mars?” Alex asked, trying to think of it herself. The dossiers and information the
D.E.O. had on the relevant alien species in their solar system - primarily Martians and Titanians - had painted a
picture of White Martians being a largely authoritarian regime, a police state of a kind, which mostly exported their
violence to the highest bidders in the intergalactic community. At the end of the day, the current leadership of the
White Martians had an ideology based around religious purification of lesser species, but they were intelligent
enough to not call a genocidal campaign, and were content to slowly rip apart alien species under the thin veneer of
mercenary work. They made money and could wipe away other species who they saw as lesser, all without
encouraging any retaliation from the greater intergalactic community at large.

Nonetheless, it was actually fairly hard to get exiled from the planet. Criminal activities might get you there, but then,
again, the authoritarian regime was largely held up by large mercenary corporations and cartel-like organizations
which operated largely without impunity. There would have to be a part of society that lacked many of the privileges
of those in higher standing, but...

“If you’re trying to think of a crime bad enough to get them exiled, stop,” J’onn interrupted, giving her a once-over.
“The exile itself could be self-imposed, or M’gann might have disagreed with some of the doctrine and was forced
off the planet for it. They did not just burn Green Martians, after all. It was a religious war fought on racial grounds,
but it had plenty of collateral in the form of minority cultures who were still ostensibly White Martian.”

“But we still need to confront her,” Alex replied, biting her lower lip.

“As it stands?” J’onn said, voice flinty and dark. “We do.”

“There’s... possibly an opportunity,” Alex said, swivelling back around to her desk to pick up her phone. She swiped
through her unpleasantly short list of non-work contacts, and found the conversation she had been having with Kara
over text. “M’gann works at Al’s as a bartender, and Kara said she was going to the bar tonight. Addy is supposed to
be there too, Kara wanted to just see how she was doing reconnecting with her friends.”

J’onn made a low, contemplative noise in the back of his throat.

“If M’gann’s working the bar tonight, I could slip in, make sure she’s there, and scout the place out. Once everyone’s
gone, we can track her down or wait until she finishes work.” It was more than doable, at least. “Afterwards? Basic
protocol is to detain and question, right? See if she has any ideas about what her blood is doing to your body, and
how to stop it.”

She... she needed answers. Alex might not have her mother’s experience with xenobiology, not to that extent, but she
knew enough. There had to be a way to counteract the process, to keep J’onn from possibly dying. If there wasn’t,
this time around, there would be no cure. No fix.

That... she couldn’t think about that. Shaking her head, Alex turned to look at J’onn again, and found him looking off
into the middle distance, a furious, but deeply cold look etched into his features. It wasn’t a look Alex had ever truly
seen on his face, J’onn... he had been capable of anger, capable even of rage, but hate like this? That had always
seemed a bit beyond him, something he was better than.

...Then again, the genocide was hardly something he could forget, could he?

“That...” J’onn said, focus dimming and the expression bleeding from his face, turning his head to look at her. “That
seems agreeable. I will draft a team, and give them the details, you just work on making sure the target is there.”

Alex could write a full-length paper on the logistics and implications of Al’s Dive Bar.

The bar itself? It wasn’t much to look at. Packed to the brim of people looking to drink with friends or drink away
their sorrows, whichever came first. Most who came were non-human, and most of them had to live and exist
outside of the bar with various pieces of technology to prevent that fact from becoming public knowledge, if they
could at all. This was one of the only places in the city where they could let their hair down, be who they were, rather
than what was expected of them.

But, then, it was what went along with the bar that made it interesting. People didn’t give it much thought, but if two
humans could be diametrically different based on culture and lived experience, two aliens from the same species
could be the same. People had a habit of assuming a single culture or identity to a single species of alien, and while
it was certainly true that with time global unification tended to force cultures to blend and intermix - or at bare
minimum interact - even the most unified alien civilizations had distinct cultural groups as a consequence of there
just being that many people.

Taking that, and then expanding that out to alien species over all, the sheer variety of them, and you had a mosaic of
cultures and peoples who were not predisposed towards working together or getting along. Potentially tens or
hundreds of thousands of different cultures, with their own histories concerning each other, had to coexist
peacefully within an environment where most of them were already part of the way to drunk, and the rest were
already well beyond that point. It was not an easy feat, and yet... it worked.

Al’s Dive Bar had the occasional fight, sure. She had learned as much from Maggie. Not everything at Al’s was
sunshine and rainbows and it often catered to those with less than preferable ideas and professions, such as the
various criminal organizations that were beginning to form opinions about Earth, but it wasn’t a warzone, even when
the room was inhabited by alien species which had actually gone to war against one another.

There was something to be said for the power of an immigrant community, sticking together despite cultural or
regional differences as to do otherwise was to give the high ground to the people who can actually make or break
their lives, but... it wasn’t all that. Al’s Dive Bar, despite everything, operated as a tidy establishment with a truly
massive clientele base and wasn’t a flaming ruin because of interspecies bigotry.

And it wasn’t the only one. Purportedly, as far as anyone could tell, there was at least one Al’s-like establishment in
most places that had more than five to six hundred thousand people in a given city. When there were cities even
larger than that, there tended to be more like it. It wasn’t unique to National City, let alone America; in every country
around the globe, there were aliens and the places they came to meet up. It wasn’t always a bar, she had once read a
report about a coffee house in Marseille, France, which catered to aliens primarily, but more often than not it did end
up being a bar or something similar.

These were not uncommon, not unique, and they were just about everywhere. Because aliens had been on Earth for
about as long as humans had been making huts, though in much different concentrations, she would grant you. The
influx to Earth recently had been the result of a vast, intergalactic war being fought by an unhinged species of super-
powerful quasi-Kryptonians - just, you know, lacking the ability to fly, create lasers from their eyes, or breathe air so
cold it would freeze anything it came into contact with - looking for someone to blame for their misfortune.

Keeping the grimace from her face, Alex tipped the virgin mary back and took another drink. She was not a fan of
tomatoes in the first place, and the only reason she had drunk its alcoholic counterpart in med school was because
they had alcohol in them. She couldn’t drink alcohol now, she was on duty and currently performing a mission -
however slight - but she still had to hide the fact that she was going dry for the night, in a bar full of, again, aliens
with a variety of origins, of which there would at least be a few who had enhanced sensory abilities. Club soda or
sparkling water wasn’t going to work, in any case, so tomato juice it was.

Lowering her glass back down, Alex leaned further into the wall, ducking her head down and playing with the stalk of
celery that came with it. She stirred her drink, eyes flitting up to glance deeper into the bar from beneath the fringe of
her hair. Her eyes danced over the aliens, the people laughing and talking, all the way up to the bar, where M’gann
was, handing off a drink to some happy patrons with an appreciative smile.

Her heart gave an unpleasant, sharp lurch, a painful twist of anger. J’onn was obfuscating her emotions currently,
not blocking them, as it would be too obvious to M’gann, but doing enough that she couldn’t get much from her that
was true. She didn’t know what J’onn was projecting, but whatever it was, it wasn’t enough in combination with her
stare to get M’gann to look away from her job.

That woman, if J’onn’s estimate of her age was anything to go by - coming down to a variety of subtle cultural cues
and behavioural tics - was at least of conscription age during the genocide of his people. She would have been an
active agent in it, or at the bare minimum a collaborator. She might’ve been a soldier, back then, J’onn had explained,
or a prison guard, or maybe even just a conscripted civilian being used for shows of force.

The one thing they did know, now, was that she was here tonight, and she would answer the questions J’onn had. If
it would turn out that she was up to the things J’onn worried she might be, they would put her away to make sure it
couldn’t come to fruition.

“Alex?”

Alex jolted, startled, and turned her head away from M’gann, panning towards Kara. Behind her, a few seats down,
Alex could spot Addy’s little group of friends—a Titanian of unknown origins, a deposed Tameranean princess, and a
Kol who had similarly little known about him, other than that he had probably been trained in combat at some point
in time. They all looked worried, though the Titanian had a more resigned expression than anything, as though their
hunch had been proven right, even if they very much didn’t want that to be the case.

“Do you have a problem with M’gann or something?” Kara continued, Alex forcing herself to focus back on her
sister’s face, her expression falling into focus. Worry had written itself into the lines of Kara’s eyes, and the pinch of
her brow, accompanied the slightest hint of confusion.

Bringing her virgin mary up, she took another drink to give herself a second to think of an answer. It wasn’t hard to
compose her face back into a mask of neutrality, to keep the anger she definitely felt out of her voice. “No,” she said
slowly, lowering the cup from her mouth. “I don’t. Why do you think so?”

Kara’s mouth twisted, an unimpressed look climbing over her face. “You’re lying, I can hear your heart,” she said
flatly, folding each of her arms over her chest. “But Megan’s one of Addy’s friends, so play nice, alright?”

Her heart gave another jerk, almost as though it was caused by the reminder that Kara could pick out subtle shifts in
posture, heartbeat and smell to literally sense fear, but it settled quick enough. “Fine,” she said, playing into the
misconception. It was better for Kara to think that she just had some type of personal animosity with M’gann, rather
than the truth.

Kara paused for a moment, eyes flicking over her face, her mouth pinching into a tight purse. “But... speaking of
Addy, I think we might have a problem, Alex.”

Her mind blanked for a moment, confused, before she caught up with Kara’s train of thought. “I haven’t seen her yet,
if that’s what you’re wondering.” It was odd for Addy to be late, but god knows, with the things she had a habit of
stumbling into, it wasn’t unusual.

“Neither have her friends, Alex. Addy hasn’t been to the bar in over a week, and Carol just got done telling me she’s
been out of contact for just as long,” Kara said, her words tumbling out in a rush. Her eyebrows pulled together,
crinkling, and the confusion replaced by something like panic. “She’s not here, either. I know she’s probably not
coming either, because...”

Kara reached into her pocket, tugging out her cellphone. After a moment to put in her password, she flipped the
device around to show her. On it were a series of texts between Kara and Addy, Kara writing with egregious amounts
of emoticons and Addy writing as though she was writing the opening paragraph of a letter to the President. The
most recent text from Addy, over an hour old, simply read I will be remaining at the bar until late tonight, as I have
found something interesting. Do not worry.

Panning her eyes up to meet Kara’s, Alex felt her stomach twist. “She’s lying to you,” she said, even to her own ears
sounding a bit bewildered by the notion. Alex knew that Addy kept things from all of them, not always, but generally
the things she kept from them were things she just didn’t see as relevant or important for them to know. But lying?
To Kara? That was... definitely a bit new.

“She’s lying to me,” Kara echoed, turning her phone back towards herself. “And she’s using this as an alibi to do
something that she doesn’t want me to know about. Alex, nobody has a clue what she’s doing, and Carol can’t track
her down because Addy’s psychic presence is so vast it feels like she’s everywhere in a large area.”

Which was just... perfect. Not only was J’onn in a bad state, possibly a very lethal one that they may have no way to
help him recover from, but now they had Addy doing things she felt obligated to hide from Kara. A rogue psychic
with the power equivalent of a literal planet, because that was just what they needed right now. She trusted Addy,
she liked Addy, she wanted to take care of Addy with some frequency, but Addy’s ideas on normal shows of power
left a lot to be desired, and the last thing they needed was another international incident with the Swedish because
someone flew at missile speeds through occupied air space because she was too impatient to let a goose plushie
get ordered from overseas.

Alex breathed in, slowly, and let it out. Addy was... a problem. If Addy was hiding something this much - the Swedish
air force incident hadn’t been something she technically kept from Kara, just not told her the extent of - and was that
unwilling to speak with either Lena or Kara about her troubles - which Alex had been keyed into a few days ago - then
it was probably big and important.

Addy was a problem, she needed to help Addy, but Addy... wasn’t tonight’s problem.

M’gann was.

“This means she’s pulled herself away from her entire support network, Alex,” Kara continued, unaware of her
thoughts. “She doesn’t talk to me, she doesn’t talk to Lena, or her coworkers, and now she doesn’t talk to the friends
who are more disconnected from her. They haven’t seen or heard from her at all, and she’s not receptive to me trying
to help her... this is getting so out of hand.”

Kara had always been better with people. Alex might be great at studies and learning and even picking apart minute
social cues, but she had never had Kara’s natural empathy. She liked to think she was empathetic, she liked to think
she got along with people and could understand them, but that had taken time and effort and work, when it had
come to Kara about as easy as flying did. Even when she’d been that awkward, gangly kid trailing behind her in High
School, Kenny as her only friend, she had still had that part of her, it was just that the rest of, well, Kara had been
rejected by her peers.

“I agree,” Alex said, at least, and it wasn’t a lie. “But we can’t really do anything right now.” Neither was that.

Kara opened her mouth to butt in, to reply, but Alex raised her free hand in her direction, palm facing forward. Kara’s
mouth clicked shut, and she nodded wordlessly.

“Addy is gone right now. To where? I don’t know. The phone Winn gave her used to have a tracker on it, as well as
most of her equipment, but she handed them back in to the D.E.O. after finding them, commenting it ‘compromised
information security’,” Alex said, remembering the incident fondly. They had bugged some of Addy’s stuff near the
start because, well, unknown alien of possibly godlike abilities, it would be stupid not to, but she had taken it as
something of a challenge, especially after Winn had been brought on board. “We can confront her when she gets
back about this, this is something she can’t talk her way out of. It’s one thing for her to be in a weird mood, it’s
another to be doing something this late into the night after telling you she would be somewhere when she wasn’t.
Getting upset right now isn’t going to help either of us.”

Kara’s mouth worked for a few moments, silent protests on her lips, but as they tended to when faced with reality,
they died in the back of her throat. A frustrated noise came to replace them, blown out of her mouth in a sharp, bitter
groan. “I just wish I could do something, fix everything, just get her to open up, you know?”

“Addy is an independent actor, Kara,” Alex said, drawing her gaze away to look at M’gann again. If they could deal
with M’gann first, figure out how to reverse whatever her blood was doing, and take away the chance that Addy
would find out about J’onn’s current state, then confronting her shouldn’t be as difficult as it could be. Looking back
at Kara, she shrugged. “She’s not the same person you met coming out of Maxwell's labs, she’s found her own
hobbies and interests and... she’s her own person. She can’t be controlled by us any more than I can control you, it’s
not that easy to do that to someone in the first place, let alone someone like Addy.”

Kara slumped, nodding once. “Yeah, I... suppose you’re right.”

[J’ONN]​

To see the world as a Martian was to feel and experience it in a way he knew humans were alien to. Emotions sat
like splashes of watercolour, bleeding through thin paper on reality, not seen or heard but simply felt, soaking into
the world as they were transmitted. Thoughts and minds were like stars and starlight, dots of intense light that
radiated out from there, their shine bright but ultimately not far-reaching. Those with psychic abilities stood out
more, their stars larger, blocking out the light of others, but for the most part, that was simply how it was.

There were a few still present, this late into the night. The homeless and destitute, most of them asleep at this hour,
though a few were awake. They were in clusters, huddled into buildings and away from prying eyes, their numbers
large enough to be startling, but not so big that anyone cared about them. He could, with barely a thought, reach out
and touch their dreams, see into them, but didn’t.

The area was otherwise empty, no noise, no activity, just the bar below him - closed and with lights off - and a single
large beacon in the dark, one target—M’gann.

“We’re in position, Director J’onn,” Alex’s voice said over his earpiece, a crackly buzz. “Whenever you’re ready.”

He never would be, in his opinion, which meant he always would be, in a sense. He descended slowly from the sky,
already having taken his natural form. This was not something to be done through layers of shapeshifting, no, it
wouldn’t feel right. Tonight, they were going to talk, face-to-face; it had to be done.

He looked down towards M’gann, towards that too-familiar light. She was hauling garbage into one of the bins,
dressed casually in jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her skin was dusky brown, and her hair dark.
She looked, in every which way, exactly as she did when he had first met her.

Betrayal sung louder in the back of his head, made his eyes burn. A White Martian pretending to be a Green Martian,
he knew the tactic well. It was one of the ways they had found to slaughter the part of his kind which had resisted
the camps - whether labour or execution, they both had the same end result: another dead Green Martian - or
otherwise fled. They would infiltrate underground groups trying to hide, and then slaughter them entirely, or call in
the military to drag them off to the nearest camp to be killed. Sometimes, they’d make up entire underground groups
by having multiple White Martians shapeshift into Green Martians, luring in the gullible and unsuspecting, horrifying
honeypots where they’d extract information and then kill them when they were used up.

It had been part of the reason why burnings had become necessary to keep the few remaining groups safe from
White Martian infiltration. Exposure to fire would make any Martian drop their shapeshifting, and he still had the
slight scars on his palms to prove it.

M’gann didn’t so much as twitch as his feet landed on the ground, but he knew she knew that he was there. He could
feel it from her presence, the song of her mind trilling off-beat, changing in response to his presence. It sang to him,
called out for him, as all Martians - Green or White - did. It was a song he had longed for, had hoped to find in
another one of his kin, but now he knew was tainted, had even tainted him.

“Cornering me, huh?” M’gann said at last, turning around to look at him as she dropped one of the few remaining
garbage bags into the bin. What he expected on her face - glee, vicious mirth, hate - was not there, and instead, all he
found was a tired look to match his own, empty and resigned, aware of what he was coming for. “I... figured this
would be coming soon.”

“So you knew it would give away your identity?” J’onn asked, the words hard on his throat. He didn’t want to have
small talk, not with a White Martian, but he needed to know. “I don’t think they sent you here to hunt me, M’gann, but
even without that, you knew how I’d feel when I found out, you would know how any of my people would feel, if they
were still around.”

M’gann’s face didn’t twitch, her expression didn’t change. She shook her head, her hands coming to rest in the
pockets of her threadbare jeans. “No, I didn’t come here to hunt you. I fled that planet as much as you did, J’onn.”

With that, she turned back around, reaching for the next bag and hauling it up, pushing it into the bin. For a moment,
they both just stood there, the silence interrupted by the sound of crinkling plastic and rattling cups.

“You know, Addy came to me the exact same way,” M’gann started at last, once she had moved on to the next bag.
“She approached me while I was taking the trash out, though she came a bit earlier, when I was still working. She
told me you were dying, and that she needed my blood.”

Another bag fell into the bin, M’gann reaching for the third.

“She made a token effort to convince me to do it, even when I told her I wouldn’t. She said she didn’t care about
social taboos that might prevent me from doing so, but most of what convinced me initially to go along with it was
how desperate she was. Of course, then she made an ultimatum: I could do it myself, of my own volition, or she
would take control over my body and do it for me. I had almost been convinced before that point, and the threat
almost made me want to do it less, but at that point I didn’t have much of an option.” The third fell in, and M’gann
breathed out a sigh. “I didn’t fight it, I gave my blood willingly. I didn’t want her to hate herself more than she already
did, J’onn.”

Her head turned, and she met J’onn’s eyes.

“You’ve felt it too, right? The pain. It’s not always easily noticeable, she doesn’t broadcast emotions like most people
do, but it’s there when she’s panicking. She didn’t... rationally understand how much it was bothering her to make
that ultimatum at me, I don’t think, but I couldn’t let her self-destruct like that.” She reached for the fourth bag,
turning away again. “So I did it. I didn’t want you to die, I didn’t want Addy to do something that she might struggle to
forgive herself for, and... well, here we are.”

J’onn was silent, the words playing over in his head. He couldn’t deny what she said about Addy. Addy... her psychic
presence was vast, loud, but static, in a way. Yes, with sufficiently high enough emotions, you could feel them, like
ripples on a pond that emerged from some sort of disturbance beneath the water, but it was always subtle, always
hard to track onto. Not all psychic presences did broadcast emotion, but Addy’s had been far the quietest.

But the rest... “Did she know you were a White Martian?”

M’gann shook her head. “As far as I can tell? No. I feel like she would’ve demanded information about whether or not
I could act as a viable donor if she had.”

That was something, at least. He would have to have a long talk with Addy soon, sit her down and really discuss
acceptable boundaries, but it took a slight weight off of his chest. He didn’t think he’d hate her for it, but to find out
that Addy knew about White Martians, their status, and what they did to his people, but still force M’gann to give
blood, despite knowing she was a White Martian, would be a much larger conversation to unpack.

Despite that, he wasn’t really here for this. “Show me your real form, M’gann,” he said, and this time, he couldn’t keep
his voice calm. It came out as a harsh rasp, angry.

M’gann pitched the last bag in the bin, reaching up to shut the lid. She looked at him, at his fists, trembling at his
sides, and then nodded with a soft, resigned sigh. She stepped away, and her form rippled, motes of red playing over
the surface, something human and familiar giving way to something he saw regularly in his nightmares.

White Martians were everything that Green Martians weren’t, in a sense. Where Green Martians had a thick, leathery
hide that covered their body, giving them their green pigmentation, the White Martians had lost that to the years.
Instead, their underlying musculature had adapted to form its own thin, pale skin, the colour of milk, outlined by pink-
red fleshy veins that defined their musculature. Where the Green Martian form was lithe, the White Martian form was
bulky and heavy, towering over him, with a head that looked more bestial, with teeth exposed. Where the Green
Martian’s hide was rough and dry, the White Martian’s skin was slick and glimmered as though covered in a fine
sheen of sweat.

The spike of fear and rage he felt was not unexpected. It was the same pair of emotions he was quite used to, had
experienced plenty of times over the years. What was unexpected, however, was his head churning. His focus
twisted, a sharp spike of pain as his entire body buzzed with pain, a migraine halo emerging over her figure as he
started seeing double. She could feel his blood - her blood - burn in his veins, endlessly painful.

Then, as it always happened, it was gone, and the world was normal again.

“I couldn’t stand what they were doing on Mars, J’onn,” M’gann said, her voice coming out in that thick rasp of her
kind. “I tried to help, and all I managed to do was run, in the end.”

The anger won out over the fear. “You do not get to say that to me,” he ground out, voice as cold and flat as he could
make it. “Not after what my people have gone through, not after you took on our form, just like they did to track us
down in the first place. You didn’t watch your family get slaughtered like pigs, M’gann. You’re old enough to have
been conscripted at the start of the genocide, how many lives did your cowardice take?”

There was silence for a moment, then—

“Thirty-nine,” M’gann replied, and the words came out thick with meaning, with self-hatred and disgust. “There were
children, J’onn. I was conscripted to make sure none of the prisoners escaped, but they were children, some of them
young enough to be barely weaned. I tried to get them to escape, but they didn’t trust me enough, the genocide had
already been going on for some time at that point, and... when I did finally manage to get them to go, the White
Martians found us, because we wasted too much time. I tried to get them onto my family’s ship, but they all died.”

Another pause.

“But I didn’t, and so I ran.”

Rage burned in his throat, louder and harsher, fizzling into hurt that clotted in his chest. He could feel his muscles
buzz again, the low ache from her blood returning, pulsating through him to the rhythm of his heart. He wanted to
yell at her, to scream, to demand to know how she could have failed, when he’s lived his entire life with the image of
his family being killed branded into his mind?

But he didn’t. Because he knew grief, and that was grief, if nothing else.

M’gann looked at him, long and hard. “If you kill me,” she said at last, picking up on his emotions, feeling him as he
did her. “Please let me take my human shape, at least. I... don’t want to die, in this form, to be stuck as I am.”

“That’s who you are!” J’onn barked, unable to help himself. “They are your people, M’gann! You lied to me, pretended
to be like me, but you’re not!”

“They stopped being my people when they sent another species to be slaughtered, J’onn!” M’gann sharply cut back
in. “I can’t stop being what I am, but I can try to be better!”

“But you were still complicit, M’gann,” he managed, sharp and furious and angry. “You stood there while they took us!
Just like the rest of them!”

“And I will hate myself for that for the rest of my life, J’onn,” M’gann replied, suddenly sounding so tired, the anger
fleeing her in a burst. “I... I tried, and I failed, and I ran. I was complacent before then, I was too afraid to step forward
and try to protest it. I won’t deny that, I was part of the silent majority who did as they were told, and we’re all
damned for it. I could go back to Mars now, make myself into a martyr, hope that there’s still some like-minded
individuals who will carry my torch, but here’s the thing?”

She made a noise, and J’onn realized it was a laugh, cut through by a sob.

“I’m a coward, J’onn, I’m afraid of dying,” she said, at last. “But I’m so tired. So I ran, I hid, and I’ve been hiding here as
long as you have been. I keep my head down and I stay up at night wondering what would’ve happened if I would’ve
stepped up before it all got carried away in that wave of violence. That’s all I have been, J’onn, and all I will be until I
finally die.”

J’onn stared at her, the slouched, tired posture completely uncomplimentary to her appearance. In his nightmares,
he could remember the White Martians’ march, their ramrod spines, the way they had tore apart protestors and
dragged the ones who survived it off to reeducation camps. He remembers the purging of the temple schools on the
highest mountain, how they had bickered and argued over whether or not his people even qualified as sentient,
during the later years of it. It was a justice, they had argued, to put these poor, unthinking creatures to work in a
fulfilling way, to make them productive.

And he knew he couldn’t forgive. “You’re not going to die, M’gann,” J’onn said, and his anger had, too, leaked out. In
its place was something cold, and something deeply familiar: hate. Not hot, not like rage or anger, just... hate, the
cold and bitter hatred that builds up as old wounds never quite heal right. “I need to know what your blood is
currently doing to me, and what else you’ve gotten involved with.”

M’gann’s face twisted, her mouth opened—

But this was enough. “Agents, detain the target.”

From both sides of the bar, they flooded in, Alex leading the charge. M’gann looked between the two crowds, the
guns outfitted with incendiary ammunition, ready to kill her if it came down to it.

She did not resist.

J’onn watched as Alex forced M’gann - now back in her human shape - into one of the cells lining the walls with a
shove. M’gann, like she had for the entire ride over, didn’t resist it; slumping forward as she stumbled into the cell.
Alex merely glared, and swiped a card through the reader next to it, the door filling in with a solid forcefield, hard
enough to even contain an enraged White Martian.

It was a bit of tech they had salvaged from Fort Rozz, containment technology having gone largely unmolested. He’d
had the cage built for White Martians particularly, with power-dampeners that meant there was no getting out of it,
not with anything they had on offer.

M’gann turned to look at the two of them, her face flickering through a few emotions. She didn’t wait for them to ask.
“You’re turning into a White Martian, J’onn.”

There was a deafening, piercing sort of silence after that. He could feel his ears ring, painfully loud, and his brain try
to process that. He... he was what?

“It was the other way they managed the genocide,” M’gann explained, voice tired and weary. “They’d capture key,
important targets, and convert them into White Martians. They’d also do this with some of the very young ones, pre-
adolescents, toddlers for the most part. Any earlier, and the baby would die, any later, and they argued that they
would be ‘too set in their ways’. They’d wipe away their identities, hide the fact that they were ever Green Martian in
the first place. The ones who knew they had been Green Martians before would be suppressed in the psychic grid,
they’d be one or two among tens of thousands and eventually, they’d either give in or die. They didn’t care which.

“I’m...” M’gann hesitated, swallowed thickly. “I’m so sorry, J’onn. I didn’t want this for you.”

J’onn stepped away, forced his lips shut tight, closed his hands into fists at his sides. He was turning into a White
Martian, he was becoming what killed his family and everything he ever knew. He couldn’t stay here, not around that,
not with the knowledge circulating through his head.

So he left, before he could do something stupid.

He heard Alex calling after him, following, but he kept his pace steady and quick, marching away from the prison
complex and over to his office. He was in the door and trying to breathe before long, anger jolting, making his entire
body buzz and ache again. He leaned against his desk, ignoring his chair, and pressed a hand to his face.

He heard Alex walk into the office, shuffle her feet, and close the door.

Breathing out through his nose, J’onn tried to swallow down the bile in his throat. He pushed himself upright, fingers
spasming against the table, trying to work out what he was feeling other than disgust, nausea, and anger.

“...I’m sorry, J’onn,” Alex echoed, behind him, voice faint. “But we need to debrief on this.”

She was right. God, when had things gotten so bad that Alex was being the responsible person in the room? He
breathed out again, dragging a hand down his face, before pushing himself back upright and turning to face her.

Alex’s face was a network of pity. “If what she’s saying is true - and I’ll have verification one way or another in a few
hours, your samples are almost done - then... I, I don’t really know how to stop it, J’onn.” Her voice choked off a bit
near the end, and her face twisted, becoming pained and anticipatory, prepared for the reprimand.

But J’onn couldn’t feel any anger, any hate. Just that soft, fatherly love that had developed over the years that he had
looked after her. Nobody could want for a better child than Alex, not truly. She was trying her hardest, and was so
crushed when she couldn’t manage it.

When no reprimand was forthcoming, Alex continued. “Your symptoms are going to likely worsen, and... the pain is
probably going to become really bad for a time. I’ll be looking into the exact physical differences between White and
Green Martians, but to transition from one to the other is unlikely to be pleasant.”

That was putting it lightly. The pain in his hide now made a sick sort of sense; it was slowly being broken down to
expose the flesh beneath. The anger, too, made sense, his hormonal balance would be completely off at this point,
and so did a lot of other things.

“I...” Alex hesitated again, bit her lower lip. “I need to know... what are we doing with Addy? We know she didn’t know,
but should she be brought in about this? This isn’t just going to go away, you might not die, but...”

He would be different. Changed. Addy would notice and want answers. “I need to consider what I’ll be doing going
forward.” He wasn’t sure how his mental state would change as the changes progressed, but he had the thought that
it wouldn’t be in a good direction. He knew better than most the trappings of self-hatred and disgust, the depths of
depression, and he could see them in his near future. “Before I make any statements.”

He would need to handle Addy gently. Alex was second maybe only to him in knowing the exact details of Addy.
Kara may understand Addy better than either of them, but he knew more about her internal workings, what she was,
rather than who. He had kept Alex updated more than even Addy’s own personal profile had been, largely because
for a time Alex had been slated for Addy’s handler - the job had later been handed off to Vasquez, who had shown
good rapport with Addy - though it had fallen off after she had ended up occupying a more sisterly role.

When he had fused, ever-briefly with Addy, he had gotten a perspective on her that he had not quite yet given out.
Alex knew that Addy was a continent-sized mass of high-energy crystal relays and psychic information occupying
the brain of a person, but he... he knew more. He had seen her history, in a way, like tree rings; past iterations built on
themselves, the lines where the shards which made up Addy’s whole self had been fused together, and where others
had been torn away. She was incomprehensible in a lot of ways, impossibly old and ancient and made up of
impossibly complex systems. The closest comparison he ever had for her was the gods of his own culture, mythical
creatures of a sort.

“She’s already struggling, J’onn,” Alex picked back up, looking a bit pointedly at him. “I know you need time to
process this, but... Addy’s been going out and doing things and lying about that for at least a week now, entirely
possible to be more. She’s been lying to Kara, and her behaviour outside of that has been preoccupied, nervous, and
afraid. People are catching on, and Addy’s getting worse by the day. Whatever she’s hiding is really important to her,
and I think we should be worried about it. The last thing we need is for her to find out about this not through either of
us, but through someone else, and think it’s her fault.”

Unease settled into his bones. Addy was not the foreign element he had initially treated her as. If anything, she was
a newborn consciousness with too much power and attention span to be entirely helpful in adapting. She was
learning and growing as a person, from start to finish, and that was a good thing. Left as-is, she could’ve developed
in whatever way her past beliefs led her, but with people there to temper her, she could begin to carve out an
understanding of the world that didn’t start and stop with forcing people to obey her.

They weren’t quite there yet, but then they had made progress, at least.

So the fact that she was backsliding as she was? It was worrying.

Before he could get a comment in, such as asking for clarification, the door was flung open. Agent Renee, one of the
more level-headed and dependable agents on his roster, stumbled in with a worried, borderline panicked look on her
face, and J’onn watched as Alex jumped immediately to attention.
“Sorry to interrupt, Director J’onn, but it’s an emergency. We’ve found a massive Cadmus base, and you’re needed
immediately.”

J’onn knew, abstractly, about Cadmus’ scope. They had been around before the D.E.O., operating at first as an inquiry
into Gotham and other sites of ‘regular supernatural appearances’. It had started as a joke, made up of largely
discredited scientists, but as time went on, they found actual, living proof of their speculation.

Living proof they took apart to see how it ticked, and then started making weapons out of it.

But... he never had expected something this large. The sheer vast size of the place being laid out to him was
boggling and unsettling, as it showed they could make something like this, in the middle of the city, without anyone
noticing. A massive warehouse complex beneath the ground, housing thousands of automata, all built for a single
purpose: war.

Glancing around the warehouse, his eyes caught on the hatch downwards, into the heart of the facility. Agents
swarmed like ants, emerging and descending, bringing chunks of robots up with them. Down below, agents were
scouring the entire basement complex, now that it had been decommissioned, in search of anything and everything.
Most of the written documents had already been brought up, and were laid out over a series of tables, at which
Maggie was walking an ashen-looking Alex through each of them, explaining in detail what he had already feared.

Cadmus was abducting aliens for more than just experimentation. They were abducting them for forced labour, to
be used as slaves to make their equipment and extract what value they had left after they had been poked and
prodded. Somewhere in America, there were entire facilities manned by enslaved aliens, possibly far more than they
could think was possible.

He was starting to understand why Cadmus had been so willing to leave the aliens they had experimented on for
collateral. They weren’t just too difficult to take, but they had served their purpose, and now they weren’t useful to
Cadmus anymore. It was entirely possible Cadmus no longer maintained large experimentation complexes, though
he doubted that it had stopped completely. No, now Cadmus was dealing in slave labour and robotics.

The one scientist his agents had acquired had been declared effectively brain dead due to existing injuries, rendered
into a vegetative state. Likely from psychic interference, if the medical staff on-hand were correct. He hadn’t
checked himself - the man’s injuries were ongoing, and exacerbating them with his own abilities would not help
matters - but the feel of him was certainly indicative of a psychic wound.

He could spot Winn not too far from the scientist, though not looking over him. Winn was, instead, crouching in front
of the guts of one of the larger hornet drones they had dragged out, drinking heavily from a huge cup of coffee he
had gotten after they had woken him up and called him in. Around him, other robots had been pulled apart, and a
small team of researchers that Winn now lead were hanging on his every word as he explained what he thought
each of them did.

Of all the things, though, that startled him most about the facility, it wasn’t his agents found, or that he had been
drastically off in understanding Cadmus’ scope, but that Addy was here first.

His eyes panned down, to a corner of the warehouse, where a small pile of power cores had been left. On them, a
carpeting of bugs covered it, utterly silent but prone to attacking anyone who got too close to it. His agents had
thought it might have something to do with the chemicals in the core, but he knew better. He could feel Addy’s touch
on the bugs as easily as he could feel it on the scientist’s brain.

A scientist, he was pretty sure, who was involved directly in her creation.

There was no clear defining line about what exactly Addy had been doing here, nor why Maggie was hiding it - and
the Green Lantern - from him. The power cores covered in bugs seemed like something she’d do to remember to go
back to it, a reminder of a sort, or a way to keep them from being pilfered by other hands. The exact specifics of the
facility were vague, but automata didn’t seem to be in her wheelhouse any.

Still, he was starting to get a very vague notion, one which tickled at the edges of his awareness. The mind she had
apparently taken apart had been of the man who was involved in helping create the conditions for her to come to
exist as she was. The pile of power cores were low-grade, but certainly not worthless.

He had a thought, one that felt like he was on the right track, but still lacked the details. He was starting to get the
impression that Addy was looking for sources of power, and that it probably had something to do with her current
existence. That she had come looking for that scientist - Doctor... Alexander? He would have to look over her file
again - and found something relevant to her current task, but had left before she had the chance to take them.

Had she found something in his memories that upset her? If so, what did that have to do with the power cores?

And if she was looking for power sources, that left him with another question: why?
 362

OxfordOctopus May 27, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 26 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jun 3, 2021  #3,014

EPISODE 26​
Morning commute continued to be one of Addy’s least favourite times of the day. It was second only to the few
moments after waking up, where her faculties had not yet caught up with the rest of her, and she spent a very brief
amount of time feeling painfully stupid.

She disliked it for a number of reasons. For starters, she could not field the commute as she wanted to, for, despite
her ability to turn invisible, she was ‘banned’ from flying to work. Which meant, of course, public transit, as she
refused to carpool with Kara after her last experience with her driving. Addy was certain she was more than durable
enough to come out of a high-speed collision largely unscathed, but overall she would rather not have to experience
something like that in the first place.

But perhaps the worst part of the commute - and between the slight delays in the subway system, the short bus ride
generally spent stuffed between people who smelled like a combination of body odour, coffee, and cologne, there
was definitely a lot to choose from - was the elevator. A cramped, narrow box full of people who were by nature of
their mass forced to come into contact with her, and of whom she was obligated to play at social niceties with.

Thankfully, after numerous weeks of her only responding to greetings - as it would be terribly impolite to do
otherwise - and not their incessant attempts to get her to tell them about the weather, or to know what she thought
about whether Judy was truly dating Patricia from accounting, she was mostly left alone.

She still did not like the elevator.

Thankfully, given minimal interruptions, the amount of time it took the elevator to reach her floor amounted to
roughly twenty-five seconds. With a variable of about five seconds on either side, if there was another bring-your-kid-
to-work-day incident.

The elevator doors slid open, just on cue, and Addy hustled herself out from the pack of other morning commuters,
nodding her head as people wished her a good day and luck with future pursuits, conveying the bare minimum
required engagement to not come away rude or crass. A few others staggered out with her, two of them breaking off
to go in the opposite direction, while the other made a straight line for the door right across from the elevator.

Addy was, blessedly, now free of social obligations.

Unpleasantly, she was however not free of her own thoughts. The failure from the night before hung ominously in
the back of her mind, and the list of contingencies she’d developed with it. A power source had been a targetable
goal because it would fundamentally reduce the constraints on her energy usage prior to acquiring a method to
recharge her core. Effectively, even if it did take her breaching into another universe - which at this point did seem to
be the best option - having excess power she could siphon would give her more wiggle room for how much energy
she needed to manage a seeding operation in a good amount of time.

Without something like that to comfortably rely on - as Cadmus certainly didn’t seem to know where it was, so at
this point it could be anywhere - she was going to have to find alternatives and figure out the breaching process
before anything cataclysmic enough could occur to force her to waste excessive amounts of power.

She was profoundly annoyed by the matter, which did somewhat surprise her. She had expected the unwelcome ebb
of dread as an emotion, or more of that anxiety, but most of it was just peevishness. She certainly felt stupid and
frustrated that she was unable to take the lantern, yes, but she wasn’t as devastated by it as she expected.

Arriving at the lab door, Addy’s head tracked up, finding herself under the scrutinizing gaze of a security camera. She
blinked, recalling that it certainly wasn’t there the last time she was here, before quietly approving. Lena updating
their security was important, and looking a bit closer, it seemed the entire lab area was much better kitted out for
surveillance. It might make another attempt to take something from L-Corp difficult, but if that was the sacrifice she
had to make for better security, so be it.

Tugging her keycard from her pocket, Addy swiped it through the reader, the door giving a sharp click. She twisted
the handle, bumping her shoulder against it as she pushed it fully open, stepping into her workplace and forcing
herself to refocus.

The lab was already occupied by the people she worked with. Emil stood as she entered, smiling at her, while June
and Serling remained seated, both of them too preoccupied with what looked like a robotic diagram spread out
across the table. It wasn’t quite work hours yet - not for another ten minutes, anyway - leaving the lab space bereft of
that faint ozone smell that it acquired after hours of interfering with energy.

The door swung shut behind her.

“We’re all here,” Emil said, motioning her over. Addy approached, watching as June finally turned away from, yes, that
was certainly a battle robot design, Serling doing the same a few short moments later. June waved her fingers with
a polite, quiet little smile, Addy bobbing her head in another greeting, while Serling waggled her foot as a wave, eyes
lidded and lazy.

At the table, Addy tugged her bag from her shoulder, laying it in what little free space the surface had left.

Emil watched the three of them for a moment, before nodding decisively. “Our prototype is now in its home stretch,”
he said, at last, voice elated.

Serling seemed to wake up at that, popping one hand into the air with a sharp whoop! “Fuckin’ finally,” she added.
“Took the suits long enough.”

The smile on June’s face widened, but she made no such great display of excitement, looking mostly serene as she
brought her hands together in front of her.

Tugging out a chair in front of her laptop bag, Addy dropped down into it, watching as Emil stepped away from them
and towards one of the whiteboards, quickly clearing some of the writing on it with his sleeve.

“Between us finishing up the power management system and the overall design being greenlighted, we’re moving
towards talks of production and marketing,” he explained, reaching for one of the dry-erase markers. “Honestly, I
think most of it comes back to the rash of alien tech being connected with crimes, but the investors are terribly
interested in our work. We’ve basically got the go-ahead to clean up any last remaining concerns before we’ll be put
into contact with people Lena trusts not to leak this. The marketing team, manufacturing and design, for the most
part.”

“Ugh,” Serling grumbled, disgust rife in her tone. “The design team always dumb down my creations.”

“...Serling,” June began, sounding exasperated. “Drop the grudge about the design of that switch, please, it has been
over a year.”

“Never.”

Emil cleared his throat, shooting a look at Serling. “Design is important,” he began, voice pointed. “Our design we
have now might work for us, but it won’t for most people. We need to make this user-friendly and accessible to use,
rather than something you need to hook up to proprietary terminals to program in functionality.”

Addy could understand that, honestly.

“Most of our day will be focused on hashing out those details, design priorities, and focuses with the new extended
staff they’ll be sending our way,” Emil continued, beginning to jot some names down on the whiteboard. “Lena has
handpicked most of them, but at this point, our main job is to collect and compile a design document so we can
actually explain how the things work to people who are partially uneducated in the exact sciences we’re working
with.”

The sound of the dial tone hummed against her ear as she waited, back pressed tight into the rough, bricklike
texture of the wall behind her.

Her afternoon, after first meeting their expanded team, had gone surprisingly well. She was genuinely somewhat
startled by how many adjustments and modifications they were going to have to do to let it work for a layman, but it
wasn’t as though it had been unproductive, necessarily. The words - as per Terry Hoffman, head of design - ‘even an
idiot has to be able to use it without losing their head’ came to mind, and it was a bit unnerving how she hadn’t
considered that.

Rationally, Addy understood that humans maintained different intelligence levels. It was not a surprise that they did,
she had been briefed on the vast distances of relative intelligence among the species, largely as a consequence of
their inability to work together for longer than ten minutes at a time before forming tribes and killing one another.
Until rather recently, even essential information on medication, toolmaking, and more had been gleefully hoarded by
very few people.

Even her own kin had not necessarily been exempt to relative levels of intelligence. While most of her kind had a
baseline intelligence level to allow for micromanaging their priorities and lesser projects, some did know
significantly more than others, sometimes even by design. She had to accommodate for it amongst the gestalt on
several occasions. That said, what was the baseline for her kind was generally sufficient in most cases, and the
more ‘intelligent’ of her kind tended to be that way due to specialized knowledge, such as herself.

Humanity, as it would turn out, could not say the same. ‘Expect not even the bare minimum’, Robin Welch, the PR
head - and partner with Marion Reynolds, the PR team senior and recent rehire after leaving the company due to
Lex’s policies - had said. The three of them had explained to their group that the major goal for pieces of potentially
unsafe equipment of any kind was to do their best to reduce the accidental risk of it as much as possible. What you
wanted to avoid was making it easy to turn the device into a bomb, or to shut down a power grid, and to have it so
that only by disobeying instructions - and thereby avoiding a lawsuit - could things like that happen.

Even if they sold it to the military - which they weren’t going to do - they had explained, it still had to be manned by
the grunts—soldiers, and they were hardly the exceptional bastions of intelligence that the US military may want you
to think they were. The weakest links broke the chain, and all of that.

The sound over the line clicked, a droning ring replaced by the sound of explosions and shrieking wind.

“Addy?” Kara’s voice came over the line, crackly and barely audible. There was another sharp bang, the sound of
rocks cracking and breaking.

“Good afternoon, Kara,” Addy said, not missing a beat. “I was calling to inform you that—”

Her words were lost beneath an extremely loud explosion, one with such volume that it overwhelmed the line,
turning it into incomprehensible static. By the time the line had evened out again, all Addy could hear was Kara
cursing - well, almost, there was a lot of ‘heck’, ‘golly’, ‘fudge’, and the like - beneath her breath.

“I’m really sorry Addy, but I am a bit... occupied,” Kara said, voice lost for a moment by another bang. “Can I call you
back in, ehh, ten minutes?”

Addy blinked, pursing her lips. “Do you need my aid?” She would really rather not have to leave, seeing as she had
something to do, but...

“Nope,” Kara was quick to reply, another explosion cracking off somewhere in the background. “Just aliens with huge
laser cannons. Weekdays, you know?”

Addy really didn’t know. Laser cannons rarely played a part in her day-to-day life, though now that she thought about
it, hadn’t that one woman who bothered her at the gun show and Lena’s gala said something like that?

Maybe it was more common than she thought. She would research it later.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I will call you back in a bit. Though I wish to inform you that I will be home later tonight, if
that’s okay?”

There wasn’t a reply for a moment, just more bangs, blasts and grunts from Kara’s end.

Finally, she got one. “Yeah!” Kara shouted over the sound of another loud explosion. For whatever reason, she
sounded rather strained. “Oh, don’t you dare point that at—crud, shoot, gottagobye!”

The line went dead.

Not for the first time, Addy was rather glad she did not have to patrol like Kara.

Pulling the phone from the side of her head, she glanced down at the screen, the ‘call ended’ notification blinking
away to reveal the texts she had been looking over. Maggie’s texts, in fact, detailing a tech marketplace they were
going to hit in a few days, given all things went according to plan.

Her eyes skimmed up, away from it, and towards her environment. Around her, a maze of back-alleys formed a
network of pathways and busy pedestrian streets, tucked away between large warehouses in the seedier side of
National City. Aliens and humans in a variety of shapes and sizes stood around, some talking, others just watching
with lidded eyes, evaluating the competition, perhaps.

At the other side of the alley, the entrance to the marketplace stood open and unguarded.

Pushing her phone into her pocket, Addy slipped free from the wall and walked ahead, ignoring the aliens watching
her as she passed. She wasn’t the only human-passing individual in the area, of course, but she most certainly
wasn’t a regular, and that meant she stood out. There was little she could do about that, unfortunately, so she let the
gazes slide off of her like water.

At least nobody impeded her path, though she figured they probably knew better than that.

Stepping in through the open door, Addy took in the marketplace in full. Packed away within the interior of a
warehouse - which was beginning to become a trend, she would grant you - was something that bore a resemblance
to one of the cape conventions she could recall from Taylor’s memories. Rows of stalls were packed tight, selling
their wares to anyone who would have them, and the number of buyers comfortably quadrupled the number of
sellers, possibly even more. Most of the retailers were aliens, but there were a number who were distinctly human,
and most of the things they sold - weaponry, for the most part - looked hand-crafted, poured over, not scavenged to
be resold at a later date.

People were learning how to make tech well beyond humanity’s means just a year ago.

Near the very back of the warehouse, on an elevated stage, was the entire Demolition Team, talking with passersby
and curious onlookers. They were all very friendly - even if their weapons were actively being held or worn - in a way
they simply weren’t at the gun show, eager to show off and laugh with others.

Maggie had filled her in on the hows and whys somewhere like this had come to be. Roulette may do personal
venues and gun shows for rich clientele, but she also did these: sponsored marketplaces where she’d put some of
her staff to keep it safe so long as they gave her a cut of all profits that went in or out. If she found out that you
swindled her, you’d be dead, and so nobody tried.

Roulette herself, Addy knew, was not present, but the people representing her were. It was why they were being so
friendly, because their presence was for more than just the safety they provided: they were here to recruit. The
Demolition Team were undeniably dangerous, equipped with some of the best weaponry that could be salvaged or
produced, and that’s what made people be drawn to them. They were, after all, just human, and to those looking in
with similar circumstances? Roulette offered the chance to be, if not the Demolition Team’s equal, then at least
something bigger than ‘just another human’.

Roulette was doing more than just hiring criminal organizations. She was well on her way to build her own, based
around a cult of power. Maggie had been considerably worried about it.

Eyes scanning across the crowd, they settled on one of Roulette’s staff members, designated by a pin attached to
their polo shirt. The individual themselves was androgynous, taller than she was by half, and lanky, an alien by
nature of their almost woven-looking skin and set of five eyes.

Waving them down, she approached, closing the distance rather quickly. “Where do you keep your power
generators?” she inquired, the alien tilting their head to the side like a cat. “Even cores would do.”

The alien extended one unusually long arm, pointing at one of the rows closest to the warehouse wall.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping away and heading in that direction. The crowd parted and shifted around her, more
people trickling in from the doorway while others made to leave. As she was nearing her destination, the crowd
parted rather suddenly, and Addy came to a dead stop as she came into contact with a man both taller and denser
than she was, as it felt like she had just run into a wall.

The man himself was fully cloaked, wearing a thick trench coat and covering up every inch of skin, even his face. His
head bobbed towards her, coat wrinkling around his arms. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, stepping past her.

Blinking, she watched him go and checked her pockets. They had not been picked. Normally, when something like
that happened, it was because she had just been stolen from. Taylor had several such memories of incidents like
that occurring, even.

At least she would not need to make a scene.

Stepping back towards her destination, she glanced down the row of stalls, taking them in. The alien had not lied, for
most of them were selling what seemed to be power-related technology. Mostly power cores, by her estimate,
ranging from cube-shaped to ones that looked a lot like an egg. There weren’t, however, that many people in this
aisle, only a few stragglers, among which was one haggling with one of the first stalls in the aisle.

The retailer the man was haggling with was an alien, with pale-green skin that looked like it was covered in the same
sort of texture that a human’s elbow had, like intricate cross-hatching, or something that wasn’t quite scales. She
had oily-looking orange hair that had been shorn short, and over a muscular body, she had a full set of oil-stained
overalls and thick, padded gloves. A pair of goggles had been pushed up to crown her forehead, leaving her
completely white eyes visible.

Next to her was another figure slouched over a wooden box of some kind, wearing a thick, baggy sweater with the
hood up and hands tucked away in the front pocket. They weren’t looking at anyone, and the only splash of colour on
them was the pale red of their sneakers and the denim of their jeans, legs splayed out wide and lazy.

Thinking it would probably be best to start at the front and make her way down, Addy waited, watching as the two
continued to haggle over what seemed to be a fairly low-grade power-core. Ultimately, the human haggling with the
alien gave up, muttering a sharp curse and shoving a wad of bills over, the alien giving a casual grin and handing off
the cube to him. The man snorted, said something in a language Addy had never heard before, and finally turned on
heel, making his way deeper down the aisle.

Now that it was her turn, Addy stepped forward.

The alien behind the stall turned to look at her, a bland look on her face. “Good afternoon, I’m Merxi, do you see
anything you want?” Merxi - apparently - spoke like a fast-food retailer did, with boredom etched into their face. Not
exactly good conduct for the face of a stall, but then she didn’t seem to have any problem selling her wares, so
perhaps it didn’t matter much.

“I’m looking to acquire high-yield power sources,” Addy explained simply, watching the alien’s face for expressions
and finding none. “Ones on similar scales to omegahedrons, or if not that, then at least very powerful, for personal
use. Even larger generators are acceptable.”

Merxi blinked once, then twice, then laughed. It was a sharp bark, crude and dismissive. “If I had a dollar for every
time a human came looking for a power source like that,” the woman more sneered than anything else, the
blandness gone and in its place something like faint resentment. “What’s your itch? World peace? Maybe green
energy? Some shit like that? Look, girl, I’d be a very wealthy woman if I owned something like that, and more to the
point, I wouldn’t be here.”

Feeling more than a little stunned, Addy blinked sluggishly at her, trying to tamp down on her anger.

“So, no,” the woman continued icily. “I don’t have something like that, can you just get lost—”

Her coreself pulsed in response to her irritability, and she was already reaching out to it, about ready to drag the
information from her brain, because she was growing tired of people treating her like their lesser, when the sweater-
wearing individual lurched to their feet. Merxi jolted, turning towards them, only for a talon-like hand to land on
Merxi’s shoulder, the wrist flecked with feathers.

“Be more respectful,” the sweater-wearing individual hissed, their voice throaty, a rasp. “That’s The Presence.”

Merxi’s face went chalky-white, the colour leaching out of it in much the same way that coral bleached. Her head
swivelled, and she looked at Addy with more than a little apprehension clouding her expression.

Addy’s eyes, though, were on the sweater-wearer. A telepath, if they could figure that out. And if they were telepathic,
they would likely know if she tried anything, and if noticed, it would likely get her removed from the venue.
Wonderful.

She loosened her grip on her core, breathing out through her nose. “Even if you are willing to answer some
questions,” she began—

“We’re not,” Merxi snapped, the sweater-wearer finally releasing their shoulder and stepping back to the box. “We’re
not doing business right now. Go away.”

Sucking down more of her annoyance, Addy turned away, glancing down the rest of the stalls. The neighbouring
stalls to the one she had just spoken to had all overheard it, and were looking at her with similar amounts of fear or
apprehension. They would be no good.

Resigning herself to it, she made her way deeper into the aisle, passing by the ones who might’ve overheard or
twigged onto the fact that she had been denied service elsewhere. It took a while - considering a large number of
them had enhanced senses - and by the time she had found someone who didn’t look at her with veiled suspicion or
fear, she wasn’t that far from the stage where the Demolition Team was.

This one was human, so lacked the enhanced senses, and seemed to be almost completely disinterested in his
competitors. He had more of the same: crude, handcrafted and salvaged power cores, amongst other things, and as
she approached, he levelled a single unimpressed look at her, before turning away pointedly.

That one didn’t even have a reason. Was she just unimpressive enough to dismiss like that?

Already reaching the end of her tether, Addy began to consider the logistics of using her psychic abilities without
being caught using them when, what else, but an interruption occurred.

Someone - and by that, she meant the member of the Demolition Team with power armour covering his top-half -
was launched from the stage and hurled, bodily, into a wall, making a crater in it.

The entire marketplace went whisper-quiet. People froze, heads turned, and everyone settled to look at the
perpetrator that had just interrupted capitalism in action.

It was, as it would turn out, the guy in the trench coat. There was a reason it had felt like walking into a wall, she
supposed, as the vast trenchcoat hit the ground below him, beneath it was revealed to be a full-body set of power
armour, but one with a much different design principle than normally seen. It looked skin-tight, more of a metal layer
that covered his body from head to toe, even covering his face. His arm was outstretched where he had hit the guy,
and the plates that made up the armour around his forearm were shifting minutely, venting additional steam from
the top.

Why, exactly, was it that whenever Addy went to go and do - admittedly less than legal - errands something like this
happened? Why could she not merely shop in peace?

The lull in activity ended as quickly as it had started. Buyers fled in droves, scampering past Addy, yelling and
screaming, grabbing what they could, while retailers worked to rapidly pack their wares away into various storage
devices. Some people screamed, but most just rushed, shouting and yelling over each other as they tried to get out
of the line of fire.

The Demolition Team didn’t wait either. Rosie - the leader - brandished her gun upwards and shot off a spray of
finger-sized nails in the direction of the armoured man, who swerved to get out of the way with significantly more
speed than either his bulk or appearance would imply he had. Scoopshovel - the one with the arm attachment that
had a shovel at the end of it - tried to whack him, only to get jabbed in the stomach for his troubles, stumbling back
with a sharp grunt.

Hardhat - the one with the power armour - clawed free from the wall with a shout and launched himself at the guy,
managing to shoulder-check him away just as he was about to follow up the jab he made on Scoopshovel with
another blow.

Jackhammer - brandishing his eponymous alien warhammer - came rushing up from the side, taking place next to
Rosie, while Steamroller - she was assuming - was scrabbling for a gun, for lack of his normal equipment.

“Fucking seriously, Steel?” Rosie snapped, firing another few nails in Steel’s - apparently - direction, forcing him to
step back a few paces. Hardhat and Scoopshovel disengaged a bit, coming shoulder-to-shoulder and forming a
barrier between Steel and Rosie. “You have got to stop doing this shit. You’re really starting to piss us off.”

Steel laughed, his voice unaffected by the metal covering his face. “Rosie, that’s kind of the point. I’m here to stop
you, and I’ve managed to shut down at least four of these at this point, going on five now. Why on earth do you think
I would stop?”

Rosie snarled and opened fire again, and the rest of the Demolition Team converged on him as well. Jackhammer
launched himself from the stage, swinging down, the head of his hammer cracking into the ground, a shockwave
radiating out. Stalls around Addy toppled, falling over, people stumbled and the people trying to flee turned into
something of a stampede.

From the side, Hardhat came back in, swinging out with a meaty fist at Steel’s face. In response, he ducked, then
drove the crown of his head into Hardhat’s face, sending the man reeling backwards. Scoopshovel whipped his arm
down, swinging it towards Steel’s legs, only for the man to kick backwards, catching it and instead sending
Scoopshovel sprawling.

Throughout it all, though, something occurred to Addy: he wasn’t going for the kill, even if he had the chance. The
only people there who were actually managing to put up a good fight were Rosie and Jackhammer, both of which
seemed professionally trained, whereas Hardhat threw his weight around like an idiot, Scoopshovel seemed to have
his weapon used against him more than he used it against others, and Steamroller was still looking for a gun, having
been knocked over during the tiny earthquake Jackhammer had made.

He was stalling, almost. What was his angle?

Jackhammer came in from the side again, shoving the pommel of his warhammer towards Steel’s face and
managing to make it connect. Steel reeled, and Rosie took the chance to fire a cluster of nails towards center-mass,
only for them to miss as Hardhat threw himself bodily into Steel, shoving him out of the way and using the chance to
grapple him, holding him in place, hands clenched around Steel’s biceps.

Jackhammer spun his weapon around, lunging forward and dragging it down towards Steel’s head. Steel, in a show
of sudden great force, lurched to the side, hauling Hardhat in front of him to take the blow, which sent the two of
them skidding back. Hardhat shouted, harsh and pained, but Steel didn’t even miss a beat, twisting around and
grabbing Hardhat, plates on his skin-tight armour hissing, venting steam as he brought him up and threw him over
his back, sending him hurtling past where Addy could see and into a line of stalls which shattered loudly beneath the
impact.

Rosie levelled her gun, Steel ducked down, and—

The ceiling exploded inwards.

Rosie and her team reeled back as a red blur dropped from the sky, Steel scrambling back much the same to avoid
being pancaked.

The dust dispersed, and in the midst of the cloud, Kara stood in costume. Her face was tight with annoyance, her
cape looked the slightest bit singed, and in one hand was a large bit of warped laser cannon, if Addy’s estimate was
right, probably the barrel. The metal screeched as her hand tightened. “You’re all under arrest.”

Rosie wrenched something from her belt, tossing it towards the ground. Kara blurred forward, attempting to kick it
back, only for the canister to explode into a plume of thick, clogging smoke. There was a sharp bang as, off to the
side, Steel threw himself through the wall, leaving only Hardhat - looking rather concussed as he hauled himself out
of the wreckage - visible. Kara surged back out of the smoke before he could make a run for it, planting her foot on
his back, before turning towards the smoke.

Rosie, Scoopshovel, Jackhammer and Steamroller were all gone. So was Steel.

Kara’s head panned, snapping around, searching for something.

Searching for her, it became clear, as her eyes locked onto Addy’s face.

Somehow, Kara had known she was here.

Around the two of them, the marketplace fled in fear, buyers and sellers abandoning what they hadn’t already packed
away.

Addy wasn’t paying attention to them, though, the world having narrowed down to just Kara’s gaze, burning where it
landed on her.

Addy pressed her forehead harder into the peaks of her knees, arms wrapped tight around each leg. The plush
cushions of the seat did nothing to steady her heart or ease her nerves, instead leaving her feeling frayed and
painfully vulnerable.

In front of her, Kara paced back and forth.

Kara hadn’t said anything to her since she spotted her in the marketplace. She had said things, of course, to the
contingent of D.E.O. agents who had arrived, handing Hardhat off to them before wordlessly taking the both of them
home, leaving the agents to clean up what evidence they could find at the marketplace.

Her head was full of static, so even words probably wouldn’t help. Her stomach was full of nervous energy, tying
itself into knots that reached up to the pit of her throat, leaving her full of panic. She was trying not to think about
having to explain, what she could say to get through this without Kara knowing, but each time she tried not to, her
mind brought her back to it. There was no way she could lie through this, not to Kara, not anymore.

Kara’s pacing slowed, gradually, before stopping. Addy listened to her breathe in, then out, the noise gusty and
exhausted.

“Why.” There was no hate in Kara’s voice, no vitriol, and...

Addy felt something in her crack. She felt her breath hitch, her shoulders started trembling without her saying so.
She tried to tamp the response down, to strangle it out of her, but if anything that just made it worse, the cracks
spreading, widening until she was gasping for breath—

“I was looking for power.” The words tumbled out without consent, spoken into the fabric of her pants. “Because I’m
running out of it.”

Another breath in, it came out ragged.

“I have an energy crisis,” each word was hard, each word hurt, but they came easier and easier. The knots in her
stomach tightened, climbed, she felt sick and nauseated but something was unwinding. “I’m dying, I do not die, my
people don’t, but I have a limited source of power and each time I use my abilities I use more of it up. I do not have
any way to replenish it, as of this moment, so I was looking for ways to refill it.”

“I—Addy,” Kara breathed, sounding suddenly horrified.

“I tried with simulations,” she babbled, dragging her face up from her knees. “I was trying to breach into another
universe so I could spread my core and begin to refill energy, the barren earth my current self is located on has been
too used up, and with the newer crystal technology I have, I could make it efficient. But nothing works,” the last few
words came out harsh, raspy, Addy swallowed back the lump in her throat, to no avail. “The parasite, it reminded me
I was running out of time, and then I found out about the invasion. I was expecting years worth of time to develop a
method to breach, I now have at most one year, and in that time I can be expected to continue to use what little
energy I have left.”

Kara’s expression shifted, a broken look on her face.

Her breath came harder, her eyes burned. “Nobody will understand, because I know that humans have limited
lifespans. The amount of time I have left is vast, relatively speaking, to the life of a single human, but I am running
out of time. I use my powers and I use up some of that time, and each new problem uses up more. I have limited
every function I can to reduce the total power I use up passively, but even that there are certain thresholds where I
would need to find larger solutions if I overstep them. I have a hundred years left of energy before, if I was to seed
another planet and do it as I wanted to, I may run out of energy before I can manage to make it self-sustaining, and
would require months, possibly more, of stasis to slowly and cost-efficiently do it, and I am running out of—I don’t
have time, Kara, I—”

She took another breath, and it came out as a croak, a sob. She felt her eyes burn so bright, and then her cheeks
became damp with tears. She pulled herself in, tighter, trying to make herself as small as possible. She was out of
time and nobody could help or understand or—

Kara kneeled down, hands came to touch her shoulders gently, before pulling her into a hug.

Her sob shoved out of her chest in a rasping cough.

“That must’ve been really scary,” Kara murmured, tucking her in close, drawing nonsensical patterns along her back.

The cracks broke free, and she felt herself shatter. That was what it had been this entire time, wasn’t it? Fear,
gripping her every moment, every mounting failure, every inability to do things on her own. Her own arms pulled free
from her legs, latched onto Kara, and pulled her in closer, her next sob coming out harsher.

“I’m so sorry you were pushed this far before I noticed, Ads,” Kara murmured, pressing her nose into her hair. “I’m so
sorry.”
Addy tucked her head into Kara’s nape, and let the feelings that she’d strangled into a ball in her chest out.

The seat was significantly more comfortable without her entire body cramping to curl up in it, and with Saturday
there to cushion her. She was pressed into him, leaving him to surround her back in his softness. Her eyes ached,
and Addy felt unpleasantly tired from the crying, but it was done.

And... beneath it all, she felt for the first time in a very long time, lightweight. Airy. Free.

Kara sat across from her, taking sips from her mug of coffee. Finally, she set the cup down, breathing out softly,
gently, and offering a gentle smile in her direction. “Can you tell me what you had planned? I can’t promise I can
understand it all, but...”

Wiggling a bit tighter against Saturday, she rubbed at her eyes, trying to work the ache out again. “If I could find a
method to breach into another universe, I could colonize another barren version of the one my core is on,” she
explained, slowly. “A source of power to siphon from that is standalone from that may be too unreliable and too
costly to use, but a source of power on its own could help make the amount of time I can use up before doing said
seeding is beyond my means. It was why I was looking for the omegahedron, as it would serve as enough energy to
at least add another few decades worth of time to my current limitations.”

Kara hummed, blinking slowly. “I mean, Barry knows how to do that,” she said, slowly. “You remember him, right?”

It was hard not to. “He isn’t in the universe, and we have no cross-universe ways to contact him,” Addy pointed out
sourly.

Kara grimaced. “That’s... true. He said he’d ask a favour of us, but it’s completely possible he just forgot about it.”

“If I knew how to access him, I would have already,” she explained simply. “So long as I could figure out the exact
specifics required to breach between universes, fabricating a device to do so would not be difficult. Afterwards, it
was a matter of making something which could breach once into the universe which contains my coreself, then use
my core to draw the object over to my now-inactive universal relays, and then use it to force open a hole into another
universe. After that, with sufficient energy, seeding can occur and I could study the effects of it with much more
accuracy with my coreself, likely reducing the power required to keep the hole open.”

Kara nodded, brows furrowing as she gave it more of a thought. “This is... yeah, difficult. Universal travel like that
isn’t common at all. I can’t even remember any alien species which did it, though I... think there were one or two
myths I could look up?” She didn’t sound very confident in the matter. She shook her head, breathing out another
sigh. “I... Addy, maybe we should tell some of the others.”

The knot climbed back into her throat, but she reminded herself that people knew now. It wasn’t just her. Kara was
trying to help, even if Addy was unsure if she would ever manage it. “I... don’t think they can help,” she admitted
quietly. “I don’t want... I don’t want their opinions on me to suffer due to this, as well.”

Kara’s features softened. “Addy, they would never,” she assured, shaking her head. “But I... I’ll try to see how I can
spin it, or at least only tell a few people, if it comes to that. Even if this doesn’t work, Addy, I still want to try, and I
think everyone else would too.”

Addy swallowed. “But that’s pointless,” she pointed out, her voice weak even to her own ears.

“Sometimes, trying is all we can do,” Kara stressed, smiling. “Even if it won’t be enough, I... can’t imagine what this
has been like on your own. If we can try, even if it’s just me, Alex, maybe one or two others, I think it’ll help.”

Swallowing down the painful lump in her throat again, Addy nodded. “Okay.”

She’d try. She’d let them.

“...And uhm, can I get you to tell me what you’ve been up to?” Kara inquired, a bit awkwardly. She fluttered one hand
against her thigh, nervously. “You don’t need to, but I’d... I’ve noticed you’ve been avoiding places and going missing.
I don’t want to push, but it’d help a lot if I knew where you’d looked already.”

Addy nodded again, breathed in, then let it out.

She opened her mouth, and started with M’gann.

 399 Last edited: Jun 3, 2021

OxfordOctopus Jun 3, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 27 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jun 10, 2021  #3,055

EPISODE 27​
Addy had come to collect a wealth of goose-related merchandise. From stickers to pins to her clothes, she was
altogether proud of what she had gathered in her time. This was the reason why, reclined in her chair, she was
wearing her goose-print pyjamas - long, soft fleece pants with a drawstring - and the goose-patterned t-shirt that
Lucy had gotten her not too long ago. While individually they were quite decorated by geese, together they patterned
just about every stretch of available space on her person.

Wiggling her toes, Addy tucked her nose a bit deeper into her knees, watching Kara across from her.

Warm, morning light filtered through the living room, casting everything in a faint golden tint. Kara sat on the couch,
leaning over as she picked through all the material Addy had compiled on her problem, down to some of even her
more errant thoughts. In one hand, she had a tall metal thermos, filled with coffee, and in the other, she was shifting
a paper around, glancing curiously at the diagrams on the paper below it.

The coffee table itself was completely covered in the pages, sometimes stacks thereof, as Addy had never been one
to skimp on proper documentation and compiling of what she knew. All told, they had run through most of the ink in
Kara’s printer, as well as all but three pages of printer paper they had scavenged from around the house.

“You are scarily organized, Ads,” Kara mumbled with disbelief. She dropped the page she was holding back onto the
stack, turning over to another to shuffle through it. “Meticulous doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’d be a dream
personal assistant.”

Blinking long and slow, Addy stared at her. “I would not lower myself to managing the menial tasks of someone who
thinks themselves my better,” she pointed out. She still didn’t understand how Kara had a healthy relationship with
Cat, from what she had seen, though to her credit Cat did seem to be the exception, if not the rule.

Kara glanced up at her, face contemplative, before she glanced back down. “Point,” she allowed, pausing to take
another sip from her thermos. “That is a very good point.”

Kara had declared, after going over what she had done - and to a point, what she had not - that they were going to
have a ‘day in’. Addy had watched as Kara had grabbed her phone and more or less killed whoever was protesting
her taking a single day off with kindness. Not once had any annoyance seeped into her voice, only the plain, distant
tone of someone who had won battles of attrition like this significantly more weighty and more important in her
spare time. Ultimately, CatCo’s head of management had folded and granted her the day.

Getting time off for herself, by comparison, was significantly easier. Unlike Kara’s, whose contract - that Addy had
yet to personally see, but was worried as to what she would find tucked away in there - did not permit a lot of things,
Addy’s was significantly more freeform. She was given a no-questions-asked amount of time off - some of it paid, in
the case of certain emergencies outlined in an entirely different document - that she could request at any time and
in any place. She had gotten two days off, to Kara’s one, at her insistence that she take some time to ‘relax’.

Which all came back around to the fact that she was wearing pyjamas when it was rather close to noon. Kara was
much the same, outfitted in a combination of fluffy pyjamas which would’ve probably given anyone other than her
heatstroke, considering the literal heatwave that was pressing through the state of California at the moment.
Regardless of the season or month, California did not like cooling down for even a second, it would seem.

“Okay,” Kara breathed out, plopping another page down and finally pulling her posture straight. She gently placed her
thermos down in the one bit of bare table left, before dragging her arms above her head to stretch. “I’m beginning to
understand why you think this is outside of our scope.”

That was... a very unexpected admittance. Addy bobbed her head. “Do you believe me when I say nobody can help?”

“Nope!” Kara chirped, arms dropping back down to her sides. “I think we can totally help, I’m just beginning to
appreciate the sheer scope of your problem.”

As if for emphasis, she gestured to the covered coffee table.

“I would hope so,” Addy agreed, letting her own legs spill out from where they had been perched on the edge of the
chair, lowering them back to the floor. “As otherwise, the two hours I spent explaining the science behind most of
this would have been wasted.”

All things considered, Addy had the impression Kara had caught on quickly and without much hesitation to the
lengthy lists of mathematical equations and theories. She had been able to pick up on things Addy had been worried
she might need to break down into more comprehensible explanations, likely as a result of her Kryptonian education
giving her a more solid understanding of the universe.

Kara hummed in agreement, reaching out to grab her thermos and take another sip. “So,” she said, breaking her
mouth from the seal it had on the rim of her drink. “The major problem at this point is getting power from one source
to you, right?”

“Roughly,” Addy confirmed, letting her body loosen a bit as she relaxed into her chair. “Any current plans I have must
account for the fact that there is no easy way to transfer energy to my core from this universe. In fact, given any
interdimensional movement, I could have fixed or, at worst, managed my ongoing energy crisis by now if I did not
have this problem in the first place.”

Kara bobbed her head in a nod, eyes slipping back down to the pages on the coffee table. She reached out, sifting
through a stack to retrieve a few pages. “You noted down two sources of, er, ‘non-direct energy transfer’. Livewire’s
shard, and... the parasite’s crystals. Can’t you use one of these? I mean I might dislike Livewire on principle, but if
she’s able to help, I wouldn’t be against it or anything.”

“Not in the amount of energy I need, nor in a way that will aid me going into the far future,” Addy pointed out, in turn.
“While The Live Wire has the infrastructure to transfer energy to me, and vice-versa, it would necessitate working
with its host, which is not always a guarantee. Additionally, while I can force the issue with my bud and make it
transfer energy, it has acquired certain personality traits from its host, and a mutiny would certainly follow. It would
require both of them to agree to behave as a power source indefinitely, and I cannot see that happening.”

No, from what very little she had gleaned of Leslie’s personality in her interaction with The Live Wire, making her
stand in place and absorb comical amounts of energy would likely be a failure the moment she explained the
specifics. Trapping Leslie, as well, would be a hindrance, as containing her would be reliant on restricting access to
her powers, something Addy was unsure was possible at this point without first draining the energy from her. In
theory, she could mind control her, but then she’d be stuck dealing with a mutinous member of the network and have
to remain within a set distance of Leslie to avoid retaliation for her actions.

“And the crystals?” Kara asked.

Oh, those. “The crystals the parasite grew are technically capable of interfacing with me,” Addy conceded, crossing
her legs. “The main problem is that they are unrefined, and small in storage capacity. At most, they could contain
months of energy, which while workable in a pinch, would not be a consistent means of regaining energy. I would
also need to be located near them to initiate the transfer. A comparison I could make would be like trying to
recharge a car with double-A batteries.”

Kara made a face.

“Precisely,” Addy agreed, because that was an unpleasant thought.

“Well,” Kara started up again, glancing back at the pages she had pulled out. “It says here Livewire’s a bud, right?
Can’t you do something like that? Find someone willing to play along?”

That was... more complicated, unfortunately. “I have very little recollection of exactly how my core was behaving
when it created The Live Wire,” she admitted, working not to grit her teeth at the fact. As she had come to learn,
kryptonite radiation was rather uniformly unpleasant for her to process. “I understand that it did so to avoid a vast
expenditure, but it made the bud in a very short amount of time. The fact that I made it work was a miracle, the
juvenile intelligence of the shard was just barely enough to reconfigure itself to work with Leslie. Which is the other
problem with that plan: Leslie is unique, the bud has managed what it did by adjusting to her physiology which
allows for energy transfer as it does, I would need to find someone very close to her in abilities to get something
reliably similar.”

A thought did occur to her, however.

“Though, I suppose cloning isn’t out of the question—”

“Yes it is, Addy,” Kara said distractedly, looking through more of the papers. “No cloning.”

She wasn’t sure how that was fair, but didn’t comment on it.

“So...” Kara said, trailing off as she set the papers down. “That would leave breaching, right?”

Addy inclined her head. “I have obtained a wealth of knowledge on unique crystalline formations,” she said, with
some pride. It was riveting to be able to improve upon something as age-old as the gestalt’s crystals, and a very rare
occurrence. “The ones I can now fabricate, given the right materials, energy and space, would be capable of creating
much greater stores of energy for myself. The intent would be to breach into another universe and seed it with these
crystals, configuring them to collect and redistribute energy to maintain the breach itself as well as further crystal
production. Ideally, they would draw energy from the sun, as well as geologic activity, and would be a consistent
source of power capable of refilling my reserves.”

Let it be known, once Addy did manage this, she would never again let herself be reliant on non-renewable energy
sources. Admittedly, the sun was similarly non-renewable, but she would deal with the sun detonating when it
started going down that path. If that was the most of her problems, she would be in a very good place.

Kara’s brows crinkled, and she fell into thought, opening her mouth, halting, shutting it, and repeating the process a
few times. She dropped the pages to tap at the side of her face, before apparently figuring something out. “Didn’t
Barry... give you something? A mathematical equation or something? Rao, it feels like that was such a long time
ago.”

“He gave me a mathematical equation which in itself proved the existence of ‘vibrational universes’,” Addy corrected,
unable to help the way her voice grew a bit dark. She still was not a fan of how this universe functioned, not at all.
“He showed me proof of how the universe generally worked, not how to fully comprehend nor break it. Due to how
different the universe I came from behaved, most of my personal knowledge is largely useless, and inter-universal
travel in this universe is at this point foreign in both the rules it works under and the mechanics used to achieve it.”

Her universe had significantly fewer moving parts. Brute force had been so much more useful. Did you need to break
through to another dimension? Compress enough energy and manipulate enough factors to punch a hole through
the fabric of reality. It was hardly simple, but it was at least straightforward.

“I’m pretty sure Barry will get back to us eventually,” Kara said at last, pursing her lips. “But I have no idea when,
unfortunately, and since we’re on a time limit...” She sighed, a beleaguered, annoyed noise that Addy very much
related to. “How were you even testing this, by the way?”

...Why was there an odd thread of worry in her voice? “Simulations, none of which had much in the way of applicable
results,” Addy offered, which Kara looked relieved about. “Practical testing comes later, much later. My simulations
pointed towards me not understanding something fundamental in how the universe works, but without any way to
properly identify it.”

“I mean, okay,” Kara breathed out, ruffling her blonde hair a bit with her hands. “I understand now why you’re looking
for power sources, but... if you weren’t even at practical testing, wouldn’t you want to get that done before looking
for something that might not help?”

Addy fidgeted, breathing in, before letting it out. The truth often hurt, she was coming to find. “Among some of my
theories, Kara, page two-hundred and nine specifically, was that there was a non-zero chance of it being something I
uniquely was not understanding,” she said, slowly. She didn’t like admitting ignorance, but there wasn’t much point in
obfuscating it. “It could be that my own logic is too absolute and based on my past experiences, it could be
something relating to my own process, or it could be simply that it was very unlikely I would just stumble upon it.
There was always a chance that someone else understood it, and finding them and picking that information out
would fix the problem.”

After all, Barry seemed to abstractly understand how it all worked, and she kicked herself mentally for not just taking
the information wholesale at the time. This hadn’t been as big of a problem, then, she supposed, but it did nothing to
help her currently. Searching for the omegahedron was also a way to set a major task, rather than languish in what-
ifs, and would be a reliable source of energy. The fact that she might find someone who had the missing piece, or at
least an idea of what it was - just enough to work her own understanding out from - was a large bonus, and half the
reason why she had been doing it in the first place.

“I felt a bit silly doing it that way,” Addy admitted a bit more quietly. “But it seemed expedient and could be managed
alongside several other concurrent tasks.”

She had to feel silly, considering her kin’s history with doing the exact same thing and getting nowhere close to the
answers they wanted.

“As you can see, however, it is my best option,” Addy picked back up, speaking clearly once more. “Breaching
simulations continue to take increasingly long times, and require the use of my computer at the workplace, which
itself isn’t even entirely what I need. The time limit we have is not large, and finding even clues to the answers I have
for my questions would be a significant boon. With as many aliens as there are, statistically, if Barry Allen can
manage it, so too can one among them do the same.”

Her own species had been a prime example of it. Unorthodox, granted, but still an example. If not for the fact that
they were significantly more likely to cannibalize her and the planet as they were to actually help her, she might have
even started looking for them more than just based on what she knew of their past conquests. After all, at least they
should, theoretically, have the abilities she was looking for.

At her words, Kara hesitated. It was slight, rather subtle at that, but Addy was beginning to pick up on those things
again, now that her head was clearer. After a moment, the hesitation bled out of her, the stiffness, and it was
replaced by an expression of resolve.

“Alright,” Kara breathed out, settling the pages down and squaring her shoulders. “I’ll work with you on this, and I’ll
even keep this for now from the D.E.O., though we’ll have to revisit Alex later, but I have a few conditions.”

Addy inclined her head.

“One: Addy, you have to reconnect with your friends.”

Addy’s head snapped up, and she blinked owlishly at Kara, who was giving her a smile that... wasn’t happy. It was
sad. It looked painful.

“You need that support, Addy, more than from just me or Alex or Winn. These are people you got along with, that you
can relate to,” she explained softly, hands fidgeting. “And this includes apologizing to M’gann, okay?”

Addy opened her mouth, but—

“I’ve still got two more conditions, okay?” Kara interrupted, voice still gentle.

Addy shut her mouth, and nodded once more.

“Two: you have to promise to come to me if something like this happens, okay? Keep me in the loop, as otherwise
I’m... always worried about you. People noticed you were in a bad way, Addy, but nobody knew why. Not even me. If
you can’t tell everyone, I understand, but at least keep one of us in the know, so you don’t feel so isolated again,
alright?” Kara didn’t wait much, didn’t let her ask questions, she merely continued. “Finally: if I’m getting involved, I
want to use the chance to take Roulette down. I know that might not be ideal, but she’s getting worse, Addy, and I
need to do something about it. You have ways of tracking her down, and I need them, but I’ll definitely help you look
through what we find and my focus will be on helping you, she just needs to go.”

This, again, wasn’t as bad as she was expecting. The major problem she had was with the first, as she had cut
contact rather severely and didn’t know if Carol would bother to respond. M’gann, on the other hand, was a larger
problem. She... did feel bad, abstractly, for what she did to M’gann, but she was out of options and M’gann’s comfort
had taken less of an emphasis on J’onn’s survival. It always would, she would always have those divisions, but...

“Okay,” Addy agreed, breathing out. “However, I am worried about apologizing to M’gann, as I may not be allowed to
talk to her. I am unsure if I am banned from the bar.”

“I don’t really think you are?” Kara said, though her own voice had a questioning lilt to it. “Nobody really seemed to
think that was the case, but even just trying with M’gann, Addy, is a start.”

“I’ll try,” Addy conceded, knocking her knees together as she stared down at the various geese on her pyjamas.

“Good,” Kara said, thick with warmth. Addy felt another surge of pride in her chest, her fingers fidgeting on her
thighs. “Which, I mean, leaves us with how we’re going to plan this out, right?”

Ah. This was certainly more her speed. “Correct. Ideally, it would benefit me to track down the people making this
tech, or even better those who understand it. Alien manufacturers seem to be fairly common, but I am unsure about
the researcher population on this planet.”

“Which makes sense,” Kara agreed amicably, pursing her lips. “But that just leaves us with finding a venue and
working out from there. Actually, you mentioned that the Green Lantern helped you track down a place, right?”

Addy nodded. She had actually kept Maggie’s involvement - and other identities of those involved - out of things. Not
because she wanted to hide anything from Kara, no, but it was common courtesy and Maggie could very well tell
Kara of her involvement when she wanted to. Addy might not care much for the privacy of those she studied, but she
felt like Kara was oddly proud of her for keeping names out of it nonetheless.

“I have his number,” she explained, reaching for her phone on the table next to her chair. “I could perhaps offer an
agreement between the three of us to target more of Roulette’s venues, as he may know another location.” She had
more Cadmus locations, certainly, which she had included among the papers she had given Kara, but not so much
for Roulette’s operations. She would have to look more into it to begin building a map.

“Will he actually join up with me?” Kara asked, sounding the slightest bit anxious.

Which, Addy thought so. “He seemed like a good person,” Addy offered. He also seemed like a smart one, which
Addy might value a bit more than intentions. “I cannot see why he would turn away the chance to work with you.”

“Sorry,” Kara mumbled, sounding a bit sheepish. “It’s just, uh, nerves for meeting a Green Lantern. They’re pretty
important, you know?”

They were empowered peace enforcers who for whatever reason had something that prevented planets from jailing
them and throwing away the key for political goals. “Those types of organizations tend to be,” Addy agreed, before
ducking her head and beginning to compose a text.

The meeting time was for a little after lunch, and the place was just outside of city limits, away from prying eyes.

This, of course, meant Kara had shown her to her ‘most favourite Indonesian place’ - she was not aware there were
enough of them in the area to have a favourite in the first place - in National City to make her eat what was, in the
end, more Javanese cuisine than anything else. In particular, she had come to learn tofu could actually be rather
enjoyable, given it wasn’t made by Kara and was instead fermented, to be turned into something called tempeh.

The rest of the trip to the meeting place wasn’t that difficult, either. Admittedly, both she and Kara had to slip into a
cramped alley stuck between an Indo-Pak and a surprisingly shifty-looking shoe store to change into their costumes
and be on their way, especially considering Kara had lingered for a bit longer at the restaurant than was altogether
necessary, but they did arrive at the empty, dry meeting place not too long before the meeting time itself.

Where precisely the Green Lantern had led them was abundantly clear: it was a concrete lot on the literal fringe of
National City, with dusty plains just beyond it, and a warehouse a short ways behind them. The place looked
completely uninhabited, and likely had been for a long time. Unlike Sunnyside, which could maintain a population of
the homeless because it was at least theoretically within walking distance of civilization, this warehouse was too far
away from anything to be functional as a squatting spot.

The why - as in, why did he bring them here, and not to say, a roof somewhere within the city limits not being slowly
consumed by desertification - was significantly harder to pin down. Addy might understand the tactical advantages
a place like this brought, including the fact that it was so isolated, but then she also had the wherewithal to point out
that the only interesting thing nearby was a half-decaying, horrendously rusted box-shaped warehouse.

Kara seemed to share a similar sentiment, as she was now staring off into the middle-distance, at roughly around
where the sole cactus for a veritable mile had sprung up: a fat, low-to-the-sand looking thing with more spikes than it
had edible flesh. Like the vegetable equivalent of a porcupine.

“What do you think about Green Lantern?” Kara asked at last, dragging her eyes from the rotund cactus. Her voice
was quiet, but still managed to carry on account of the empty landscape.

Addy gave it a bit of thought, first. She hadn’t been particularly forthcoming about what she thought of John, outside
of that he seemed to have good intentions and a head on his shoulders that wasn’t empty. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t
be good to damn him with faint praise. “I am somewhat fond of the man,” she admitted, after a moment. “He seems
to be intelligent and driven enough to not annoy me, and he understands the practical use of his assets without
overdoing it or showboating. He also clearly feels responsible for this planet, and I assume he is now doing his best
because he feels like he should, not because he wishes to be worshipped.”

Or at least, he should be. If Addy went through all of that emotional turmoil to find out the man found the lantern and
decided to hang up his responsibilities she would likely not hesitate to simply take it from him. There would be no
moral quandary there, just wasted resources.

“I...” Kara trailed off, before huffing, folding her arms over her chest. “My family idolized the Green Lantern Corps,”
she began, voice even quieter. “Krypton saw them as wise bastions of justice and good intent, and I was raised to
think that too. Even Non wouldn’t mistreat them, despite his motivations, but...”

Another pause.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Kara said, voice edged by something vaguely self-deprecating. “Kryptonians liked them,
the people who designed Myriad liked them, my mother, who put aliens away in one of the worst prisons in the
universe for drug charges liked them. I don’t know if I should be preparing for that disconnect again.”

Kara breathed out, a sharp exhale that threw some of her blonde hair up as she turned towards the warehouse on
the other side of the lot. “I’ll have to find out for myself,” she said, reaching up to style her hair back to how it
normally was as Supergirl. “That should be him right now.”

Addy followed her gaze, and more out of curiosity than anything else, reached out to her power to send out an errant
pulse without any of the power behind it. True to Kara’s words, a presence was there—or rather, two presences.

“And he’s brought someone along, too,” Kara said, a bit more stiffly. “Another human, I think? Their heartbeat
matches, in any event. Maybe backup?” Kara glanced at her for a moment, a bit of a weird look on her face. “Would
meeting me require backup?”

“Depends on the context,” Addy offered. That was probably Maggie and not ‘backup’, as Kara put it, though thinking
on it, Maggie could probably qualify as backup if she was using kryptonite.

Looking back towards the warehouse, she watched John appear from around the side, in costume, but without
Maggie. He strode forward, spine straight, shoulders broad, looking confident and completely in his element. His
eyes jumped between the two of them, both in costume, a curious expression written across his face.

Finally, he came to a stop, just a bare few paces away, and extended his hand towards Kara. “It’s good to finally meet
you, Supergirl,” he said, and his voice seemed to reflect that. He sounded partially awed, a bit like how Kara had
sounded back at the apartment.

Kara took his hand, giving it a firm shake. “It’s good to meet you too, Green Lantern. If anything Administrator has
told me is true, you’ve earned the mantle you wear.”

John regarded Kara with a look, one that Addy couldn’t place, before inclining his head respectfully and stepping
back. “I have to ask first: is this D.E.O. business?”

Kara shook her head. “No, it’s not. This is personal, for myself and for Administrator, and I’m intending to keep them
out of it until we have results.”

John relaxed a fraction, turning back towards the warehouse. “In that case,” he said, before raising his voice. “You
can come out now!”

Maggie, as expected, stepped out from behind the warehouse, and immediately froze.

So did Kara.

Maggie’s eyes jumped between the two of them, rapid-fire, lingering on how they were standing side-by-side, truly
looking over all of them before, finally, her face went through a series of colourful expressions, only to be quickly
concealed behind her hand, which rather sharply smacked into it. An audible groan, even from the distance, could be
heard, and Maggie started towards them, looking incredibly embarrassed.

Kara glanced at Maggie, then back at Addy.

“I believe she knows your identity now,” Addy offered politely. That had been about the same incredulous ‘I should’ve
known’ look that she had received when Maggie had discovered hers.

Kara let out a groan to match Maggie’s, the heroic persona dropping from her posture. “Seriously?” she said,
sounding both mortified and utterly exasperated. “What even gave it away?! I don’t even know her that well! If it was
that obvious everyone in the city would know!”

Maggie came to a stop next to John, motioning between the two of them. “I’ve seen you two side-by-side before, and
since I know Administrator’s identity...”

“It wouldn’t be hard to put two and two together,” Kara finished for her, sounding pained.

“Hey, at least you didn’t loudly shout her name,” John said dryly.

Maggie just levelled a look that even Emil would be proud of in his direction and pointedly said nothing.

Kara glanced between the three of them, tilting her head to one side. “You both know Administrator’s identity, then?”

That got her a series of nods.

“And now you know mine?” Kara said, this one more directed at Maggie.

Maggie’s follow-up nod was a bit more hesitant.

“Please don’t go spreading it around,” Kara requested, huffing out through her nose.

Maggie gaped at Kara. “Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked incredulously. “Of course I won’t. I’m already on a
tyrannical anti-alien terror organization’s shit list, the last thing I need is to be on yours too! If anything you’re scarier,
you’re more subtle than your cousin!”

The last few words in that sentence genuinely did sound faintly horrified by the notion, as though ‘subtle’ and
‘Kryptonian’ might, when combined, cause some horrific chemical reaction that would doom the planet.

“My cousin is younger than me,” Kara said, which was a complete misdirection but Addy let it pass. “And he’s also
not as trained. I’ll have you know, Kryptonians were known for being subtle political experts.”

“...Right,” Maggie said, voice so thick with disbelief there wasn’t much more to it than that. “Telling that there’s no ‘us’
behind that ‘Kryptonian’.”

Kara flushed. “I wasn’t the best at it, no,” she admitted. “But I still have the training. Kal—er, my cousin would’ve too,
had he not been sent away so young. We were a diplomatic species, Maggie, we had to be able to talk to others
without starting a war.”

Maggie had nothing to say on the matter, but did seem genuinely thoughtful, rather than just disbelieving.

“Alright, with that over,” John picked back up, sounding somewhere between unamused and vaguely curious as to
where this was all going to go. “We should talk.”

Kara jolted a bit, and Addy watched her visibly refocus on the reason they came here. “Right.”

“We’re looking to go after more of Roulette’s venues,” Addy stepped in, drawing eyes away from Kara and back to
her. “I have my own reasons for searching for them, however Supergirl wishes to do so as she intends to take
Roulette down. Our goals are mutually beneficial, in that sense.”

“Hey, you as much as me, girl,” Maggie jumped in, raising her hands. “Roulette killed people I knew, I had to tell
spouses and children they weren’t coming home.”

“But, unfortunately, I don’t have much news in the way of Roulette’s venues,” John spoke up, his voice genuinely
sounding sorry. “I gave Administrator the last location I was made aware of, and I have no way to get details on the
venues where she’s actually present.” He sounded frustrated about the fact, and even Maggie’s face darkened from
his words.

Kara just groaned, dropping the heroic persona entirely. “That’s... jeez-whiz that’s annoying. I was hoping we’d
actually have a place to start.” She breathed out, pushing a smile back to her face, though this one came across as
apologetic. “Sorry for dragging you two out here for something like this.”

They were all forgetting something crucial though, weren’t they? “We know someone else who could get us a
location,” Addy pointed out.

Everyone turned to look at her again.

“Lena Luthor,” she offered, without much preamble. She turned to look at Kara. “You almost went to her to ask about
it before, remember? But you didn’t feel okay doing it, because of your argument with her.”

Kara blinked once, then twice. Her face lit up. “Yeah!” she said, quickly, nodding rapidly. “Lena might be able to help,
actually! How did I forget about that?”

Addy’s guess? Her attention span.

The other reactions were a bit mixed, however. Maggie looked contemplative, if not entirely eager to go along with it,
while John’s face had contorted itself into something like unease.

“Is she anything like her brother?” John asked, likely saying what Maggie was thinking.

Kara sharply shook her head before he was even finished speaking. “Not at all,” she said, hands slightly clenching at
her sides. “Her brother is actively trying to murder her from prison because she isn’t like him, and she’s doing her
best to tarnish his legacy and go beyond his prejudices. She’s a good person.”

“She has more benefits than just providing us with a location,” Addy pointed out. “Her anti-tech field, from the gala,
would be useful.” She couldn’t outright say ‘the device is now at the point where it could be deployed’, as that’d break
her NDA, but what the public had already seen was not technically protected under the NDA.

Kara looked like she was about to start vibrating. “That would be perfect, honestly!” she said, a glow of happiness
beginning to settle into her features. Only, it was quashed as she took in the other two, hesitation coming to replace
it. She recomposed herself, returning to the ‘girl-of-steel’ expression and posture she tended to wear when out in
public, and coughed awkwardly into her hand. “We’ll put it to a vote, okay? I know... I know not everyone trusts her -
even if she totally deserves it - but I can understand it.”

“I vote for meeting Lena,” Addy said, without any preamble.

Maggie was giving a long, rather invasive look at Kara, an expression of rather sudden realization on her face, as
though all of the world’s puzzle pieces had finally slotted together just-right, and she had just discovered the answer
to life.

John, by comparison, was much more contemplative, mulling it over. “I’m still not sure,” he said, slowly. “I’ve known
plenty of people who seem good, so I can’t go off of your trust alone, but...” His eyes flicked to Addy, pausing. “If
Administrator trusts her, I can’t see how she could do anything worse than turning down our proposition.”

Kara looked like she wanted to cheer, but put her Kryptonian political skills to work by merely just looking a lot like it,
rather than actually doing it.

“I know my vote doesn’t really matter, three-to-one and all that, but I’m for it too,” Maggie added, eyes never leaving
Kara. “I still don’t really know how to feel about Lena, honest-to-god the Luthors always creeped me out, but... I think
it’d be interesting.”

Addy had the distinct impression Maggie meant it would be interesting in a way that was almost completely
unrelated to the actual attack on the venue.

“Great!” Kara chirped, again, not quite able to hide her enthusiasm anymore. “I promise you, Lena’s much more than
her brother’s legacy.”

In the end, only Addy and Kara were to meet with her. For starters, Maggie and John simply did not know Lena;
Maggie might have heard rumors of her in passing, but they didn’t want to make it feel like they were cornering her
or anything. The result was that the faces Lena knew - and was generally friendly with - were given the task and told
to update the rest if all went to plan.

Addy landed next to Kara on Lena’s balcony, averting her eyes from the reflective glare of the sun behind them. It
was closer to evening now, leaving the sky a mottled purple-blue, and the sun heavy and intense on the flat of the
horizon, making everything both brighter and darker at the same time, in all the wrong ways.

Lena was still inside, despite the time, tucked behind her computer with her brows furrowed. She had been typing,
though with their arrival, her entire body had frozen up, and slowly, carefully, her head swivelled towards them. Her
face went from worried - possibly even a little afraid, and Addy mentally noted that it wasn’t unprecedented, she had
an attempt on her life rather recently - to more curious, and she was pushing herself from her seat before either of
them could step forward to talk.

Slowly, Lena approached them, tall heels clacking against the floor. Her dress today was a midnight-black thing,
perfectly tailored to fit her body, that matched the black metal band she had around her index finger. “Supergirl,
Administrator,” she started, halting just shy of the door to the balcony. “Good evening, is something wrong?”

Kara glanced at her, then back at Lena, stepping forward once to take center stage. “I... we would like to ask for your
help, Miss Luthor,” she began, Lena’s eyes widening minutely, her expression more overtly curious. “We’re going after
Roulette, she’s done too much damage to the city in a very small amount of time, and we intend to hunt her down
and put a stop to her actions. We were hoping you might have a way to get us an address or a location for a venue,
or possibly even put out feelers for something like it, if that’s all you can do.”

Lena blinked, looking a bit flabbergasted by the entire thing. She seemed to collect herself rather quickly, though,
and glanced between the two of them, before looking back at her office. “Both of you, come in,” she insisted,
stepping away and gesturing towards the collection of chairs. “We can talk.”

Addy did as asked, with Kara following after her. Lena returned to her desk, slipping back down into her chair and
watching as the two of them got comfortable in their seats.

“It’s more than that, too,” Kara picked up, once she had wiggled sufficiently to find a comfortable spot. Addy knew
the feeling. “I don’t want to come under false pretenses, and I promise you, you don’t need to do this. You can step
out of this whenever you want. We would really appreciate it if you could provide us with some of those things you
used on Miner’s Gang, as Roulette deals with similar guns and it could reduce the chance of someone getting hurt.”

Lena regarded both of them for a long moment, eyes dancing between each of them. “That’s a lot of trust you’re
extending towards me,” she said, slowly, voice uncertain.

“You deserve it and more, Miss Luthor,” Kara insisted with great conviction, not missing a beat.

Lena’s face flushed. Minutely, granted, Addy almost didn’t notice it, but pink had come to dust the high points on her
cheekbones. “I... yes,” she started, sitting more upright. “I would like to help, and I think I can.” She turned back to her
computer, quickly typing on her keyboard, doing something neither she nor Kara could see. “Because Roulette never
really stopped trying to impress me, even after I stopped going to the same boarding school as she did.”

Kara looked honestly rather shocked by the idea that Lena had the displeasure of growing up near Roulette in any
capacity.

Lena caught the expression, and a loose laugh bubbled out of her chest. “Rich parents, Supergirl,” she said, glancing
back at her computer. “I went to school in Ireland, in a boarding school rich people send the kids they don’t want to
have to care about to.”

Kara said nothing, but the expression on her face was a little more pained, sympathetic.

Lena, still looking at her computer, nodded. “I found it. If you can give me a few days, maybe a week, I’m almost
certain I can use this contact to get an invite,” she explained, glancing back towards the two of them. “It’ll also give
me some time to work on what I was mocking up with the technology. My team has been working on it more
personally, but I have some personal interest in the device itself, and I’ve been playing around with it. I think what I
have will do nicely, honestly.”

Kara smiled at that, bright and sunny, like she hadn’t just heard that Lena’s parents had handed her off to a school on
the other side of the Atlantic because they ‘wanted to get rid of her’. “The moment Administrator mentioned it, I
knew it would be a good idea to include you.”

Across from them, Lena blushed again, a bit more visibly this time around.

“Thank you, Miss Luthor, we’ll be in touch.”

Addy pressed her prosthetic back into the charging port, watching the light blink back to life.

After all was said and done with, Kara and Addy had left the scene not long after getting Lena’s confirmation she’d
be joining them, and had briefly met up to convey as much to John and Maggie, both of whom were more than
happy to know someone like Lena Luthor was on their side for this.

Addy had, in the time since she and Kara had arrived home, slipped into her pyjamas and finished her nighttime
routine. She wasn’t quite ready for bed yet, despite how much she might long to curl up with Saturday, as it would do
no good to pass out at nine when she knew she only slept for six hours on average.

Stepping away from her bed, Addy slipped out from the dividers that portioned off her room, watching Kara walk out
from her own. She was towelling down her hair, having slipped into a sleeveless t-shirt and some plain gray
sweatpants for her sleepwear. She had an entire litany of clothes she had once admitted to Addy were too worn out
to wear in public anymore, and which she now used to sleep in, among those being an entire collection of National
City University-branded sweatpants and sweatshirts that she had worn almost religiously during the time she spent
studying there.

Addy didn’t really get the appeal, but then the mascot of the university wasn’t exactly a goose.

Dropping down into the couch, Kara let out a relieved sigh. “So,” she said, glancing her way. “That went well.”

Addy couldn’t help herself but to agree. She wandered over to her own chair, easing herself into it and letting her
body soak up the cushiony feel of it. “It did.”

Kara wrapped the towel tight around her head, containing her hair within it. “Where’s your mind at, Ads?” she asked,
tying the towel off and dropping her hands back down to her thighs. “Do you feel good about all of this?”

“I am glad we are pursuing this line of discovery first,” she admitted without much heat. “I am still uncertain as to
whether I should include my friends in my matters, so I appreciate you not forcing the issue.”

Kara huffed. “We’re going to have to tell them at some point, though, I can’t... keep this from Alex.”

“I know, but thank you for being patient,” Addy said. She understood that the longer they kept Alex from this, the
more upset she would be. Alex felt a degree of responsibility for her, and would be hurt to know they had kept this
from her. Addy had mostly done so based on the fact that it might very well hurt her less to not know until the last
moment than it might to know for a longer period of time and find herself completely unable to help.

That said, Kara knew, and the point of the secrecy was slowly being eroded under the practicality of getting everyone
up to speed on the matter so that they wouldn’t ask too many questions otherwise.

“Addy, I uh. I know you have tomorrow off,” Kara began again, twitching a bit. “But I was thinking, maybe you wanted
to come to CatCo? I think it might help you a bit, it might make you happier to see some old faces. I know Cat would
love to see how you’re doing.”

Addy considered it. She didn’t have anything to do tomorrow, and boredom was certainly more painful than an
awkward interaction with her former boss. “Okay,” she said, at last. “I will come with you to work tomorrow, but I will
not eat at Noonan’s.”

Kara pouted. “Fine, but breakfast is non-negotiable, young lady.”

Addy didn’t even know where to begin correcting that statement.

Last edited: Jun 10, 2021

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Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 28 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jun 17, 2021  #3,082

EPISODE 28​
The CatCo building had changed. It shouldn’t surprise her, considering that it had nearly been totally destroyed in the
aftermath of the Myriad incident, but it still somehow did. Her mental image of the building, for what little time she
had been gainfully employed in it, was oddly inflexible, and was still, even now, taking time to adjust. It didn’t
particularly bother her, she wasn’t upset at the changes - if anything, they were good changes in Addy’s opinion - it
was just hard to ignore the things that had changed, even on the ground floor.

With some hindsight, though, she could now confidently say she understood why Kara had been so excited about
some of the changes.

Noonan’s had been enlarged in the intervening time since it had shut down for remodelling, expanding out to cover
where there had once been two smaller gift shops next to it. More people were manning it, too, and they had gone
from a single cash register to four, two of which were the automated kind.

It wasn’t just the size, though. Noonan’s had much more colour than it had before, was more personalized than she
had ever seen it. Before, Noonan’s had looked like just about every franchise of coffee-and-sweet peddling franchise
on the planet, despite only having one store. There had been no personality to it, just dark wood and uninteresting
menu designs.

Now, it was decorated. Several “Don’t hate! Relate!” posters were plastered along the back wall of the shop, and
pamphlets carrying the same slogan were packed into a series of wire racks that sat next to every cash register.
Each poster was bright, colourful, pinks, reds and greens popping against equally contrasting colours, the font
bubbly, almost graffiti-like. A hiring poster had been stuck up on the rightmost wall, near to the cashiers, which had
“We welcome all, regardless of species!” written underneath the contact information for the shop.

Of course, Noonan’s was still Noonan’s, and as a direct consequence it smelled profusely of fried dough and coffee,
but that was if anything to be expected. Had Noonan’s suddenly started actively smelling good, Addy might have
begun to wonder if she had sustained damage to the part of her brain which regulated the olfactory senses.

At one of the cashiers, Kara was there, talking over her order with the woman manning the machine, a bright smile
on her face as she gestured wildly with her hands. The person at the register was - as another surprise - an alien,
and not one that was hiding the fact. It was a woman, except where her hair might’ve been, a series of long, feather-
like quills stuck out and hung low to her mid-back. They were thick enough that they looked rather unpliable, and her
hairline was just the slightest bit different than what one would expect on a person’s body, with a boxier shape than
most. Her skin was brown, her eyes warm, and she was sporting a similar grin to the one Kara was giving her.

In most cases, Addy would not have commented. Truth be told, she didn’t particularly care what someone was when
it came down to it, though knowing they had resources at their disposal - such as telekinesis or the like - was
beneficial, in a situation like this, Addy would’ve only noted it insofar as it was a break from the norm.

But Addy recognized her, was the thing. Daria was the woman who mostly took Kara’s orders when the two of them
had come in, back during the period Addy had actually been working at CatCo. The woman had been soft-spoken,
and worked the earliest shift she could get on account of ‘liking to have almost the entire afternoon off’.

She also had a head of hair back then. Curly black hair, if her memories could be trusted.

She had likely been disguised, in that case, using some form of technology Addy knew the alien population of
National City so often did. Still did, even, as despite legal structure to the contrary, aliens were still viewed with
poorly-veiled suspicion and concern. She likely hid it before because the world had yet to entirely come around to
accepting the notion that aliens existed as something other than a target for Superman or Supergirl, but things had
only improved marginally, and the woman was certainly making a risky choice in doing so.

Addy didn’t know whether to approve or not. She personally thought obfuscating your own nature for the
sensibilities of people who, frankly, could do literally anything else than complain about it, was a bit
counterproductive and self-damaging, but at the same time, she did understand the value of not wanting to endure
the hostility that came with being ‘out’, as it was. There were laws in place to protect her now, so it was Daria’s
decision in any event, but still, it made her wonder.

It was not just Noonan’s that was different, though. Next to it were a series of displays, all newly installed for the
viewing pleasure of those who came through on their morning commute. A showcase for the magazine, for while
other people did work out of the CatCo building, it was nonetheless ostensibly owned by the media company, and
Cat Grant clearly did not want anyone to forget that.

It was a large area, taking up what had once been a place for kiosks to set up, usually for ugly-looking sunglasses,
from what Addy could remember. They were mostly made up of posters and screens, showing off the covers and
small snippets of the contents within. One of them featured an alien, brazen and sharply inhuman; there was no
good comparison for it on Earth, really. Perhaps a jellyfish might work, but the tendrils were woven throughout the
body, with each tendril ending in an eye of some kind, if Addy wasn’t mistaken. The tendrils were translucent, giving
a view into what appeared to be organs that moved between them, being ferried around the body in a slurry of pale-
crimson fluid. It was wearing a tuxedo over most of its body, though lacking a conventional humanoid shape, it had
been adjusted to account for the length of its torso and the absence of legs.

Beneath the image, as brazen as the alien itself, was the slogan: “Aliens Are Here to Stay: The Conversation We
Should Be Having” written in blocky text, giving no room for misunderstandings. A little below it was a blurb about a
feature interview with a telepath on page 14, but other than that, the image took up the entire cover, only ceding
ground to the ‘CATCO INQUIRER’ label itself.

The other display was just as striking. Another alien, this time a K’ol, if not Itnar by the looks of it. Though less blunt
with its message, the “A Species Adrift: Climate Change and the Danger It Poses” was still as large, taking up the
lower half of the cover, the magazine foregoing any such informational blurb about other stories. Not unexpectedly,
considering this one was for World Nature, one of the various subsidiary magazines the CatCo company owned.

Near to the displays were the screens, flat-screen televisions bolted to the wall and displaying interviews and
miscellaneous news without sound, though subtitles were provided. Most of it was on things unrelated to the aliens,
and seemed to be looping through a number of clips that had been pre-chosen, though Addy did pick out one about
the international response to aliens - which was, like America’s, heavily mixed - and another clip on the current alien
gun crisis in National City.

“Here, Ads.”

Addy blinked, drawn away from the display and back towards Kara, who was now next to her and extending a bright
yellow slushie - small size, of course - in her direction.

Reaching out, she took it, saying a quiet “thank you” before bringing the straw up to her mouth and taking a sip. A
purely sour taste bloomed across her tongue, only just barely tinged by sugary sweetness, and when combined with
the texture of the slushy, it was a thing of luxury. It was one of the very few things she actually liked from Noonan’s,
and Kara had taken to getting her one whenever she could as a result.

Not that she was complaining. Lemon slushies were a beautiful colour and had lots of taste and texture. If all fluids
could be like this, Addy might actually start getting somewhere.

“Daria says hi, by the way,” Kara chirped, drawing her back from the bliss she had experienced.

Addy blinked, glanced towards the woman in question, who was smiling at the two of them, and raised her hand to
wave when she caught sight of her looking.

More out of habit than anything else, Addy waved back.

Turning away, she took another sip from her drink, glancing in the direction of the worryingly packed space in front
of the elevator. “I would say hi back, but the smell is too intense,” she explained, before thinking for a moment. “I was
not aware Daria was an alien, however.”

Kara stepped ahead, finally picking up enough pace that it wouldn’t feel terribly awkward or rude to start marching
towards the elevator. “She’s half,” Kara explained belatedly, glancing back in her direction as they neared the densely
packed crowd. “Father’s a Hulnor—a bit bigger than humans, though still the same shape, they’ve got quills and
echolocation—and her mom’s human. They make a cute couple.”

Huh. Addy slowed her pace as they arrived at the back of the crowd, turning her head to watch Kara do the same.
“Have you ever wondered why aliens are so genetically compatible?” she asked, mostly because she felt more
people should.

Kara blinked, then shrugged. “Not all of them are, Addy,” she pointed out.

“And yet, a lot of them are, even if they evolved completely separately,” Addy returned, pausing only to take another
quick sip of her drink. Her sense of cold was muted - though supposedly not as much as Kara’s was - but she could
still feel the way her plastic cup was delightfully chilly. “You cannot crossbreed most lifeforms with even minor
genetic deviations from one another. There are two separate species of mosquito in London which cannot do so,
despite one coming from the other, simply because one now lives underground and primarily feeds on rats, while the
other feeds on birds.” It was honestly a touch more complicated than that, including the fact that the mosquitos
which lived underground no longer needed to collect blood before breeding, and could do so year-round, but
nonetheless, they were two separate species.

Taylor had retained an odd fascination with the extant species after finding out about it, when she joined the Wards.
Addy had personally never understood her interest in them - mosquitos were hardly bountiful in appealing or
interesting qualities - but let it be said that she was never one to let information go to waste if she could help it.

Kara was giving her a rather odd look, so she decided to move things along.

“If something like that can prevent procreation, why can two species which have no common ancestor whatsoever
be capable of creating viable offspring?”

Kara sighed, a long and bleary noise that said more about the upcoming answer than her odd looks about mosquito
biodiversity ever had. “Nobody’s really sure, Addy,” Kara explained quietly. ‘Nobody knows’ was starting to become a
trend, and she was not a fan. “If you need to know, scientists scratch their heads all across the galaxy wondering
why it happens, but it just does sometimes, and that’s as far as they’ve gotten. Life finds a way, and all that.”

That was possibly the worst answer anyone could’ve given her. Technically, the phrase ‘life finds a way’ was true, as
it had a habit of being generated in the right conditions, and life did tend to stick around despite one’s better
attempts to purge it, but that only truly applied to simple life, single-cell organisms and the like.

In fact, if anything, she would argue that complex life had a habit of doing the opposite and finding increasingly
convoluted ways to kill itself and everything near it.

Before Addy really had the chance to press for more information - as Kara’s expression was not telling her she didn’t
know anything, but rather that an actual cohesive explanation would take too much time and energy than they had at
the moment - the elevator doors wheeled open, and the crowd - with Kara in it - was moving.

They shuffled into the elevator, bodies unpleasantly pressed together in the morning rush, and Addy, deciding to
avoid making a scene, opted to focus on the taste and feel of her slushie as she took more sips. Buttons were
pressed - Kara, in particular, having to nearly climb onto someone to actually get to the panel with the floor buttons -
and, before long, they were ascending.

With, of course, elevator music accompanying them. L-Corp certainly didn’t have elevator music, and as the floors
came and went, the crowd dispersing with each stop, Addy thought they were better for its absence.

By the time they reached the CatCo floor proper, it was her, Kara, and barely a handful of others. Being the last stop,
the music dimmed as the doors peeled open, the others making their quick escape into the bowels of the beast,
while she and Kara took their time to amble on out into the open office space.

That, at the very least, had not changed since the last time she had been there. The floor had undergone renovations
since its destruction, certainly, one floor had become two interconnected ones by a series of modern-styled
staircases and expensive-looking glass barriers, but for the most part, it was currently the most familiar part of the
building to her.

Addy skated her eyes across the area, glancing over familiar faces who looked back at her with surprise. There was
the sweet older woman by the name of Georgie who, by the looks of it, still seemed to be having troubles with her
printer. There was Jason, a guy around the age of her body, who had been purportedly hired for the sole reason that
he was very good at paperwork. There were others, too, Kaitlyn, Patrick, Ernest, Penelope and Whitney, just to name
a few, who similarly caught sight of her, startled, then waved.

“See?” Kara said, glancing back at her with a rather smug grin. “Told you, people here remember and appreciate you,
Addy.”

Addy felt an odd tinge of heat curl around her neck, then spread up along her face. “I was not aware I made such an
impact,” she murmured, flicking her eyes away.

That earned her a snort. “Ads, you are very impactful.”

Kara pulled ahead, and Addy, once making the requisite nods and polite waves towards the people who recognized
her, followed after. They weaved between occupied desks, shuffled amongst moving bodies, stepped around
rambling conversations about upcoming covers and supply line problems. It didn’t take them very long, but each
step let Addy breathe in the sharp familiarity of the space; of the background noise that clung around every corner of
the space.

L-Corp, and her lab, was quieter on average. It may be host to profoundly loud explosions at times, but it was never
so full of chatter. She thought she liked the silence interrupted by loud bangs more than she did the dull roar of
conversation inherent to an office space like this, but then, reflecting on it, they seemed to have their positives and
negatives.

The crowd split, and Cat Grant’s office fell into sight. It was as it always was: a space boxed in by glass walls,
occupied by the woman and her endless collection of sweets tucked away in crystal bowls, shaped like a decanter.
She was behind her desk, eyes narrowed as she stared at her monitor, hands drifting over her keyboard. Other than
the narrowing of her eyes, her face was utterly expressionless as she typed, though Addy had the very distinct
impression she was enjoying whatever she was doing more than she was letting on.

Kara approached, reaching out to rap her knuckles against the glass door, just barely hard enough to be heard.

Cat’s gaze jumped up from her monitor, settling on the two of them. A wry smile pulled across her face, and she
beckoned the two of them in with a wave.

Kara pulled the door open, glancing back her way, and ushered both of them in.

Cat’s office smelled distinct from the rest of the space, she noticed immediately. Rather, perhaps it may be more
operative to say it smelled like nothing, any scents dulled or scrubbed away. This was, in fact, rather unusual—Cat
herself often wore some amount of perfume, from what Addy could remember, and though she hardly soaked
herself in it, the smell of it had never been that far behind when she was involved.

“I see our visitor has arrived,” Cat said, folding her hands together beneath her chin. “I would say it’s a good morning,
but then I currently have to explain to a senator why I won’t run a smear on his political opponent.”

The door closed behind them, dragged shut by gravity, and Addy still felt... somewhat out of place, to be honest.
Cat’s office was something carefully crafted by the woman herself to dictate the rhythm of anyone in it. Behind her,
the entire wall was covered in interlocking screens, displaying multiple news channels, and though it lacked any
audio, the sight of it was somewhat distracting. Combined with the glass walls, door, and the lack of places to get
out of the line of sight, Addy felt intensely exposed.

Still. Politeness was tantamount. “It is good to see you, Miss Grant,” Addy offered, hands coming to settle at her
sides.

Cat’s eyes followed one of her arms, blinking long and slow. “I... did you regrow your other arm at some point?”

Addy shot a look at Kara, almost certain the other woman had told Cat before now. Kara looked back at her
sheepishly, proving that she very much had not.

“I hadn’t thought to ask at the gala,” Cat admitted easily. “And truthfully it had slipped my mind until now.”

“It’s a prosthetic,” Addy explained. “Realistic, yes, and fully functional, but nonetheless a prosthetic.”

Cat’s eyes scrutinized her prosthetic for a moment longer, and it occurred to Addy that half of the startled looks
might be for exactly the same reason. Huh. Maybe that was why Georgie looked as though she was about to topple
over from shock? She had honestly assumed it was because her printer had failed her again.

“One arm or two, I would offer you your job back, if I thought you’d take it,” Cat cut back in, her voice as dry as a
desert. “Turns out, you and the cardigan hobbit needed three people each to replace you. Good help is hard to find,
most certainly, but you’d at least expect some of the replacements I’ve hired to have at least a portion of your
capabilities.”

Addy wasn’t really sure about that. “You would be hard-pressed to find someone who could fit those criteria,” she
responded bluntly. “Winn is something of an outlier among the population, as far as I can tell.” Lena had joined him
in that group, as did Lex Luthor - if half of what he had done had been by his own design, anyway - but it was most
certainly a short list.

Cat made an undignified snort, before sighing, her posture relaxing. “Come, sit.” She gestured at the chairs in front of
her desk and, after a brief glance at Kara, Addy did as asked, slipping into the hideously uncomfortable metal chair.

The degree of discomfort must’ve shown on her face, as Cat clicked her tongue. “That is much less funny when it’s
not an overweight politician wincing and squirming in it,” she noted in a slow drawl. “I won’t keep you there for long,
either of you for that matter, because Kara has her job to do soon.”

Kara startled at being addressed, just about jumping a half-foot off the ground. “Ah, er. Yeah, I do? I mean, did I get a
new assignment or—”

“Kara,” Cat said, sounding borderline exhausted.

Wisely, Kara shut her mouth.

Cat returned her focus on her, and the exasperation bled from her face, replaced by something a touch softer. “Now,
how has L-Corp been treating you? I prefer to keep tabs on my employees who I expect have bright futures, and
you’re no exception.”

There was a pointed glance in Kara’s direction, Kara wincing in response to it. There was a story there, somewhere,
but Addy didn’t feel particularly inclined to dig into it.

“It has been kind to me,” Addy explained. “There haven’t been any problems with accommodating me, and the team I
work for is considerate. My boss similarly seems respectable, and continues to provide me with interesting things to
explore.” For a meaning of ‘interesting’, anyway. At the very least she could say nothing she learned when working
for Cat had lent itself so literally to helping take down a threat.

“I was hoping that was the case,” Cat replied, voice casual. “I understand better than most the position Lena Luthor
is in, as my father was not a popular man by any stretch of the imagination, not to mention my mother. Business
magnates rarely make friends, or at least not worthwhile ones.”

Cat’s eyes returned to her monitor, and she typed a few last keys before clicking off whatever she had been doing.
“Otherwise, I’m glad you’re making a place for yourself in the world,” she said, pushing herself upright from her chair.
“We need more examples of people like you, truth be told. Now. Up you get, out of the chair, I have someone I want
you to meet.”

Rising wordlessly, Addy stepped out from the front of the chair, head tracking Cat as she less walked, more prowled
around her desk, strutting towards the door. Kara, possibly out of an ingrained habit more than anything else, was at
her side in a heartbeat, reaching out to ease the door open.

Cat stopped her with a look. “Kara, what did I tell you?”

Kara’s face was blank for a moment, confusion and instinct warring with practical knowledge.

Addy tucked her seat into the desk, and walked over to join the two of them.

The lights came back on, and Kara blinked, eyes big and owlish. “I’m not your assistant anymore,” she replied, the
words coming out like a quote, reciting something.

“And what does that mean?” Cat probed, eyes flicking to the door, and more specifically, Kara’s hand.

Kara followed her gaze, and her face scrunched. “...But it’s polite,” she protested, confused.

Cat made a rather put-upon sigh, reaching out to take the glass door from Kara’s hand and push the thing fully open.
“I’ll allow it, but you still hover, Kara. We’ve been over this, you need to find your own way outside of my sphere,
and...”

Kara breathed out a sigh, finishing the sentence. “The only way to do that is to find my own path.”

Cat gave her a somewhat clipped smile, saying nothing as she stepped back out into the office space, Kara
morosely trailing after while Addy kept up the rear.

The office grew quiet as people caught sight of Cat outside of her office, eyes flicking up to watch her with the same
wariness small prey animals watch large predatory birds. Cat, in turn, observed them much the same, eyes scanning
for any sign of weakness or duplicity, and evidently finding none. She let the door slip from her hand, turning away in
just the right way to make her outfit - a pantsuit, if Addy’s terminology was correct - swish like the long, tapered end
of a royal cape.

The action was punctuated by the rattling bang the door made as it swung shut, and the accompanying half-dozen
winces at the noise, but Cat was utterly unruffled by the sound and strutted along, towards the stairs.

They ascended into the second floor, taking the stairs in long strides. It was up here that Addy did finally notice
things that were different. There was, for starters, an entire room seemingly devoted to the IT team that Cat had
been forced to hire to replace her and Winn, the door left just ajar enough to spot a number of haggard-looking
people, looking to be barely out of college, hunched over bits of technology or typing frantically on their computers.
The room reeked profusely of coffee, Noonan’s undoubtedly.

The walls along the second floor were different too. There were now several cork boards that were covered in a
litany of topics, with notices left for when some were taken into consideration, or not to be considered at all. At
some point, someone had even commandeered a whiteboard, and by the looks of it was attempting to find a way
around a series of privacy laws relating to finance and taxes.

She wished them luck.

They split off from the main area, the three of them walking down a narrow hallway in silence. The walls here were
more colourful, and a glance at plaques on doors made it clear these seemed to be offices for particular people.
What their roles were, exactly, Addy hadn’t a clue, but each door had a name, or at least all for but the one at the very
end of the hallway.

Without missing a beat, Cat reached up and rapped her knuckles against the door.

“It’s open,” a voice called back, high and adolescent, the voice of someone only recently influenced by puberty.

Cat twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

Inside was a boy, head cuffed by feathery blonde hair. He was maybe ten, at the oldest, and was wearing what were
clearly old clothes, ones stained with paint. An apron had been pulled over the messy jeans and black shirt, which
was thoroughly splattered in paint, much like the large blue tarp that had come to cover the entirety of the room’s
floor. The boy had a tray in one hand, covered in gooey globs of acrylic, and in the other a needle-fine paintbrush.

In front of the boy was a tower, half-painted, and made from nailed-together wooden blocks of various shapes and
sizes. The parts he had gotten to painting had something of a unique depth to them, painted in just such a way to
make the wood they were made of instead seem to be layered bricks. Careful artsmanship had detailed windows,
and by the looks of it, he had been using sandpaper as well as possibly a chisel to add further depth to the piece.
There were balconies similarly constructed from wood and painted to resemble wrought iron, and when the tower
got low enough - where the base flared out into a wide, almost pyramid shape - the careful brickwork detailing was
replaced by attempts to make it appear like mossy stone.

Altogether, it made it look as though the tower was built on a forbidding, possibly Scottish cliff - by the sheerness of
the drop, in any event - towering tall and narrow, and painted in such a way that the building - at least the parts that
were done - would not look entirely out of place in the older parts of London, where architecture had developed
enough to let buildings grow tall, but other sciences had limited such a thing to the materials of the time, instead of
the steel and glass of the modern era.

There was other evidence of his workings around him, too. Wood shavings, a discarded chisel, and a variety of
brushes in very different styles were scattered around the base of the tower, to be picked back up as needed.

Speaking of the boy, he was strikingly familiar. Addy dredged her memories for any recollection of him, and came
back with the vague, half-remembered anecdote of that gala, where Cat had introduced him as—

“Carter Grant,” Cat said, her voice tight and unimpressed. “What did I say, not ten minutes ago?”

Carter’s brush faltered, and the boy levelled a look befitting Cat Grant’s progeny at the woman in question. Waspish
came to mind, but it carried little heat. “I just needed to finish up this last bit,” he said, voice on the blank side. “It has
to be done right.”

Cat hesitated for a moment, but ultimately let out a sigh, not willing to press the matter. “Is it okay enough now to
take a rest?”

Carter turned his attention back to his tower, tilting his head to one side like a particularly inquisitive dog. “Mostly,”
he confirmed quietly, hunching down to place his tray on the floor, the paint-licked brush with it. He rose back to his
feet, glanced down at his hands - freckled, as most of him was, with paint - and frowned. Without missing another
beat, he ignored the three of them, turned to the sole table in the room, and proceeded to thoroughly clean off his
hands with copious amounts of soap, rinsing them in a small bowl of water that had been evidently left out for just
that reason.

After drying his hands off with a towel, Carter carefully untied his apron, clearly making especially sure not to brush
against any of the still-wet paint, ducked his head through the bit that strapped the apron to his neck, and placed it
on the ground next to his tools.

Finally, he turned back to the three of them, and promptly avoided looking at any of them. “Hello,” he said matter-of-
factly, eyes trained on the ceiling.

“Heya, Carter,” Kara said, a soft smile coming to pull across her face.

At the sound of her voice, Carter’s gaze inched minutely down towards Kara, taking her in. “Hello,” he mumbled
again. “Kara.”

Kara’s smile broadened a bit more.

“Addy, this is Carter,” Cat introduced, glancing between the two of them. “Though, you’ve already met once, at the
gala.”

That, finally, got Carter to look a bit more closely at her, though his gaze kept flitting around, interested in everything
around him as much as he was interested in her. “I remember,” he said, voice thick with curiosity. “You’re the one
Mom told me about.”

“Addy Queen,” Addy offered, finding the simplest answers to usually be the right ones. “It is good to meet you
properly, Carter.”

Carter nodded, solemn and terribly serious. “I’m here because my school’s been getting renovations for the last
couple of weeks,” he provided.

Ah. Addy could relate. “What is the tower for?” she inquired, glancing towards it.

Carter’s face lit up a bit as he glanced its way, hands twitching as though trying to clutch a brush that wasn’t there.
“An art project. I really like making towers, and this is my fourth that’s this big.”

“It’s his style,” Cat offered, her smile a bit more generous, a bit wider. “Carter has been making towers since he was
old enough to know what blocks even were. He’s my little architect.”

Pink dusted Carter’s cheeks, and he shot his mother an incredibly unimpressed look. “Mom,” he hissed, sounding
mortified.

“You should not be ashamed,” Addy interrupted. She, if anyone, knew the value of careful design and planning.
“Towers are impressive tests of one’s architectural ability.”

After all, generally when you messed up a tower, everyone died. If you messed up a villa, only some people would die,
but in this day and age towers and by extension skyscrapers were among some of the most densely occupied
buildings to exist.

The pink faded a bit from Carter’s cheeks, though if anything it just seemed to have migrated to the tips of his ears,
which were now a rosy shade of crimson.

“It’s why I always praise him for it,” Cat cooed, an indulgent smile on her face. “His art teachers, and his math
teacher especially, love him for it. He always comes to them with design ideas first, and then plans them out with
me.”

Ah, the blushing cheeks were back. “I’m not good enough to make to-scale replicas of my ideas,” Carter mumbled,
voice a bit faint. “But these are design examples, mostly, and they fit with the layout plans I have. I didn’t bring any,
so I can’t show you, but each floor has a purpose.”

Addy blinked. “You say that as though people do not plan those out in the first place,” she said, slowly.

Somewhere behind her, Kara poorly muffled a snort.

Her focus was on Carter, however, as the boy had taken something of a dark expression, and was nodding furiously.
“Apparently people don’t!” he confirmed, sounding almost outraged. “Obviously, architects do, but not for this sort of
thing. Our sculpture unit focused on buildings and I was the only one who brought in more than a few notes!”

“Before we get into this discussion,” Cat interrupted, voice light. “Kara and I need to go for the time being, but we’ll be
back within half an hour. Will you two be fine on your own?”

Addy glanced back at Kara and Cat, both of whom had moved to the door. Huh. She hadn’t noticed. “That’s
acceptable.”

“It’s fine,” Carter agreed, voice a bit antsy.

“Remember what I asked you to do,” Cat said, slowly.

“I’ll drink my juice and eat my breakfast,” Carter was quick to agree.

Cat raised an eyebrow, evidently not believing him. “Promise me, Carter.”

There was silence for a beat.

“Okay,” Carter conceded, tone considerably less mulish. “I promise to eat my breakfast and drink my juice.”

With the concession in place - an “I’ll hold you to that” said by Cat - both Cat and Kara left, closing the door behind
them.

Turning back to Carter, Addy watched him wander over to a bag that had been left next to the table, hunching down
to retrieve a smaller bag from within. He popped the top open and retrieved a pair of juice boxes, as well as a
sandwich covered in saran wrap, both of which he placed on the table.

“Mom said you had, uhm, special interests, like me?” Carter asked, glancing up from his food as he began to pick at
the plastic covering his sandwich. He seemed a lot more demure without her there, and Addy could understand that.
Shyness was not unique to the boy, in any event.

Addy nodded. “I like geese,” she said, simply. “And birds in general, but preferably waterfowl.”

Carter gave her a bit of a curious look. “Why?” he asked.

“There are many reasons,” Addy replied, solemn. “Primarily, I like them for their intimidation tactics. Most birds, with
few exceptions, prefer to avoid conflict whenever possible, as they are vulnerable to life-ending injuries.” Bird bones
were on average too fragile to take much abuse, though some had certainly found workarounds. “Geese do not fear.
A goose will face down a bear with the same aggression it faces down another goose, or even smaller animals. I
also find their honks very agreeable, and their appearance is pleasing on the eyes.”

Carter pulled out half of his sandwich, taking a quick bite from it, eyes glancing between her and the tower. After a
moment, he swallowed. “What about swans? Ducks?”

“Swans are much more dangerous than geese,” Addy said approvingly, glad that he picked up on it. “They are just as
territorial, but rather than resort to threatening displays, they are simply strong enough to overcome the competition.
Ducks are less territorial, and move in larger flocks to protect their own, however I am a fan of their quacks, and I
think they have a better variety in patterns and colourations than either swans or geese.” Geese were still definitely
the top, admittedly, but they were at times lacking in interesting variations.

Ducks, by comparison, had everything from a Barbary Duck to the iridescent Cayuga Duck to even the brightly
patterned Mandarin Duck. Geese could use some selective breeding to bring out the more creative colour
combinations, though there didn’t seem to be much of an interest in doing so. A shame.

Sometimes though, the simplicity of a goose's patterns was very much preferable.

“So you like all of them?” he asked.

Addy nodded. “They all have their merits, though I prefer geese more.”

“They are more interesting than pigeons,” Carter said agreeably.

“I would not underestimate the value of a pigeon,” Addy said, trying to be gentle. “But I would not disagree with you,
there.” Pigeons were in a similar place to dogs in terms of human involvement. People viewed them as pests
because that was what they had become after mail-by-pigeon was antiquated by the progression of technology, but
for a long time humanity had cultivated and groomed pigeons for the sole purpose of being very good at the job of
going to and from places.

Carter made a face, evidently finding that statement contentious, but wisely occupied himself with his sandwich
instead of making a fuss.

Willing to extend an olive branch, however - as Addy knew that people could and would have differing opinions on
things, much to her dismay - she glanced back towards his half-complete tower, the careful way it had been sculpted
and tended to. “Would you tell me about your tower?”

Carter blinked at her, swallowing. After a moment, though, surprise faded into genuine excitement. “What would you
like to know?”

Addy had some experience when it came to talking to artists. She did not particularly consider herself one, but did
not devalue the act of artistry. There had been some among her kin who were most inclined towards creative
pursuits, leaning on the inherent creativity in their host’s minds. Among them had even been the Shaper, though
Addy would not quite admit to ever wanting to listen to Shaper ramble on about her pursuits. Rarely did the words
‘ecosystem art’ not cause her a pang of dread.

“Does it have a name?” she asked, deciding on the safe option first and foremost.

Carter nodded rapidly. “Uhuh. It’s called the Botham Lookout.”

Oddly specific. “Why?”

Carter paused for a moment. “I liked the name,” he confessed, as though it was some dark secret. “It feels like
something like this would be named Botham Lookout.”

Addy regarded the tower for a few moments, considering. “I cannot fault your assessment. What is its purpose?”

Carter’s face lit up. “It’s a—er, Mom called it an institute of learning?” He glanced at her, looking for her reaction.

“Like an academy?” Addy asked.

He nodded again. “Yeah, like an academy. The bottom floors are mostly classrooms and laboratories, they’re low to
the ground to avoid trapping people if something was to go wrong.” He gestured towards them, the first four floors.
“The middle floors are where the libraries and archives are, as well as offices for the teachers.” He gestured towards
the midsection, pausing at about where his own work became incomplete. “Above it are lecture halls and other
things that take up a lot of space and are harder to fit. I’m still not entirely sure about putting them up so high, but
sometimes we have to make compromises.”

Addy took all of that in, glancing towards the balconies. “I had assumed it would’ve been a residential building,” she
admitted. “You rarely see balconies and other such fixtures on institutions of learning.”

Carter regarded her with a blank look for a moment. “It’s the style,” he offered, after a moment. “Balconies are
traditional for the style of design I’m working with.”

“I am not an expert on architecture,” Addy was more than willing to admit as much, too. That had never really been
her purview. “But if you would be willing to expand on that?”

Carter didn’t even so much as hesitate, beginning with, of all things, the House of Tudor.

It took until lunch for Addy to disengage from Carter’s expansive explanation of architectural and design principles.

She found herself, this time around, tucked into Lucy’s office, a ways away from where Carter had continued painting
his sculpture, the space cramped now that it was occupied by not the one person it was made for, but rather four.
James, Kara, herself and Lucy, all finding room in an office that was little more than a shoebox.

Addy was, evidently, not the only one to think so.

“You could really ask Cat to get you a better office, Lucy,” James was saying, poking at some of the shrimp-fried rice
he’d had tucked away in a tupperware container.

Lucy, by comparison, had gotten take-out—stir fry of some kind, with a lot of chewy beef, that she was expertly
eating with a pair of chopsticks. She was better at it than Kara was, which was saying something since Kara
regularly ate with them when they had their weekly potstickers. “I could,” she said, after taking a moment to swallow.
“But this office survived a Kryptonian tearing through the place. It’s grown on me.”

Kara, crammed into the corner and messily going to town on a burger that was worryingly close to the size of her
head, shot a look at Lucy. “I think I’m growing into it,” she grumbled, quickly wiping her face with a napkin before
taking another gratuitous bite of a burger that was, at this point, more grease than meat.

Lucy levelled a chopstick in her direction, a threatening squint to her eyes. “Kara Danvers, if you put a hole in any of
my walls, so help me—”

Kara, wisely, babbled promises that she wouldn’t, cowed by the threat of retaliation from a military-trained lawyer.

Addy glanced down at her own food. She had predicted that the environment she’d eat in would be one where messy
foods would likely cause an endless array of problems, and so had instead defaulted to her normal spread of
vegetables and hummus. It might not be that creative or exploratory, in terms of texture or taste, but it was a
comfortable choice, and those were so often the best ones. She plopped a hummus-wicked carrot into her mouth,
and savoured the crunch as she listened to the three of them bicker.

“You know, it’s good to see you again in the flesh, Addy,” Lucy piped up, changing topics entirely.

Addy jolted - though she didn’t let it show - and glanced up from her food, finding James and Lucy both looking at
her. “Thank you,” she said, not sure what else to say. It wasn’t like Lucy hadn’t seen her recently or anything.

“How have you been doing, anyway?” James inquired, his voice in theory curious but tinged a bit too much by
something Addy couldn’t decipher.

“My job has been going well,” she said, much as she had explained to Cat. “I’ve adjusted, and nobody is causing me
problems. The type of work they give me is fitting, and I enjoy it.”

James made a face that was gone too soon to make anything out of.

Lucy merely levelled a flat look at James, lip curled a bit. She turned back to Addy, and smiled apologetically. “He’s
got reservations about Lena Luthor, still.”

Addy didn’t really find it in herself to care, honestly. “He’s allowed them.”

That earned her a round of confused, bewildered looks.

Sighing, because she would have to explain this, Addy dipped another carrot in her hummus. “James has previously
established difficulties with the Luthor family, and as a family with that amount of power, they have an incentive to
ensure their children carry on their legacy. Whether or not that worked on Lena is something he must struggle with.”

“See?” James said, gesturing at her. “I’m just worried!”

“I think he’s wrong,” Addy added, belatedly. “But rational thought rarely plays a part in problems like these.”

James spluttered, but he was cut off by Kara.

“James, Addy’s a literal telepath,” she scolded. “You’re a lot better than you were about this near the start, but...
c’mon. If something was bad, Addy would know, and so would we.”

For a moment, that statement hung in the air, and Addy watched Kara’s face twitch, minutely, as she realized the
conversation they had days ago had been about almost exactly that. Her head turned, slowly, back to Addy, and Kara
scrutinized her. “Right?”

“I would,” Addy confirmed.

Kara glanced back, gesturing towards the other two across from them, as though to say ‘see?!’

“If it’s any consolation, James, from what Lena’s told me there’s not a lot of love between her and her brother,” Lucy
interjected, shrugging her shoulders. “They drew apart when she was in school, and even more when he started to
become unhinged. She’s honestly more scared of him than anything else, and deeply resentful of his legacy. She
wants her brother back, but... her brother hasn’t been her brother since she was a teenager. Even before Superman,
he was already losing control of himself.”

James let out a sigh, reaching up to scratch at his chin. “Yeah,” he breathed, long and slow. “I know, it’s just... hard,
sometimes. I’m trying to keep that in mind, but it’s just so hard when you can see the little marks the Luthors left on
this world.”

Nobody had much to say in response to that, the silence filled in instead by the sound of people working through
their lunches, Addy included.

“I’m still trying,” he added, minutes later. “I know she’s trying to be different, but Lex... it still burns to think about him.
Lex was a friend of mine before, a friend of Superman’s, and... I don’t want what happened to him to happen to you,
but I’m going to keep trying to give her a chance.”

“She’s good people, James,” Lucy soothed, reaching out to rub his shoulder. “There’s only a few people who can
come out of the sort of environment she grew up with and still want to help, and she’s one of them.”

There was another lapse of silence as they picked into their lunch, Addy finishing off her stalks of celery with precise
jabs into the container of hummus.

This time around, when conversation picked back up again, it was blessedly not about Lena Luthor.

“Yeah, the photos are mostly mine?” James said, though his voice had an uncurrent of uncertainty to it. “You said
the ones out in the display area, right?”

Kara nodded. “I work with a few of the people who did the interview, did you guys really get a suit tailor made?”

James laughed, a bubbly, deep-chested noise. “That was the same response Krat - the alien - gave us, you know?” he
said mirthfully. “‘I did not know tuxedos could be tailored for my body’, he had said. But, yeah, we did. It was a show
of good faith, considering he and other non-passing aliens are struggling a lot. Honestly, that interview was one of
the happiest I’ve done photography for, most of the stuff I do now is...”

He trailed off, a bit of a hollow look on his face. Lucy and Kara frowned, not at James, but rather sympathetically.
Addy glanced between the three of them, rather out of the loop.

“What are they like?” she asked, not willing to let the silence stretch on.

James blinked, and the distant look faded, replaced by something stonier, harder. “I’m the one with the most alien
photography experience,” he said, slowly. “There’s a bit of a trick to taking pictures of Kryptonians, you know? If you
don’t know how to manage it, you tend to get photos that have glowing eyes like cats in pictures do, among other
things. So they’ve been sending me out for most of these, not just the photo ops, but the ones about the shanty
towns and poverty, too.”

“We’ve been working pretty hard to find ways to give these people anonymity,” Lucy piped up, when James didn’t
seem inclined to continue. “But there are a lot of aliens who just don’t trust us, and that’s... understandable. My job
has been mostly keeping them safe when we interview them, safe from reprisal, whether legal or otherwise, and
keeping the exact places they live mostly a secret. We’ve had reports of other newspapers ending up getting alien
squatters evicted because they released the location and the owners took exception to it.”

“It’s not only that,” James said, a bit darkly. “Aliens in the best conditions? They’re the ones who can hide, who are
stealth, but most aliens who don’t have the funds to do so or just... can’t are much worse off. I didn’t even know we
had shanty towns that aliens inhabited until recently, nor how high the homeless population is for them. They’re
ghettos, segregated from the public to keep themselves safe, though surprisingly the homeless population has
taken them in with open arms. I’ve seen people in huts definitely not up to code - and we’re in earthquake territory -
and... kids, god. I’ve seen kids, who have lived their entire lives on American soil, and who have never known a life
beyond a small strip of shelters, who are afraid of humans.”

“Some places are better,” Kara piped up, her voice soft, almost placating. “I don’t know where it is, but there’s an
entire community of aliens on Earth somewhere which is slowly reaching out to the public, now that aliens are public
knowledge. They’ve been around for a while, and they’ve been making sure everyone is taken care of, but... a lot of it
is bad, yeah. It’s hard, sometimes, because I feel a lot of kinship with some of them, but my experiences are just
better. It feels like I cheated.”

“You didn’t,” Lucy rushed to say, glowering at Kara. “You were lucky, yeah, and you do have privilege the others don’t,
but... you didn’t cheat, Kara. You got to where you are now because you are who you are.”

“We’re working to hopefully make things better,” James agreed. “A lot of our coverage has the media up in arms
across America. There’s word of some considerations being tossed around in congress about getting a more
streamlined process to help aliens find work and shelter, though it’s all very vague. You’re helping too, Kara, so is
Superman, hell, even Addy is.”

Well. Addy wasn’t sure about that. If it had anything to do with the law, she was most certain President Marsdin
would in fact be not thinking of her, at best, and at worst, actively thinking to work against her. Blackmailing a person
in power was effective, certainly, but prone to retaliation like that.

Still, the words got a smile out of Kara, small and tenuous, but one nonetheless. “Yeah, I guess. It’s... it’s why I’ve
taken to stopping at these places, you know? Just talking with these communities when I’m out as Supergirl, instead
of going in fists first, questions later. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, but it’s helped a lot. Most of these
communities just want to be safe, and they’re more than willing to tell me about any danger they find, so long as
they trust me.”

“Small steps,” Lucy confirmed. “That’s all we can do for now. Change is rarely slow, but we just do what we can.”

Kara breathed out, smiling more genuinely towards Lucy. The smile faltered, after a moment. “Honestly, though, I
could do without the alien tech that’s come along. It keeps popping up everywhere, and there’s no end to it.”

Lucy’s face twitched a bit at that. “That’s because it’s likely not limited to single sources anymore,” she said, letting
out another sigh. “People are learning how to make it, and considering how scared people are feeling, it’s a lucrative
business. Managing alien weaponry is going to have to be more about discouraging people from buying it in the first
place.”

“I know that,” Kara said, though her tone implied she really wished it wasn’t the case. “It’s just frustrating. Gangs
used to be so simple to deal with, you know? They hit up a convenience store and at best they’ve got like, a bat, and
maybe a pistol. Now? I’m lucky if I’m not launched thirty feet into a wall by some jerk with a plasma launcher.”

“Welcome to the future, Supergirl,” Lucy replied sardonically, tipping her water bottle in a facsimile of a toast.

The fact that they let her into the bar in the first place was a good sign. It meant that M’gann probably hadn’t banned
her from it, or, failing that, had forgotten to tell someone she had decided to. Maybe it was more complex than that,
as M’gann hardly owned the institution, but she sincerely doubted someone would reject banning her if M’gann was
truthful about what happened.

Not that she was at the bar to confirm one way or another, anyway.

Al’s was occupied, as much as it always was. People sat at the tables, trading stories and drinks, talking over one
another while a hockey game blared in the background, dozens of eyes trained on the wall-mounted television. The
only thing that stood out was that M’gann wasn’t there, something that was, in fact, rather striking.

As far as Addy knew, M’gann didn’t really do much outside of work at Al’s. She worked long nights, had enough hours
to constitute full-time work - which she had expanded upon, explaining that the owner had groused endlessly about
paying her the benefits of doing so - and was a regular there even when she was off work. It was an epicentre of the
alien community, and for one reason or another, she was just absent.

In her place was someone unfamiliar, a human woman - and she had checked this time - who was handing off a tall
glass to an even taller alien whose skin resembled bark.

Flicking her eyes away, Addy considered. It was possible they had missed one another, and she was almost relieved
if they had. M’gann could have been informed she was coming - after all, she had told Carol as much, and she
certainly worked at Al’s - and decided she might not want to see her. That made some amount of sense, certainly,
probability dictated most everything might occur, given enough permutations.

Still, for whatever reason, beneath the relief, she just felt an odd, unpleasantly squirmy sort of dread. She didn’t want
to put off that conversation with M’gann, she wanted to approach it, address it, and get it over with. Do what she had
to do to confirm she was sorry, as much as she could be given the circumstances.

Breathing in, then out, Addy centred herself, and let the thoughts go. There was no changing it now, M’gann was
absent, and as it stood that was unlikely to change.

Scanning her eyes across the crowd once again, Addy focused on Carol and Koriand’r, both of whom were seated at
a table. Koriand’r was absently watching the hockey game play out, dunking fries into what seemed to be a
milkshake, while Carol was occupied with her phone.

She made her way over to the other two, receiving a number of stares and nods, people recognizing her,
acknowledging she existed. She spotted Itnar, up near the bar, who waved gently in her direction before going back
to his work creating ice.

Carol looked up as she arrived at the table, blinking. “Hey, Addy.”

Koriand’r, startling away from the screen, threw the incredibly soggy french fry into her mouth, pausing just long
enough to chew and swallow before greeting her much the same.

Addy said nothing for the moment, pulling a chair out and dropping herself down into it. The second chair that felt
more like a punishment to sit in than it altogether should be, Addy was truly beginning to consider releasing a
pamphlet to tell people how to design chairs for those who weren’t short.

Breathing in, then out again, she rallied herself, and did the one thing she really, really disliked doing.

“I am sorry.”

The other two occupants at the table just stared at her, bewildered.

“I cut off contact with you, and I have been informed that I tend to isolate myself when under stress,” Addy
continued, each word like pulling teeth. Rotten teeth, yes, but still painful. She hated admitting to ignorance, to
mistakes, because she had so rarely made them before. Becoming... becoming Addy, changing from just Queen
Administrator into something new had made that experience a much more frequent one. “I should have responded
to your texts, I should have reassured you that I was fine, if dealing with something, and... that I should have done
more to retain your friendship. I hope that I may still have such a thing with you, but I understand if I do not.”

For a time, she was mostly met with blank stares, though Koriand’r had taken the time to continue dunking more
french fries into her drink and quickly throw them into her mouth, chewing merrily away. On reflection, Koriand’r had
known her for a much shorter amount of time than Carol ever had, and this was probably mostly dramatics to her.

Koriand’r honestly struck her as a woman in transition, most of the time. A past conversation had alluded to - if not
confirmed - the fact that her vulgarity and bluntness had been a consequence of spending most of her adult life
among hardened criminals and being forced to learn how to engage with them. With time, the hard, brusque, vulgar
and violent parts of her personality had diminished, but beneath it all was still an undercurrent of steely crudeness
that tended to manifest itself as punctuated shouts of ‘fuck!’ and ‘shit!’ when something went wrong.

She still didn’t really know what to think about Koriand’r, even knowing that. That said, Addy had the distinct
impression that uncertainty was mutual.

Carol sighed, drawing her back to the other woman, her face pinched a bit. “It was a shitty thing to ghost us,” she
said, not blunting the edge of such a statement. “But you’re... you’re fine, for now, okay? I’m okay, you’re... I’m hoping
better?”

Addy nodded.

“You’re better,” Carol reiterated, propping her chin up beneath the palm of her hand. “I understand needing personal
space and time to process, I mean I ran away from home for literally that reason, but... please for the love of all
that’s good keep in contact with me, if you do get back into a similar state. I didn’t know if you were hurt or not, and
while I could make educated guesses on behalf of your psychic presence, I knew that you were alive, and still in
National City, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell how you were. I wasn’t afraid you were captured or something, but
anything could’ve happened.”

That was... fair. “I will endeavour to do so in the future,” she agreed.

“You are fun to be around,” Koriand’r admitted, eyes turned back towards the hockey game. “You always had really
great ideas”—Carol, for some reason, winced—“and you got up to things I could never imagine doing myself. It was
nice to hear about them, when you spoke to us. I hope that’s something we may continue.”

There was a blare from the television, someone managing to score a goal.

Koriand’r cussed sharply beneath her breath, grimacing at it. “The Flames are an awful team. Why did I choose to
like them?”

“...Because you liked the logo, Kori,” Carol said, rather pointedly.

Koriand’r just huffed, turning away from the screen. “They do not live up to the fire their logo is emblazoned with,”
she complained, though any further such comments were lost as she went back to dipping her fries into her
milkshake, something Addy was not entirely sure how to feel about.

Milkshakes were already not something Addy was fond of, but the idea of soggy fries was... just. Unpleasant.

“Ah, well,” Carol muttered, reaching up to stretch her arms above her head, letting out a yawn. “What have you been
up to, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Koriand’r’s eyes trained themselves on her, her interest clear.

She would have to redact some things, and likely avoid speaking specifically about some parts, but... well. There
were most certainly things she could clue them in on, undoubtedly.

She felt herself relax, a similar feeling of contentful calm overcoming her. It was the one she had when talking with
people, just talking, the sort of small talk that didn’t come naturally to her, but felt good to have. It grounded her, it let
her think, and it let her share without fear of getting into a long, philosophical or psychological conversation about
her well-being.

Free of such burdens, she started with Cadmus.

Heavily redacted, of course.

Last edited: Jun 17, 2021

 330

OxfordOctopus Jun 17, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 29 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jun 24, 2021  #3,106

EPISODE 29​
The fleeting twilight hours of the day were murky. A heavy overcast had come to settle over the sky, forming a black-
gray ceiling of clouds that Addy hadn’t seen since Brockton Bay. The clouds hid what little light the evening could
provide, with the sun past the horizon as it was, leaving everything thrown into a not quite dark, but certainly not
bright middle ground.

Just below her, Kara was descending from the air, down towards stretches of arid grassland, interrupted only by a
single homestead of some kind, placed far beyond the highway with its only connecting road being dirt. It snaked
between desiccated stalks of grass and over rocky outcroppings, with only a handful of working street lights to
illuminate it. Instead, twin beams of yellow cut through the shade, cast from a car’s headlights, which dutifully
followed them as Addy did Kara.

Next to her, John was quiet, descending much the same as she was. His eyes were trained on the far horizon, where
if she looked closely, she could still make out the dim illumination of the highway leading back to National City.

In silence, Addy found herself touching back on the ground alongside John, landing with Kara at the side of the road
leading up to the homestead, a fifteen-second walk at the most. She could even see the front door from here, the
white paint that coated it having been half-smothered by a layer of dust. It was dwarfed by a larger barn door that
connected to another part of the building, this one painted red, and looking somewhat less dirty.

Kara was looking between the two doors, a confused twist to her face. “...I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be the
place,” she said, her voice skeptical. “I mean, she told me to come here, it’s just not really what I was expecting.”

Addy couldn’t find it in herself to disagree. She had come to witness a rather large assortment of secret bases in
both Taylor’s life and her own experiences afterwards. A ramshackle, dusty barn outside of city limits was not
inspiring much confidence in the quality of the base, in any event. Before she could voice her commentary, the
crunch of wheels over dirt drew her focus, her head swivelling to take in Maggie’s car as it trundled up towards them,
slowing to a halt, the headlights illuminating them for a brief moment before clicking off.

“I believe that’s the point, Supergirl,” John replied, voice as dry as the grass they had landed on.

The door to the car popped open, and Maggie scampered out. She turned for just long enough to close and lock the
door with her keys before she was moving towards them, slowly jogging up the hill to join them.

Addy’s gaze resettled on the homestead, listening to Maggie’s footsteps as she neared. In her expert opinion, she
was simply glad this one wasn’t another warehouse. She was growing dreadfully tired of the things, little more than
rusty sheet metal and concrete. There wasn’t much inspiration to a homestead surrounded by an arid landscape, no,
it had about as much colour as the warehouses did, but heterogeneity in secret bases was always nice.

“It’s not much to look at, huh?” Maggie said, her footsteps slowing to a halt.

Kara made a noise in the back of her throat, though Addy couldn’t put any particular emotion to it. “Let’s go see if the
directions I got were right,” she said diplomatically, beginning to walk towards the front door.

Addy, dutifully, followed.

“If they aren’t, you owe me gas money,” Maggie groused. “Not all of us are capable of self-propulsion, and instead
have to rely on overpriced explosive fossils.”

Kara shot her a look. “The Green Lantern said he’d fly you here,” she pointed out.

Maggie returned the look with equal force. “And you have no idea how uncomfortable that experience is, huh?”

“Are you hearing or seeing anything, Supergirl?” John interjected, apparently about as interested as Addy was in the
back-and-forth Maggie and Kara could get into, when left to their own devices. There was never much heat in it, but
Addy still refused to support banter of any kind.

Kara blinked, tilted her head, then nodded. “Yup, one heartbeat actually. So, probably the right place.” She stepped
ahead of the rest of them, pacing up the first few stairs, and knocked her knuckles against the white door, dislodging
a small cloud of dust directly into her face.

Maggie coughed, or laughed, it was hard to tell.

There was a sharp creak as, rather than the front door opening, the barn doors opened instead. Lena peeked her
head out through the gap she made for herself, staring at the four of them. She wasn’t dressed up for their visit, to
Addy’s surprise, and rather in what was clearly her comfort clothes. Her hair was down, for starters, loosely braided
and thrown over one shoulder, whereas she was wearing a soft-looking red sweater with the MIT logo on it, a pair of
baggy gray sweatpants, and running shoes.

“You got the wrong door,” Lena said, her head vanishing back behind the door as she pushed it fully open. “C’mon.”

The four of them made their way back around in silence, Kara looking nervous, John looking mildly interested, and
Maggie mildly suspicious. The interior of the barn - however it might frame Lena - was not a particularly impressive
one. It looked, for the most part, like a completely normal barn, if one could ignore the huge square hole in the
center, framed by metal. There were some tools thrown around, a pair of wires snaking from the roof of the barn
down towards the hole, but other than that, it didn’t actually look too far from being a genuinely abandoned
homestead.

“Come in,” Lena said, tilting her head back as she stepped to the side. “Just close the door as you go.”

While the rest of them stepped through, Kara hung back for a moment, and did as Lena asked, pulling the large,
squeaky door in as they all went, the wooden frame shuddering as it closed.

Lena turned away from them, moving towards the hole. “Sorry about the condition this place is in. I had a safe house
back in Metropolis, and I misguidedly thought that, with my brother in prison, I wouldn’t need one for National City, or
at least not an official one.” There was a sharp twist to her face as she glanced towards them, something like
bitterness and grief, before it all vanished back beneath her neutral mask. “I still had plans for this one eventually,
because you never know when something your family did would come back around to hurt you, but considering my
experiences in this city? I should’ve had it finished much sooner.”

With that, Lena kicked at a bit of metal that was sticking up from the hole. There was a noise of metal shifting over
metal, then a sharp screech and bang as something reoriented itself. She crouched down, reaching for the two bits
of metal sticking up from the side, and swung herself around, her feet catching on something Addy couldn’t see. A
ladder, then.

As she started to descend, Addy was quick to approach. The hole itself, when she could finally look down it, was
about eight feet deep, and concrete on all sides. Metal scaffolded the walls in places, especially near where the hole
turned into a tunnel, leading north.

Maggie made a low whistle as she reached for the ladder. “Your family does not do anything by half, huh?”

Addy lifted herself into the air, considering that Eliza was not present to chastise her about flying inside, and
descended, landing on the ground below just as Lena pulled away from the ladder.

Those with flight capabilities in their group did the same, Kara descending smoothly down to land next to her, while
John landed just next to the ladder, waiting for Maggie to reach the ground.

Lena, to her credit, didn’t even so much as flinch at Maggie’s words, and instead just raised one eyebrow. “No,” she
confirmed, voice quiet. “They don’t.”

Turning away from the ladder, Addy looked deeper into the corridor that the hole led to. It was, like the rest of the
construction, blocky and made from concrete, with metal framing certain parts, in certain places. The wires that had
been run from the roof of the barn vanished into what appeared to be a metal fixture specifically made for them, a
hollow tube of some kind that had been fitted into the top right corner of the ceiling. There were other things, too, the
soft whirr of a ventilation system in use audible, though she couldn’t see any vents or fans.

At the far end of the corridor was a single, boxy room, a literal cube of concrete that, due to how narrow the corridor
was in comparison, she couldn’t get much of a look at. Still, it struck her as immensely familiar, especially the way
the entire thing was organized. There was a single major table in the center of the room, covered in papers and two
laptops, while the one wall she could see had servers stacked on top of each other, blue lights blinking back at her.

It was composed, in every way shape and form, strikingly similar to how Serling’s was. In the back of her mind, it
even occurred to her that it might not be a coincidence, and that Serling might’ve taken inspiration from Lena’s
aforementioned Metropolis safe house. That said, she wasn’t sure how a thing could be managed, considering the
bunker Serling had retrofitted into a lab had been there since the 60s, but then renovation wasn’t entirely out of the
question.

It was just horribly inconvenient.

Wordlessly, Lena started making her way down the hallway, leaving them to follow.

“Not to sound ungrateful or anything, because I’m not—you don’t get to see a secret lair that often, or live to talk
about it—but how do you even manage to come out here regularly?” Maggie asked, glancing between the walls of
the corridor, her expression thoughtful. “This isn’t exactly close to National City. My gas budget can say as much, so
it can’t be easy to get out here, and I don’t see a teleporter or something to make the trip any easier.”

Stepping out of the corridor and into the open space, Lena gave Maggie an inquisitive look, possibly searching for a
reason why she would ask something like that in the first place, before she shrugged. “While I do have meetings that
keep me in National City, I do some of my work remotely for security reasons.”

Kara shot Lena a thoroughly confused look, while John was staring at her as if she’d grown a second head. It was
only Maggie and herself who seemed to get where she was going with that conversation, or possibly approve of it,
Addy couldn’t tell if John was confused or just thought it unnecessary.

After all, it wasn’t paranoia if they were actually out to get you.

Lena rolled her eyes at Kara’s look. “I have some people watching certain feeds, listening for any chatter about me.
There are more than a few people who would want me abducted or dead, though not many of them have acted on it.
Most of them are Lex’s connections, and sometimes the heat is just too hot, or there’s someone who is a possible
threat to me in the area, and so I stay in a safe location until things blow over.” She said it as though it was a fact of
reality, which it might very well be, now that Addy thought about it. Taylor hadn’t needed to deal with regular
assassination attempts or something, but there had been similar things in place to protect them in the event of
something like that happening. “That’s fairly rare, I’ll admit, maybe once a month at the most. Lately, it’s gone up in
frequency, what with Lex, but I’ve been handling it.”

“You’re telling me you’re being targeted by murderers,” Kara said slowly, as though she couldn’t quite believe it.

Lena shrugged, moving towards the table. “It’s the truth.”

Following her, Addy watched Kara try - and seemingly fail - to say something in response to that, her mouth working
silently.

“You have your own information-gathering operation?” Maggie asked, sounding more curious than anything else.

That, it would seem, jogged Kara back into action. “Why haven’t you told us?” Kara said, voice now very much
aghast. “We could try to help.”

Lena came to a stop at the metal table, reaching over to tap the spacebar on one of her laptops, the screen lighting
back up and casting her face in a sharp blue glow. “I’ve had people who want to capture me for money, Supergirl.
Emphasis on had. I’m too expensive of a mark for most people, so it’s only the high-profile extremists who really try
anything.” She tapped on a few more keys, and the blue light transitioned to white. “I’ve upset a lot of people with my
actions. My brother had a lot of friends, and it’s best not to give them the opportunity to act on their threats or cause
a problem.”

“Saving your life isn’t a problem,” Kara blustered, folding her arms over her chest. “I’d do it any day! You shouldn’t
need to... hide or something ridiculous!”

Lena smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s very thoughtful of you Supergirl, but you have better things to do. So do
we, in fact.”

Kara looked like she was about to escalate the conversation into an argument for a few seconds, before, with a
great, gusting breath, she visibly stopped herself. She breathed out sharply through her nose, eyes shutting as a
hand came up to pinch at the bridge of her nose. “We’ll be discussing this later, Miss Luthor,” Kara said with glacial
slowness. “But for now, you’re right.”

Lena, in a show of surprising defiance, rolled her eyes. “We’ll see,” she said, noncommittally.

Kara stiffened her jaw, but once again, to her credit, she didn’t rise to the bait.

“This is, as mentioned, a safe house,” Lena picked back up, not bothering to give them any silence to digest the prior
conversation. “Any of you three can use it, at any time.”

Maggie startled a bit, an eyebrow ticking up. “That’s awfully generous.”

“I know Roulette, Detective Sawyer,” Lena said in return, her brows pinching together. “I know how far that woman
will go. This is a very dangerous game to be playing with her, and you need a place to hide if things go wrong. This is
an ideal location for it, because I pulled some strings to make it as innocuous as possible. As far as the government
is concerned, this homestead was backdated after someone found the deed to this location in their late
grandfather’s things. To even them, it’s been abandoned since at least the thirties, but it’s still private property.”

“This isn’t a bad fallback point,” John said, grudgingly. “It’s out of the way, it blends in with the environment, and
nobody would have any reason to look here unless we led them to it.”

Kara nodded stiffly. “I don’t think I’ll need it, but the Green Lantern has a point.”

Apparently placated, Lena turned back to her laptops and papers. “I was never friends with Roulette. We might’ve
gone to the same private school, but we didn’t run in similar circles. The academy I was sent to as a child was more
for social climbing, to find problem children peers to hopefully learn from. What they learned from their peers,
exactly, was the contentious bit.” She slowly eased herself down in a chair, motioning for the rest of them to come
towards the table. “Roulette’s parents were real-estate moguls, and she was their youngest daughter, pushed out of
the family for no reason she could identify, and left in another country. We had that much in common.

“Roulette’s parents are about as clean as slumlords - and I’m using that term fairly literally - can be, though they’re
not good people. They aren’t involved in anything overtly criminal, but Roulette... well, she always was. Roulette
made connections at the academy, she learned how to entertain and play to people’s desires, to draw crowds. When
it was time for her to pick up the family craft, she catered to a different group—the rich, for less-than-legal purposes.
Combined with a degree in architecture, she made herself indispensable to those who had something to hide and
needed a place to hide it.”

“I figured as much,” Maggie said, into the silence following Lena’s explanation. “She was well connected, too well
connected. I spent weeks looking for any links between her and local criminal gangs, as all evidence was there, but
came back with nothing.”

“That’ll happen,” Lena replied darkly. “She fell off the map after we both graduated. It was quite the scandal for my
peer group. I honestly thought her parents had forced the issue with her activities and sent her off to live out the rest
of her life in relative isolation or something. Maybe cloistered in a nunnery, knowing their ties. Turns out, it was just
because she was running in narrow circles and working with people who didn’t want news of their activities to get
out. She got really good at hiding her tracks, and she has enough cash to make any slip-ups just disappear.”

Maggie nodded. “I’ve already experienced that, but...” Her face twisted, a bitter curl of her lip. “I was hoping it wasn’t
as bad as I was expecting it to be.”

“Not everything is,” Lena responded simply. “I have the location for Roulette’s next gun show, one of the rich ones in
particular, and I can tell you now it’s going to be big. Lots of guns, lots of security, and if rumours are anything to go
by, a VIP—the person who has apparently been helping Roulette manufacture the weapons.”

Kara, having settled next to her around the table, swapped her stubborn expression for an eager one. “That sounds
like an ideal place to go after.”

“You’d be right, and that’s because Roulette’s gotten desperate, Supergirl,” Lena replied. “Someone has been
diminishing her reputation, making people less confident in her. There’s a lot of value placed on anonymity in what
she does, making sure no mouths are talking, and keeping things on the down-low, and this person just keeps
breaking in and keeps exposing these locations. A... “Steel” or something, who keeps disrupting her venues. This
next one is in two days, and it needs to go perfectly if she wants to keep her empire.”

Kara’s face stiffened. “I know him,” she said, her voice a complex blend of emotions Addy couldn’t really make out.
“He’s been baiting me towards her venues by using this super-high-pitched frequency, but he’s always running off
before I could actually talk to him. Helpful, but annoying.”

Addy’s mind, though, was less on Steel, and more on the mentioned VIP. A tech genius was something she could
certainly use right about now, though it seemed they were more weapon-oriented. Still, a grasp on alien technology
would likely prove useful to her pursuits, so she quietly filed the knowledge away for later.

“Like I was saying, her reputation’s been hurt by him, and people are starting to look elsewhere,” Lena continued,
voice focused. “It’s an ideal time to break faith in her organization, her losses are stacking up, and this is the one last
big attempt to regather interests and keep people buying what she offers. But that’s why it’s so dangerous, because
Roulette knows that too. She’s going to have much more security, and be a lot less hesitant about pulling the trigger.”

“She’ll still be down one member of her Demolition Team,” Kara said, thoughtfully. “We took out Hardhat, and last I
checked they haven’t broken him out of D.E.O. custody or anything.”

“If anything that’s going to make her worse,” Lena pointed out grimly. “The Demolition Team seems to have been her
main form of defence. She’s betting a lot on this going well. This attack? It has to be smooth, there’s no room for
hesitation or mistakes here. She won’t let you recover if any of you do. She’s backed against the wall, and like every
other cornered animal, that makes her dangerous.”

Lena reached down beneath the table with both hands, pulling what appeared to be a cardboard box up, placing it
down next to her laptops. “Which is why I’m not holding back anything, either,” she said, reaching up to open the top
flaps. “I didn’t have much time, but I did what I could.”

Inside the box was several objects. Most of them were baseball-sized orbs, coloured matte black, and seemingly
made from metal, with a single button recessed into it, bright red in colour. Next to them were a series of earpieces,
communicators, contained within a separate glass case, one for each of them.

Reaching inside, Lena took the case and one of the balls out, placing them in front of her. “I’ll start with these—the
black box field bombs.”

Addy’s mind hitched at that, confusion coming with it.

She gestured at the orb in front of her, thumb tracing around the button. “Think of them like EMPs, just more focused
on disrupting alien technology, or technology that might feature lasers and the like. They only work for a short
period, at most five seconds, but they’ll close to fry most alien tech, and if they don’t manage that, they’ll still disrupt
them for a time.”

Addy, mentally, shifted Lena further up her mental chart of intelligent people. Lena had just created a portable, if
short-lasting version of their black box field generator. In a week.

Nearly no time at all to miniaturize something that had taken her and the team over a month of working from Lena’s
own prototype to minimize and reduce the power cost.

Honestly, she was quite nearly tempted to take a scan of Lena’s brain structure and compare it against Winn’s, just
to see if there was something abnormal about the two of them that she was missing. She wouldn’t exactly be
looking for a Corona Pollentia or anything, but surely there had to be something different about her brain than the
rest of the planet’s.

“The communication devices are mostly immune to the effects of the bombs,” Lena continued, not hearing her
thoughts on the absurd technical ability she had. “They’ll keep you in contact with me, because I’ll be working to help
you tactically.”

Kara opened her mouth to protest, but Lena raised a hand to stop her.

“I won’t be at the venue, I intend to stay well enough away, but this is my stuff, and you need my help. I don’t want to
send you in without some support, and it’s the least I can do,” Lena said, though her tone grew a bit uncertain near
the end. “I’m not going to press the issue, but I want to help.”

Kara let out a sigh. “We’ll probably need it,” she admitted, though she didn’t sound happy about the fact. “I think we
should start planning out who is doing what before we really get into the specifics, though.”

“Generally, we’d need to decide who goes in first, and what the plan is when we enter,” Maggie interjected. “We can’t
just go in there without any plan of action. Even if it doesn’t survive contact with the enemy, it’s still important to
have a goal in mind.”

“I can enter first,” Addy announced, drawing eyes back to her. “Through the use of my invisibility, I can drop through
the ceiling and take control of a large amount of the crowd, including any security detail they have, while remaining
mostly out of sight.” Kara already knew about her invisibility, it had been among the things she had shared with her,
and so did John and Maggie.

Lena was staring a bit curiously at her, but shook her head after a moment, glancing back down at her computers.

“Which would deny Roulette access to her army,” Kara said, nodding along. “With civilians out of the way of harm
and her army out of her hands, even if you’re not close to Roulette and her bodyguards, me and the Green Lantern
can handle that.”

“It’ll also keep any buyers from running off,” John said. “It’s not just that we’d keep the civilians out of the way, but
when it came time to call this in, we won’t have any loose ends.”

“So, what then?” Maggie cut back in. “Administrator drops in, takes control of everyone she can. Where do we go
from there?”

“I make my entrance,” Kara said, sounding more and more confident about things. “They know me. I’ve been hitting
Roulette’s markets and some of her shows regularly, not to mention I’m on the television more than anyone else in
this room besides maybe Miss Luthor. Anyone who isn’t under Administrator’s control is going to immediately focus
on me, which gives the Green Lantern a chance to slip in and help me take them down.”

“You are a bit more durable than I am,” John said agreeably, his voice tinted by gallows humour.

“Between the two of you, will it be enough to deal with everyone else?” Maggie interjected, sounding curious. “Not
that I’m judging too much, but there may very well be more than a few psychic-resistant species, and you’re going to
have to deal with whatever else they can throw at you.”

Kara and John shared a look.

“I think so,” Kara said, slowly.

John nodded. “Even if Supergirl mainly acts as the offence, I believe I can act in a supportive role.”

“Then I could catch anyone who tries to flee,” Maggie said, at last. “I’ll be honest, going into a manor without
backup? Or a team? Which is full of Roulette’s flunkies? Not what I really want to do. But, I can if you guys think you’ll
need it. Otherwise, I think I’ll do better keeping people from getting away.”

“You could work with me,” Lena pointed out, glancing towards Maggie. “I’m going to be fairly close to the location,
though not as close as you probably intend to be. Still, we could work something out.”

“Speaking of backup, though,” John said, slowly. “I think we should prepare to call the D.E.O. if things go south.
They’re better trained for it.”

Maggie made a face. “I’m not going to argue that,” she said, apparently put off by the fact that the Science Police
weren’t even getting a consideration. “And honestly, even if we did call in the Science Police for an after-fight
cleanup, the D.E.O. would just take the weapons anyway with some shitty fed loophole or something. It’s probably
for the best that we keep the Science Police mostly out of the loop until a D.E.O. delegation can fill them in.”

“I don’t think the D.E.O. is going to be impressed with us,” Kara pointed out. “But if you’re both sure?”

“There’s nobody else,” Addy responded in kind. “The D.E.O. is one of the only groups in this part of the country which
can reasonably contain the amount of highly dangerous weapons we’re going to be acquiring. Any other agency
wouldn’t know what to do with them, or have too many holes to keep them secure.”

“Before we decide on what we’ll do after you storm the venue,” Lena cut in, her voice slow and careful. “We should
probably go over the actual place we’re hitting, shouldn’t we?”

Kara tilted her head again, then nodded. “Point. What do you have for us, Miss Luthor?”

Lena just smiled, all teeth. “Floor plans and much more.”

With that, they got to work.

Addy hung silently in the sky, staring up at the dim few stars that could be made out amongst the light pollution.
Below her, she knew, the manor stretched out, a wide expanse of white stone, built like the estates of those with old
money. It was packed with people, with security, who moved like ants, equipped with guns and everything they would
need to make sure this went to plan.

None of them knew she was here.

The two days of deliberation leading up to this moment were full of minor changes to the plan. Adjustments had to
occur upon further review of the materials of the location, and though the bones of the plan hadn’t changed - Addy
was still to make a forced entry first, she was still going to take control of the crowd, and so on - many of the details
had. One of those changes was that, unlike the rest, she had been unable to equip herself with the orbs, only the
communicator - which could fit beneath her costume - as they would be visible when the rest of her wouldn’t be.

“It’s lead-lined, just as you said,” Kara’s voice said, tone a bit frustrated. “Can’t see or hear anything that’s inside of the
building, in any event.”

Far above her, Addy couldn’t only barely make out Kara. She was a distant, slight tinge of colour, the darkness of the
night doing much to mask the bright colours of her costume, and the distance between herself and the ground doing
the rest. John was even less visible on account of the darker tones of his costume, blending near-perfectly in with
the sky. If someone had bothered to look up - not a guarantee, in any event - they wouldn’t see anything they didn’t
already know to look for.

“The estate used to belong to a friend of my brother’s, Supergirl,” Lena replied dryly. “It’s designed to keep peepers out.”

“No kidding,” was Kara’s sardonic reply.

The line quieted back into silence, and Addy repositioned herself, glancing down at the roof that, very shortly, she’d
be throwing herself through. She reached out to her coreself, playing over the settings, adjusting specifics.
Humanoid control, short-ranged, but then that was the unfortunate consequence of her configuration. For now, it
would do. In the future, she would have power, she would be stronger, and she could begin adjusting the details with
greater focus.

“The guards on the doors are being shuffled out,” Maggie’s voice cut back in. “It’s now or another 15 minutes.
Everyone’s in position. Are we clear to go?”

“I’m ready to start,” Kara responded, voice firm.

“In position and ready,” John said in turn.

“Prepared and watching,” Lena sounded-off.

Her turn, then. “I am ready,” she said, as quiet as she could manage, into the mic.

There weren’t any other words to be said. It was time.

Addy reached out to her body, eased her flight, and felt gravity begin to reassert itself. Her body tipped, turning as it
began to descend, reorienting herself so that her head was aimed towards the roof.

She reached out with both arms, closed her hands into tight fists, and—

Pushed.

Flight picked back up, assisting gravity in her descent. She accelerated, going from still to as fast as she could
manage in mere moments, the world blurring as she twisted herself around, bringing one shoulder up as she braced
for impact.

The ceiling shattered like glass. Stone masonry turned to dust, the lead lining broke apart into smaller fragments,
she fell from the sky and into the room below, jerking herself to a stop before she could actually land.

She lashed out with her power, her range expanding, growing and collecting those under her. It crawled over the
tightly-packed crowd, leashing minds to her, binding them under her control. Points in a map of darkness, dozens of
viewpoints flickered into being, and so too did the crowd’s fear. Some had been mid-scream at the sudden chaos,
others had been trying to run, and now they were all still.

Not that she could see them with her own eyes. The dust that had blasted out with her entrance had obscured her to
the greater area, and she used it to skate through the room, taking anyone she could reach within the crowd. The
ones she couldn’t control she certainly felt, like absences or holes in her map, gaps where, when she sent signals,
nothing came back. But they could be handled, even as she saw some of them responding, shouts emerging from
within the crowd.

She watched the ones with guns, where heads turned to look at the cloud of dust, the shaft of moonlight that cut
through into the room itself. The guards were looking for her, but not at the crowd, and that was a mistake the ones
who still had their own mental faculties were unlikely to make again. She had those under her control lunge, getting
the first mind-control-resistant guard down by having the human guard he had been paired with crack the butt of his
pistol against the back of his head, the crowd dragging the concussed guard out of sight.

Another twitch, and three affluently dressed women lunged, grappling an alien servant - just about to run - to the
ground. They lashed onto his arms, his limbs, four rather than two, and with one hand on his collarbone, and another
on the arm, she had them pop one of his arms out of socket with barely a moment of hesitation. A hand pressed
itself over his mouth, muffling the shout of pain.

“Don’t move,” she had the three women say at the same time. “Nod if you understand.”

The alien nodded, and she kept him pinned.

Others followed her commands on whims, and the small crowd of people who couldn’t be controlled were pulled,
dislodged, their weapons ripped from their hands as the dust cloud from her entrance fell over them, obscuring what
exactly was going on. People were pressed into the earth, and the ones who struggled found themselves
unconscious, whether from choking or brute force.

In moments, all that was left were the ones under her control.

The dust cleared, any moment now, Kara should be coming in, another percussive impact to disrupt the venue, but
for the moment, Addy could see them, even if they could not see her.

On the stage, Roulette was at the front, her eyes wide with shock and palpable anger, looking for her guards
amongst the crowd. Next to her was a woman in a very familiar set of armour—an identical set to the one the Master
Jailer had worn, just made for someone of slight frame, with narrower shoulders and less bulk. The Demolition
Team had gained members, rather than the expected fewer of them, where there had once been Hardhat now were
at minimum four other people, two of which were aliens with weapons all their own. Mostly guns, by the looks of it,
but dangerous weapons nonetheless.

Even the Demolition Team wasn’t unchanged. Their weapons had been modified, changed in slight ways, likely
improved. Sledgehammer’s hammer now had additional parts added to it, more switches, Scoopshovel’s pneumatic
arm had been evolved into an actual arm this time around, no longer just a long fixture with a shovel attached to the
end of it, a hand at the end of the long piece of machinery, each finger tipped with a blade. Rosie’s gun was larger,
bulkier, with additional sights and a curved magazine fitted beneath the barrel, and Steamroller, sans his vehicle,
now had a glowing riot shield and a heavy-looking handgun.

“Telepath!” the woman in the armour shouted.

But whatever she was about to say didn’t finish.

Kara dropped through the ceiling, landing hard into the ground with a profound crack of noise. She pulled herself up
into a stand, fingers closing into fists at her size, and lowered her front body, ready to leap.

A hail of weaponry met her. Rosie fired immediately, the nail glancing off of Kara’s side as she swerved. The new
members of the Demolition Team levelled weapons, barrels barking with bright sparks of light, lasers arrayed about
in bursts, cutting into the ground, trying to pin Kara as she threw herself into the air, twisting around.

John fell in through the same hole Kara had blasted through just in time, a green shield shimmering into existence
as another hail of laser fire took it dead on, barely wavering.

“Fucking shit!” The woman in armour shouted. She raised her arm with a snarl, her gauntlet giving a sharp glow—

“Snare!” Roulette shouted, already making for an exit.

Snare, apparently, ignored her. The energy discharged from her gauntlet, a cutting blast of what seemed to be
kinetically charged light streaking through the air and shattering the green shield. John rocked back, twisting away
as her gauntlet started glowing again. “Take them the fuck down!”

The others didn’t hesitate. The Demolition Team turned their attention on John, Rosie aiming at him and firing off a
volley of nails which lodged sharply into his shield, almost able to penetrate completely through. Sledgehammer
hopped from the stage, swinging his hammer down, the head of it glowing bright red as it made contact with the
ground. Energetic lines rippled through the ground, collecting on an area just below John, before exploding up like a
lightning bolt.

A bubble of green narrowly saved him from damage, John veering to the side, just in time to have to summon
another shield to deal with the incoming gunfire from the unnamed members of the team and Steamroller.
Scoopshovel moved to join Sledgehammer, the two of them moving towards where John was.

Snare, meanwhile, moved on Kara. Both of her arms lashed out and more cutting shots of energy jumped from them
towards Kara, narrowly missing her and instead taking large gouges out of the walls, sending masonry and wood
splinters flying in every which direction. Snare even started to float, her body lifting up off the ground to meet Kara in
the air.

Before Addy could intervene, however, she heard it: the incoming chatter of additional forces. Splitting her focus, she
grabbed hold of her thralls not busy keeping people pinned, especially the guards, and turned towards the other
entrance to the room. She plastered those under her control up against the wall, fanning her swarm out so that
coming in through the door, they’d only see Kara and John fighting, and none of the crowd.

She knew when they were coming, as they fell into her range, and not all of them were immune to her influence. She
grabbed onto the incoming guards who weren’t, keeping them moving as they had been, prowling towards the door,
receiving and barking orders to their comrades. The incoming unit had about thirty people, and she had taken ten of
them under her control before they even knew it.

One of the guards, equipped with a heavy gun, rushed forward and kicked the door in, barking orders to move.

Before he could even get a foot through the door, hands lunged to grab him, his weapon. He let out a hollow shout,
his alien physiology making the noise echo-y, a warble of almost electric noise as her swarm wrenched him free
from the doorway and dragged him into the hidden crowd. They tore his weapon from his hands, and she had others
grapple his neck, before slamming his head into the wall. An arm encircled his throat, and cut off any further noise
as she had him choked into unconsciousness.

At the same time - panic surging through the incoming group, watching their leader get dragged away - she had the
ten other guards turn on their fellows. Guns aimed down at knees, and blew them out before someone could even so
much as bark out an order. In a single moment, she crippled over half of the nineteen remaining guards, many
dropping their guns in a panic, despite the damage they could do to her forces, had they endured. She grabbed
guards from the crowd inside at the same time, urging them through the door as the ones she couldn’t immediately
incapacitate turned their weapons on their friends, barely hesitating.

She lost one of the controlled guards in the resulting hail, but took down another five. The ones she sent in grappled
and threw themselves on the other guards, dragging the hobbled ones to the ground, wrenching their weapons free
and using coordination to pin those that were stronger than one. Another two fell, and what was left of the forces
turned to run in a panic.

She dropped them with a hail of laser fire into their legs. Unable to move her forces directly up to the ones she’d
dropped - her range was painfully restrictive - she instead had them destroy the other’s weapons, a volley of lasers
breaking them into pieces or at bare minimum throwing them away from questing hands.

Back on the stage, Kara was still facing off with Snare. The woman’s armour had unfolded, revealing a dozen or
more gadgets as she slipped through the air, using propulsion fitted into the power armour itself. Kara snarled, a
lash of her hand missing its mark, and Snare responded by lashing out with her own, lengths of wire emerging from
her arm and latching onto before encircling Kara, crackling with a sharp buzz of electricity.

Kara cried out, pain thick in her voice, but she didn’t crumple. Hands closed around the wires containing her body,
and with glacial slowness, she tore them from her body, metal screaming as it was ripped apart.

With a twitch of her wrist, the wires detached themselves from Snare’s armour.

Behind Kara and Snare, John threw up a shield just in time to catch an incoming swing from Sledgehammer, red
energy crackling brightly as it warred against his willpower. Rosie launched another hail of nails, which slammed
into the shield, large cracks taking shape across it. With a sharp grunt, John spread his hands, and then shoved out
with both arms, the shield breaking apart into pieces which reformed into heavy chunks, launched back at his
attackers. One took Rosie in the arm, nearly throwing her weapon away, and Sledgehammer just barely avoided
getting pulped, Scoopshovel whipping his robotic arm out to shatter the incoming hail of blocks aimed at the two of
them.

And, behind that, Addy spotted Roulette, scrambling to her feet, her heels ditched a few feet away as she limped
quickly towards the door. A heavy purplish bruise had crawled up her leg, mottling the colour of her tattoo, and she
wondered when she missed her taking damage.

Still, she couldn’t let her get away. Guns exchanged hands, a chain of movement bringing it up to a person at the
front of her crowd in a breath. She levelled it down at the same leg, and—

A gauntleted fist slammed across Roulette’s face, dropping her like a sack of potatoes.

Addy blinked.

Out from behind a pile of boxes, Steel stepped into the open. He was in full armour, as he always was when he made
appearances, and with a casual flick of his wrist, he threw a doorknob to the ground, one that looked horribly
mangled. He stared down at Roulette for a moment - very much unconscious, or stunned enough that she was
unresponsive - and then back towards Snare.

The fighting lulled for a moment as everyone took in their boss, unconscious and vulnerable, on the ground.

Kara moved first, trying to take advantage of the distraction. She closed the distance to Snare, who whipped back
around, catching sight of Kara just in time to get a fist firmly lodged against the place her face would’ve been, had
her helmet not been in the way. She toppled from the sky, body twisting around, legs coming out as she skidded
against the stage, grinding to a halt, still very much upright. Both of Snare’s arms lit up with energy, and she lashed
out once again, twin, conal blasts catching Kara in the chest, these ones crimson.

And Kara, in turn, dropped. Addy knew the feeling, having experienced it once before, her power visibly guttered,
flight giving out as she landed hard on the wooden floor, skidding out much as Snare had. A bruise was already
purpling her face, and her eyes were wide with shock, pain, and no small amount of anger.

“Did you think we’d operate out of National City without making countermeasures?” Snare snapped, more red energy
beginning to pool in her arms, filling in the gaps of her armour. She glowed, bright and vibrant, opening her mouth to
speak, to continue her completely counterproductive monologue.

Addy shot her in the knee with a plasma cannon.

The woman’s leg jerked out from beneath her, not enough to send her sprawling, but enough to cut her diatribe off.
Snare let out a snarl, metallic and sharp through the confines of her helmet, and instead of generating blasts this
time, the red energy took the shape of shields, panels that floated just-so off of her arms.

“Everyone! Fall back! We’re making an exit!”

Kara stumbled back up to her feet, lifting back up into the air now that her powers were returning. “No!”

Addy had another shot fired off, but this time Snare was expecting it, catching it with a shield and then launching the
shield she wasn’t protecting herself with towards Kara, taking her in the chest once again and making her drop from
the sky.

Steel slammed into Snare before she could get another blast off, throwing her to the side.

Addy drew on her forces, pulling them in from the outside, guns quickly changing hands and finding their way into
those who could use them as soon as possible. She left the downed stragglers, making a mental note to make sure
they were still there after all of this was done and over with.

Snare threw out a punch, catching Steel in the metal chin and sending him toppling backwards. Steel’s armour
vented, hissing steam as he tried to right himself, only to catch a plated boot in his stomach from Snare, sending
him tumbling back towards the Demolition Team.

John wasn’t doing so good, either. The Demolition Team had kept him pinned, forced to dodge and swerve, having
just enough time to return fire before he was once again forced back behind cover, Rosie emptying clip after clip into
his shields, shattering them in seconds.

Kara finally drew back into the air, and Snare gestured at her with her hand. More wire leapt from the top of her arm,
tangling around Kara’s body, wrenching her arms in near her chest. She gestured up, wire still attached, and then
fired again, the end of the wire slamming into the ceiling and very suddenly jerking Kara into it, keeping her hanging
there, like a tether of some kind.

Guns now at the ready, Addy had her forces aim, and fire. She didn’t pay much mind to Steel, though she did adjust
as best she could to keep him from getting hit, even if he was skimmed. Lasers slammed into Steamroller’s shield,
which quickly jumped between the lasers and Sledgehammer’s back—her true target. The other lasers found their
mark, slamming into Scoopshovel’s arm, sending it reeling back in shock, while a smaller cluster punched into
Snare’s chest, shoving her further towards the back of the stage.

Steel took the opportunity given to him. He launched forward, ducking through her laser fire, and threw his fist into
Snare’s chest to the shriek of metal-on-metal. Snare skidded back, again, her back slamming into the back wall of
the stage. He pressed his forearm up against her throat, pressing her even harder against the wall, and pulled back
an arm to punch her.

Snare’s entire set of armour lit up like an arc pylon, jetting sharp bursts of red electricity which sent Steel toppling,
arms covering his head as his armour seized, stuttering.

John aimed his hand down at Scoopshovel in turn, firing off a blast that he moved with. The blast sent him skidding
back, right up to the edge of the stage, where his arm reached back to grab Steel in one mechanical fist. Addy had
her guns retrained on him, ready to fire, only to be interrupted as Scoopshovel whipped the heavy, armoured body of
Steel over his head, and directly at Addy’s firing line.

Knowing better than most how fragile humans could be, she was forced to move them. The sea of bodies parted as
Steel sailed through, and Addy lowered herself, widening her arms and, with a grunt, caught Steel before he could be
thrown into some of the prone, unconscious bodies still on the ground. She spun a bit through the air, the sheer
mass of the armoured guy keeping her from making this smooth or particularly graceful, but she managed to avoid
casualties.

“Go!” Scoopshovel shouted, levering himself up onto the stage. Behind him, Rosie, Snare, Steamroller, and
Sledgehammer were moving out of sight, having climbed onto the stage and moved towards the back exit, while
Scoopshovel’s arm was unfolding, openings appearing along the length.

In the air above her, Addy could hear Kara’s cry of triumph as the net of metal was finally pried apart, falling in
shredded pieces around her body.

The openings disgorged thumb-sized rockets, fired wildly into the surrounding environment. Addy adjusted her
crowd, pulling them away from projected landing sites. John pulled a bubble around himself, and Kara didn’t have
enough time to do anything as the rockets slammed into the walls, into John’s shield, and into Kara’s body.

The concussive blast was intense, but it was the deafening sound and light of it that really caught her off guard. Like
a dozen flashbangs being set off in a confined room, Addy was immediately deafened and blinded, and so were all
of her minions.

By the time the blinding light cleared from her eyes, all that was left was one unconscious Roulette - still exactly
where Steel had dropped her - a half-deaf, half-blinded Scoopshovel, her thralls, Kara, John, and Steel, who she had
dropped to the ground in the interim.

It took less than ten minutes for an entire fleet of heavily-equipped D.E.O. vans to arrive after they made the call.

Addy had always approved of their response time, though it did sometimes leave her feeling like they had already
preemptively known about a given situation and were just waiting for the chance to swoop in. In this case, though,
she could be fairly certain that they hadn’t been in the know at all, as otherwise, Alex wouldn’t be yelling at Kara.

Probably.

An agent slotted a pair of cuffs over one of her thralls, and Addy, as she had for all the other times, relinquished
control.

The thrall - a woman in her mid-to-late thirties, wealthy beyond reason and thoroughly racist even by the standards
of her fellow millionaires - immediately started hissing, spitting out cutting insults and threats that the agent, looking
much too tired for any of this, merely ignored. A pair of agents came in on either side of her, grabbed her by her
restrained arms, and literally hoisted her into the air, the woman’s feet kicking wildly as she bellowed about not
touching her.

The agent pulled out another set of cuffs, and Addy, knowing the rhythm, had another thrall step forward to be
restrained.

Off to one side of the crowd, Kara had her arms folded defensively across her chest, her shoulders slightly hunched,
and a mulish expression plastered across her face. In front of her, Alex was hissing something at her, gesturing
wildly towards the estate, and looking completely unsurprised when Kara merely raised an eyebrow in response.
Behind Alex, J’onn was watching the byplay with a completely unimpressed look.

On the other side of the crowd, Maggie, John, and even Steel had stuck around, though Lena had made herself
scarce, pointing out that the D.E.O. was unlikely to be pleased with her presence by any stretch of the imagination.
She had commented on the fact that none of them had used the EMP bombs, airily admitting she was a bit
disappointed not to see them in action, and Addy could agree. Lena had left them with a small pile of the things if
they wanted them, though.

Roulette had been dragged off a while back, too, alongside Scoopshovel for an expedited retrieval back to the D.E.O.
base, presumably for interrogation while they sorted through the rest of the estate. Roulette had been quiet, not
blustering or cussing, her face a placid mask of cold hatred that she had made sure to level at each and every one of
them as they stuffed her away in the back of a van.

Scoopshovel, his robotic arm removed, had been significantly less graceful about the matter. There’d been a short
scuffle where he’d managed to pop the lock on his restraints somehow, which had concluded in the man in question
getting tackled to the ground and promptly had not only his wrists cuffed, but also his fingers and elbows. It looked
incredibly uncomfortable, but then he had managed to land a hit on Alex - if only on her chest - and Addy wasn’t
particularly inclined towards sympathy.

Glancing back towards her thralls, Addy relinquished control again. This one, a man in his late fifties, merely asked
for a lawyer in a cold, clipped voice, and let himself be led away. He had quite the amount of self-control, that one.
Most people were so unnerved by her controlling their every waking moment that they devolved into hysterics or,
failing that, became violent. She had done what she could to ensure people wouldn’t die of shock - had Taylor merely
waited for a time before using her modified powers, Addy would’ve honestly tried to give her the requisite knowledge
to do the same, rather than having her rely on some cobbled-together shard from a woman with feathers in her hair -
but ultimately she hadn’t really bothered to make them forget any of the incident.

In her opinion, there were much fewer repeat offenders when people remembered things.

“Administrator?”

Turning away from her thralls - while moving one up to be patted down and looked over - Addy caught sight of Kara.
Alex and J’onn still were where they had been before, and were now talking in hushed tones, their expressions
clipped, but Kara herself had broken off and come up to her. At the moment, she was climbing over some of the tech
the agents were working to haul out.

“Yes?” Addy inquired, tilting her head.

Kara came to a stop just a few paces away, letting out a huffy breath. “Agent Danvers”—the tone and state of
address were not a promising start—“has told me to tell you that she will debrief with you later, and that you
particularly are not out of hot water yet.”

Addy had figured as much. “Noted.”

Kara rolled her eyes, stepping up to her side and glancing back towards where she was helping the agents sort
through her thralls. “You noticed it, though, right?”

Addy blinked at her. “Noticed what?”

“The armour on the woman—Snare.”

She had. “Trombusan,” she confirmed, drawing on her memories of Master Jailer and the first time Addy had really
been acquainted with the notion that Kara could be hurt. “Identical to Master Jailer’s.”

“It’s not just Trombusan,” Kara said, voice flat. “It’s the standardized armour of the Trombusan engineers and prison
guards on Fort Rozz. Modified a lot, but I know the look of it.”

Oh. “Is it possible someone acquired it from the wreckage?” Addy asked, folding her hands behind her back.

“It’s not impossible, but considering she was the one helping them make weapons? I think we’re dealing with another
Trombusan, and one who was even on Fort Rozz,” Kara explained, tilting her head back and shutting her eyes.
“Which is why I just got permission from Alex to visit Master Jailer. We need information out of him, see if he knows
of any other prison guards.”

There was a crunch next to her, Addy turning to look and finding herself face-to-face with Steel. He was still a small
ways away, but he was glancing at them through his mask.

“Hello,” Addy said, politeness winning out over annoyance that her conversation had been interrupted.

Kara followed her gaze, a curious expression spreading over her face. “Steel, right?”

Steel stepped forward, nodding. “Yeah,” he said. He took a moment to audibly breathe in, then out, before staring at
both of them.

“I, uh, want to extend an offer to both of you,” Steel began, glancing towards the D.E.O., who watched him back with
the same bland professional antipathy that most non-aligned superheroes got from them. “I’ve been hunting
someone, you see, the one who has been supplying the schematics to Roulette to make the weapons with. I’ve
known they’ve existed, and all of my effort into disrupting Roulette’s work has been based around taking her down. I
couldn’t help overhear you might have an idea who it is, too.”

Addy tilted her head, watching Kara’s curious expression become more inquisitive.

“I never saw them, or at least I hadn’t until tonight. Roulette might be defanged without her weapons maker, but
taking her down for sure would be a major blow to the weapon manufacturing and selling black market that’s
emerged,” Steel explained slowly, spreading his hands apart in front of him. “She’s been making guides and
spreading tech to those who can understand it, she’s been a major menace, and now that I’ve drawn her out, I know
what to target.”

“But you don’t know where she is,” Kara pointed out. “She got away, with the rest of them.” There was a sharp, bitter
amount of defeat to her tone that Addy desperately wanted to soothe, but knew better than to try for now.

“Don’t I?” Steel asked at last. “After all, I’ve been planning to get her out in the public since Roulette started selling
this stuff. I had plans in place, and you guys helped me manage it.”

Kara blinked, again.

“I stuck a tracker on her,” Steel explained, and she could just about hear the smile in his voice. “Would your band of
merry superheroes be interested in hunting her down with me?”

Kara opened her mouth, paused, then shut it. “Would there be any time to make a stop before then? We have another
lead that could help take her down.”

Steel shrugged. “I expect she’ll be moving around for a few days before reaching her base, wherever that might be.
I’d also have to go back and connect up with the tracker I left on her, it’s incredibly subtle, but it’s not very powerful.
It’s basically a signal receiver, so we do have time, so long as she doesn’t find it.”

Worrying her lower lip, Kara glanced towards John. “Have you spoken with the Green Lantern about it?”

Steel inclined his head. “He said he’d be on board if you two would come as back-up, at least.”

Kara nodded, then finally glanced at her. “Administrator? What about you?”

Addy wasn’t exactly about to let a chance to pick through another Trombusan’s brain pass her by. “I am not opposed
to an activity such as that, though I would prefer if we found out who she was before tracking her down.”

Steel straightened, and nodded very seriously at the two of them. “Do you have a number I can use to contact you? I
uh, each time I use that high-pitched frequency creator, it sets off every dog in the area.”

Kara’s face twitched. “I’ve noticed,” she said, dryly, but nonetheless reached for her pocket. “Tell me your number.”
Last edited: Jun 24, 2021
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OxfordOctopus Jun 24, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 30 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jul 1, 2021  #3,130

EPISODE 30​
The question had been lurking for a time in Addy’s thoughts, truth be told. Where did you place more than a
thousand displaced aliens? Some of which were highly traumatized and prone to fits of violence? The D.E.O. had a
very literal surplus of aliens who, by the declaration of what little oversight the D.E.O. actually followed, had to be
interviewed and, for those who could be, rehabilitated.

There was no room for unethical detention centers in the upcoming future, the president had explained very bluntly.
Aliens were here, whether or not everybody was particularly enthusiastic about the concept, and they had to deal
with that.

The answer to that question, as it would turn out, seemed to be: somewhere in the nooks and crannies of California’s
mountainous regions.

Addy kept her gaze focused through the window of Maggie’s car, watching the passing wildlife as they drove along a
snaking, mountainous road, passing between growing cliffs. Rocks crunched under wheel, gravel and dirt giving a
rumbling sort of texture to the movements. Even with the police car’s rather impressive suspension and durability, it
could not quite hide the fact that they were very much off the beaten path at this point.

Back before the trip had actually happened, and Kara was tracking down the whereabouts of the Master Jailer, Alex
had explained to the both of them that he had been relocated from his prison cell to a rehabilitation site just about a
month ago. He was considered among those with a chance at being reintroduced to society in some capacity. In a
sense, they were trying to see if he felt any degree of guilt for what he had done, and if that guilt would be enough to
stop any further executions on behalf of a completely destroyed alien prison.

The location itself wasn’t just host to the Master Jailer, no. It was holding a large number of aliens, a mixture of
those previously incarcerated by the D.E.O. - some of which Alex had implied had just been found after Fort Rozz
crashed and brought in, with no on-Earth crimes to speak of - or those who had been freed from the various
abandoned Cadmus bases. It was, supposedly, a place for all of these people to get better, to find their footing, and
to find their place in a world that was, tentatively, beginning to accept them.

The reason why they weren’t flying there was for security purposes, which Addy could admit she was willing to
stomach. It wasn’t some arbitrary rule made up because Kara had put her head through one too many walls
excitedly flying around a house, but rather because some of the aliens at the location were capable of flight
themselves, and so they needed to keep an eye on the airspace above the location. Not to mention Alex had pointed
them both at Maggie, as she was now the major contact for the rehabilitation center with the D.E.O., and if she had
to come along, it’d make sense for them to carpool.

Truth be told, Addy was less than thrilled about spending two hours in a car when she could do it in about ten
minutes - or less, if she wanted to irritate the military - of flight, but then at least it all made a sort of rational sense.

How her standards had drifted.

Evening light cut in through the windows, painting the sky in mottled blues, the colours of a ripe bruise on flesh.
Considering the three of them were obligated to work, they had all agreed to carpool after work, during the evening.
It had at least protected them against the heat, as Maggie’s air conditioning had stopped functioning - in her words -
‘about three weeks ago after an alien kicked my dashboard’ and her department had yet to actually find the funds to
get a repair technician in to give it a look over. She didn’t want to imagine how unpleasant the drive would’ve been
with the sun bearing down on them the entire time.

The car took another turn, curling around a corner, and the place that Addy had only seen from a distance fell back
into view. She had spotted glimpses of it on the drive up, from a lower ledge, but it’d been too far away to make out
much. That wasn’t the case anymore.

It was a location in active flux, a flat plane of land that had obviously been developed for some purpose or another.
In a region where nothing plateaued, where rocks jutted from the earth like teeth, it stuck out for the uniform flatness
of the land. It was a large, perfectly level region, with buildings constructed on the rough rock. An apartment
complex stuck out the most, a series of four concrete squares that looked to be built with utilities rather than
aesthetics in mind, shaped into a wide ‘u’, with two buildings making up the sides and two buildings making up the
bottom.

There was other development to the land as well. Another apartment complex, looking to be built in the image of the
first, was half-constructed; four apartments that were currently more of a skeleton than anything else, covered in
tarps and boards painted with notation and symbols. It was situated away from the rest, tucked into the corner of
the plateau, and there was even a scattering of construction equipment that had been left there, unmanned for the
time being.

The area itself was hemmed in by evergreens, pines and spruce trees closing in and making something like a
woodsy grove. Rocky peaks stuck out behind the forest walls, tall and sharp like jutting daggers, visible against the
skyline. There were other buildings, too, she noticed as the car drove even closer. Larger ones that were tucked just
barely out of sight, four or five from what she could see, with an open area in the dead center of the land, a stone
fountain sputtering water, fold-out chairs left discarded near it.

The entire space, evergreens and all, was enclosed in a tall, concrete wall. The only part of it that let people in or out
was the gate: a heavy-looking metal thing, with a pair of guards stationed on either side, and a third tucked away in a
smaller building, presumably where they controlled the gate itself.

Kara, seated next to her in the car, whistled long and low. “I... did not think they could make something like this in the
short amount of time they had,” she admitted.

Maggie pulled the car to a halt just in front of the gate, Addy watching as her eyes skimmed between the guards
who began to approach. “They didn’t build all of it,” she explained, drumming fingers over her steering wheel as she
reached into one pocket with her other hand. “The lot itself and some of the buildings were already there. From what
I’ve been told, it was built as a base for some government agency, and was later repurposed for this. Cold war era, I
think. The rest is all because we have access to futuristic building tech, as far as the construction guys have been
willing to tell me.”

The guards approached, one breaking off to come up to Maggie’s window and knock his knuckles against it. He was
an older man, outfitted in military gear, with a balding head and a full beard that had been carefully groomed,
showing off the gray and white that had begun to leech the colour of his hair away from his chin.

Maggie rolled the window down, fished her badge out of her pocket and handed it over.

The guard smiled at her, reaching into his own pocket to pull out what looked to be a card reader of some kind,
pushing the card into the base of the device. “Detective Sawyer,” he said, his voice a low timbre, thick with age. “It’s
good to see you back, I’m sure Bittie will be overjoyed to see you.”

The card reader gave a sharp beep, and the badge was retrieved and handed back through the window. The guard’s
eyes came to skate between the two of them - herself and Kara - tucked away in the back seats, a curious look
falling over his face. “And you have some visitors, I see?”

They were both in costume, of course. It was one thing for Administrator and Supergirl to come to visit an alien
rehabilitation and recovery area. It was another thing altogether for Adeline Queen, a veritable unknown individual
working for L-Corp with a very spotty background, and Kara Danvers, a journalist with a close connection to
Supergirl, to do the same.

“Don’t get too starstruck,” Maggie drawled, shooting the man a lidded grin as she tucked her badge away. Her voice
was chiding, but not unkind, and Addy was struck by the fact that, despite the armour they wore and the guns visible
on their person, Maggie was treating them fondly, rather than as prison guards or something like it. It meant this
place might not be as bad as her first impression of it implied. “We’re here on business. I’ve already called ahead,
Tatiana should be expecting me.”

“No rest, eh?” the guard said, amused. He stepped away from the window, gesturing towards the other guards with
his hand, which went through a series of gestures. A signalling code, most likely. “Go on ahead, you three.”

The gate pulled up, the heavy-duty sheet of metal that made up its construction pulling apart into smaller pieces as
it folded, giving passage for the car. The guard that had been with the other guy stepped aside, off the road, to make
way, and Maggie paused just long enough to nod at the guard who had greeted her, rolled up her window, and then
drove them through.

The car jostled from gravel and dirt to smooth concrete, Maggie making a face as the car lurched a bit in protest.
“Shitty thing,” she muttered as they passed beneath the gate, turning immediately off to the side and away from the
buildings, towards where a sign indicated there was a parking lot. “Suspension is even starting to go out.”

The parking lot itself was fairly large, and was mostly taken up by military vehicles. Humvees, the sort of things built
for wear and tear and long tours, where there was no certainty that roads were going to be there, or if they were, that
they would be in one piece when the cars used them. The rest were larger vehicles as well, trucks and armoured
vans, by the looks of it.

Whether or not this was called a rehabilitation center, it was still guarded much like a military base.

Pulling the car into park, Maggie twisted the key, the engine cutting out, and went for her seatbelt. Addy did the
same, freeing herself from the tight confines of the harness, and reaching for the handle to the door, popping it open
and taking a step out into the open air.

It was honestly very, very nice. Addy had gotten used to the stifling, acrid scent of industry that plagued the better
part of California. The state was a very developed place, somewhat by necessity, but mostly because there were a
lot of people living there. National City, totalling several million people, wasn’t remotely close to the largest city in the
state, as an example.

This far up into the wilderness of California, however, and everything was fresh. The air was crisp, bereft of smog,
brine or exhaust. There was no undercurrent of rust or concrete that made her want to scrunch her nose up, and
there was a delightful breeze that licked through the canopy of tall green trees, leaving the air faintly, but not
overwhelmingly, scented. If she had to make a comparison, it smelled and felt close to the summer camp Taylor had
gone to, before everything in her life had gone wrong.

Her, of course, being the exception in that wrongness, but nonetheless, Addy was more than capable of
acknowledging that the summer leading into high school had been something of a turning point for Taylor. Her and
many other people, really.

Addy watched Kara and Maggie trundle out much the same, Kara seeming to share her delight in the fresh air and
the scent of the forest. Addy had always known Kara’s senses were much stronger than her own - though, honestly,
Addy was beginning to think her own senses were getting stronger, she had no conclusive evidence but she was
beginning to pick up on things she knew humans probably shouldn’t - but it had never occurred to her that a city
might weigh on her as much as it did Addy herself.

Kara had, after all, lived a good chunk of her time on Earth in a rural, if not poor, town, separated from the highrises
and concrete that made up the bigger cities. She had grown up smelling the ocean and sand, the forests that dotted
the area around Midvale, and going by her knowledge of the landscape during their last visit, had probably spent a
lot of time in said forests. California was in every way a far cry from Midvale, as close to its polar opposite as you
could get without extreme conditions.

With a tap of a button on a small black device, the car was locked, and Maggie looked between the two of them.
“Let's go,” she said, no real emotion in her voice as she stepped away from her car and started moving towards the
building they had just passed. Addy kept up behind her, and watched Kara do the same, Kara’s eyes flitting between
the buildings, the trees, looking quietly awed by everything around her, picking up on things that Addy didn’t have a
chance to.

They passed around the side of the building that had enclosed the parking lot, Maggie moving towards the front
door. Addy’s eyes were drawn first to a plaque next to the front door, inscribed with ‘Administrative Building’ in
thirteen different languages. Below the plaque was a blackboard, the sort that sat outside of coffee shops, that was
covered with line after line of symbols Addy couldn’t put a name to—alien languages, probably translating what was
on the plaque.

Maggie didn’t bother to knock, opening the door with a twist of her hand and a push of her shoulder, the three of
them shuffling inside. A small electric chime from a speaker declared their entry, though it was so faint Addy almost
wondered why it was there in the first place.

The Administrative Building’s interior was, in a word, bland. It was every bit corporate and uniform, with shiny off-
white tiled floors, a front desk made from some sort of plywood, several seats for people to wait in, a single out-of-
place fern stuck in a planter that more resembled a bush, and an overhead light that was closer to ‘unpleasantly
glaring’ than anything else. The one thing that did stand out was that, near the front desk, where it sat flush to a wall,
there were a number of drawings, crude and childish, scribbled on paper that had been painstakingly put up with
tape.

Addy saw Kara’s eyes linger on it, her expression complicated, twisted and a bit stiff.

Maybe she hadn’t realized children would be here, would be among the victims Cadmus chose.

Addy knew better. Knew how malleable children could be, and how they were the preferred targets of people looking
to make work of them.

A few doors were leading to different parts of the building, one for each wall, painted a different colour. North was
blue, the one they had just walked through - south - was white, east was yellow - and not a bad choice for yellow,
either, somewhere between pastel and canary in terms of intensity - and west was a vibrant cherry red.

“Tats?” Maggie called out, glancing around.

There was a muffled thump. “Just a moment!” a woman’s voice returned, coming from behind the cherry red door.

A fan passed itself back and forth on the desk, and small though it was, Addy could just barely feel the breeze as it
swivelled back and forth across the three of them. She glanced between Kara and Maggie, Kara’s eyes refusing to
leave the pictures, while Maggie was looking up at the ceiling, a bored cast to her face.

A few moments later, the red door popped open. The woman who walked out was not, precisely, what Addy thought
of when Maggie had said Tatiana. It was bad to judge based on names, but then one could forgive her for doing so,
considering designations had been very literal in her past.

Tatiana was a short, stout, and sturdily-built woman. Her height just barely reached five feet, and her body was curvy,
if not particularly soft. Her short sleeves rode up near her shoulders, revealing long stretches of freckled, pale skin,
and tight musculature that spoke of years of training and physical activity, not in menial labour, but likely in
something close to combat. What she wore stuck out as well, being not quite military fatigues, but between the
black shirt and pants and the combat boots, it struck her as nearly identical to the clothes the agents wore when on-
site at the D.E.O. base, but off-duty. Her hair was dark brown, so dark it edged on black, short enough to only reach
past her ears, and her eyes were a murky gray-blue.

Addy almost instantly pegged her as ex-D.E.O., or, barring that, at least ex-military. From the silvery scars that
marked her fingers, to the way she held herself, it was a woman very used to duty, and who was comfortable in her
role as a soldier.

“Maggie!” Tatiana said, a bright smile creasing her face, wrinkles catching at the edges of her eyes. “It’s good to see
you again so soon.” Still smiling, her eyes were quick to flit between the two of them. “These are the two you told me
about?”

Guarded, careful, and suspicious, even despite facing down one of the most well-known superheroes on the planet
and her sometimes-mentioned partner. There was no shine of awe or giddiness in her gaze, no hero worship.

Addy liked her already.

“They are,” Maggie said, gesturing between the two of them. “Supergirl and Administrator, this is my colleague,
Tatiana.”

Tatiana didn’t approach them, but rather made her way around to the front desk. “Tatiana Batya,” she said politely,
tipping her head in greeting. “It’s nice to meet the both of you in the flesh, Supergirl, Administrator.” She grabbed a
file from her desk, bringing it up to quickly thumb through it, before nodding.

“You as well, Miss Batya,” Kara responded, politely.

“Miss Batya was my mother,” Tatiana replied flippantly, waving them off. “Call me Tatiana, if you would. This should
be the right file—you’re here to meet the alien who went by the pseudonym ‘Master Jailer’, correct?” Her eyes jumped
back to them, looking for confirmation.

Addy nodded. “We are, and it is nice to meet you as well.”

Tatiana nodded back, a thin-lipped smile creasing across her face as she stepped around her desk, eyes settling
back on the file. “His real name is Imnal Dhavor, a Trombusan whose family has a long history working for
interstellar prisons, going back several generations,” she explained politely. “The Carl Draper identity you both know
him under was a fabricated one he managed using his tech, as far as he’s been willing to tell us. He’s since
abandoned it, and prefers his native name, for the record. We let people call themselves what they want, so keep
that in mind.”

Kara visibly hesitated, mouth opening for a time. “Do... many aliens here use identities they adopted on Earth?” she
asked, sounding like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer.

Tatiana made a ‘so-so’ gesture with her hand, a quick wiggle. “Some do, it’s especially common among those who
were refugees fleeing violence elsewhere, or those who were controlled by Cadmus, as memory loss is not
uncommon with their experiments, nor is wanting to distance yourself from traumatic experiences,” she provided,
glancing back up at the three of them and closing the file. “In other cases, aliens might have names which are
physically impossible to say fully, or at all, for humans and other aliens. But a lot do prefer to return to their previous
names, or at least take something from it.”

Something in Kara’s face cleared, and she gave a bit of a hesitant smile before nodding. “Makes sense.”

Tatiana, apparently seeing something Addy didn’t, smiled back, before her mien became serious again. “Before that,
though, there are some ground rules you three have to follow. Maggie already knows them, but I want to get this out
of the way to avoid stepping on any toes, alright?”

Kara glanced at Addy, before her gaze resettled on Tatiana. Addy just nodded.

“For starters, an introduction: welcome to the National Institute for Alien Rehabilitation, or NIAR. We are currently
host to over six hundred aliens on-site, with nearly twelve hundred offsite in undisclosed locations, waiting for
accommodations to be made. This institution was spearheaded by our president prior to the Alien Amnesty Act
coming into place, as President Marsdin saw that this would eventually be necessary,” Tatiana explained, her voice
quick and rote, professional. “As it stands, we have had success with forty-eight aliens, most of whom weren’t
captured by Cadmus nor were Fort Rozz escapees. Our current goal for the end of the year is to bring that up to fifty-
five, which may not be possible, given it’s November.

“Most of what we do is therapy-related, as well as working from a system similar to how Swedish prisons function,
in that our primary goal is not to punish, but to aid and, as the title suggests, rehabilitate. This is not a prison, though
as it stands we only allow those we see as safe leave the premises.

“Moving on, there are certain locations neither you, Supergirl, nor Administrator are allowed in, though this primarily
applies to you, Supergirl, I’m afraid. There are people you have fought at this location, people who are trying to be
better, and find their footing, and there are those who have been... programmed to be hostile towards you, to one end
or another. We currently do have them moved to a separate part of the compound for safety measures, so don’t
wander off.

“We ask that you try not to raise your voice or make grand displays of strength, or behave violently near our patients.
A lot of people here are sensitive and vulnerable and are prone to lashing out. All currently on-site are okay being
around humans, but not all of them are comfortable with being very close to humans. Some of them will be able to
tell that you aren’t human, but there are a number who cannot, and it’s best not to risk it.

“Finally: this is a place of healing. Not everyone here responds to trauma by being demure or shutting down. If there
is a conflict, I ask that you try to keep the peace. Disengage, if you can, as staff will be nearby to de-escalate as
necessary, but try to avoid getting into fights in general if possible,” Tatiana finished. “There are other more specific
rules that you don’t really need to be privy to, and I’ll make sure you are aware of them if they come up. Understood?”

Tentatively, Kara nodded, and Addy did the same, if with less hesitation.

Tatiana waved them towards the door, moving at a marching pace. Maggie made room for her as she went, the
woman pushing the door open and leading them back out into the open air.

They passed through the center of the lot, walking around the fountain in silence, and past the apartment complex
that Addy had seen on the way up. Instead, they wandered over to one of the buildings that, even at the gate, Addy
hadn’t quite noticed: a short but broad, cube-like building with a plaque similar to the Administrative Building
labelling it ‘Communal Building’. There was, again, another blackboard next to it with another long list of symbols
Addy wished she could make heads or tails of, but let it be for the time being.

Before they could completely arrive at the building, though, a shock of colour caught her eye. Addy found herself
glancing to the side, and coming upon a trio of small children, looking maybe five in human terms, just boggling at
her.

The three of them were identical, and all visibly alien. Their base skin tone was a dark, dark red, but was interrupted
by bright stripes of mint-green that bore a resemblance to a tiger’s pattern. Their eyes were wide, almond-shaped,
and lacked pupils, with the colour that made up the iris - in this case, a lilac purple - consuming everything but the
white that made up the rest of the eyeball. The three twins were huddled together, staring openly and brazenly at her,
faces scrunched up.

Then, as though seeing them had prompted it, she felt it: a probe at the edge of her psychic presence, poking at her.
In most cases, she would’ve slammed the metaphorical door to her psychic abilities and left the individual stupid
enough to go nosing around where they weren’t wanted to pick themselves up after the fact, but remembering what
Tatiana had said, and feeling that it might make a bad impression to respond that way to children, Addy tentatively
opened herself up just enough to let the interested parties in.

Which they took without any bit of hesitation. The presences, radiating curiosity, had the oddest sense of being
profoundly squirmy, like earthworms wiggling around in her space. They were utterly unguarded, as well, their intent
shining clear—no malice, just rampant curiosity and eagerness, really.

[Who?] one of the presences inquired, a childish burble of intent that rather reminded her of the initial conversations
she had with The Live Wire.

Before she could so much as respond, the rest of the trio were quick to chime in.

[Who?] [Who!] [Who? Who? Who?]

Obligingly, Addy heavily tempered her psychic power - because she had the unpleasant impression that too much of
a response might actually injure the tiny children - and pinged her response back out. The transmission amounted to
information that she was safe, that she wasn’t a threat, and she was just here to visit, not to be a new patient.

“Administrator?”

Addy blinked, glancing away from the triplets to find Maggie, Kara and Tatiana all watching her, already at the door.

“I believe she just met the Kohre triplets,” Tatiana responded, dryly. “Talkative little kids, they were probably drawn to
her because she’s psychic.”

Kara made a face. “That happens a lot.”

Tatiana nodded, before turning to look at the triplets. She cleared her throat, and then said something in a language
Addy, once again, could neither understand nor speak. It was a guttural string of sounds, rumbling and hoarse, and
cut off rather sharply at times.

The presences were quick to retreat from her, the triplets letting out a wild series of - frankly somewhat worryingly
maniacal - giggles as they quickly scattered, rushing back out of sight.

Addy turned, watching Kara raise a curious eyebrow at Tatiana, who merely shrugged.

“Just told them to head back to their guardian—one of the successful patients I spoke of before, who decided to
stay with us to help with psychics.” Tatiana paused, tilted her head, then added after a moment. “She’s probably
worried sick, now that I think about it. Those three are always getting up to mischief.”

Well, that was enlightening. Addy picked up her stride again, walking over to the door, Tatiana and the rest turning
back towards it as well. The door was quickly pushed open and, without further interruption, the four of them
entered.

To her surprise and delight, the Communal Building actually seemed to be made by someone with taste. The floor
was still tiled and off-white, but there was much more to this space than the Administrative Building had. Couches in
a variety of shapes and colours were tucked into corners next to tables, some of them occupied by aliens
themselves. Each wall had different wallpaper on it, some of it green, with white vines, others yellow with starbursts
in blue, and even some with royal purple cut through by dark reds. The tables were cluttered in places, things left
around and out in the open, not untidy, but very much lived in.

Which wasn’t unexpected, considering how many people were in the communal space. Two dozen heads turned as
they entered, the aliens standing around dressed in a mixture of clothing. Some wore jeans and t-shirts, others
sweatpants, some had very obviously custom-made clothing to either imitate something unique to their culture or to
accommodate for biological traits that others didn’t have.

All of them, too, observed them with extreme caution, wariness and nerves playing over their faces.

The aliens came in a range of colours, shapes, ages and sizes. There was what looked to be an entire family unit,
ranging from a pair of children no older than eight or nine by human standards, to a teenager, up to a pair of parents.
Each of them had a long, lizard-like tail, with mottled brown skin and toxic green whorls. Another alien near them had
feathers and down in the place where normal hair might’ve been, with four eyes instead of two, and two sets of
arms, one of which lacked hands, and instead had a talon-like spike ending the limb, which otherwise looked to be a
full wing. Others were mostly human-looking, with some oddities, such as horns or unique eyes or odd patterns on
the skin.

It was an even mix, with adults making up half and children the other half, by Addy’s estimate.

Before Addy could begin investigating them more, there was another interruption. A happy trill rose up through the
background noise, one that stabilized into a very vocal noise: “Maggie!” The sound was almost electronic, synthetic,
a distorted noise that played with pitch like speakers could.

A small figure burst from the crowd, tumbling whole-heartedly towards the detective in question. It was another
child, a girl by the rough looks of it - though Addy didn’t... really know how to tell that, now that she thought of it -
with purple skin covered in lighter freckle-like dots. Where ears would’ve been were instead fins, dark spines with
glimmering flesh stretched between them, a pair of big eyes, coloured vibrant-green, hair so dark it was iridescent
like an oil spill, and an otherwise normal human shape, looking maybe six or seven at the oldest. She was clad in
khaki shorts, flip-flops, and a comically oversized t-shirt that fell past her knees.

Maggie stepped forward to meet her, a soft smile passing over her face as the girl sprinted over and promptly hurled
herself at the woman. Maggie let out an ‘oomph!’ as the girl collided, her arms circling around her. “Hey Bittie,” she
said, soothingly, one arm reaching up to tousle her hair. “You’ve been good?”

There was another distorted chirrup, like birdsong filtered through something that promised to make an audio file
sound like dubstep. Addy certainly couldn’t make a noise like that, in any event.

Kara wasn’t looking at the two, her gaze instead turned off to the side. Following it, she found herself looking at
Tatiana, who was smiling at the byplay between Bittie and Maggie.

“The girl’s a Duvean,” Tatiana offered, stepping closer to them as Maggie caught up with the child. “It’s a loan word
from another alien language that roughly translates to ‘whistler’. Nobody besides a Duvean can actually pronounce
their species name, as they all have acustokinetic abilities, meaning they’re able to control sound waves, though it’s
mostly the sound they produce.”

Kara glanced back, and comprehension flashed over her face. “Mirahd,” she said. “It’s the word we have for them too,
but—she’s really far away from her home, isn’t she?”

Tatiana’s face fell a touch, and she nodded. “We didn’t know her real name, or if she even knew it at the beginning.
Maggie just called her ‘little bit’, and ‘Bittie’ eventually stuck as a result. Duvean, as you said, aren’t even remotely
common to this part of the galaxy, and we couldn’t find any evidence she came with family or guardians. For a while,
we couldn’t even talk to her, nobody knew how to, and we didn’t even entirely know what she was. That said, Maggie
found someone who could help talk to and identify her.”

“I only asked around, Tats,” Maggie said, pulling free of Bittie, who made a shrill whine but obligingly detached
herself from Maggie. “It wasn’t anything big.”

Bittie turned her gaze onto the two of them, her posture changing, and the baggy shirt she wore falling loose around
her left shoulder. A shoulder, Addy recognized, that was knotted with scar tissue, repeated incisions to a location
leaving a visibly marked area where it had been forced to heal over and over again.

Addy watched, mutedly, as Kara’s jaw grit, tight, before her face smoothed back over and she shot the brightest
smile she could reasonably muster towards the girl.

Bittie returned Kara’s smile with her own, diples catching tight, her mouth set with a series of teeth that were only
the slightest bit sharper than a normal human’s.

“Tats, I’m going to hang around with Bittie for a while, okay?” Maggie said, glancing at them as Bittie, in the
background, let out a musical whoop. “You can bring them to Imnal, right?”

Tatiana nodded, glancing back towards the two of them as Maggie ushered Bittie towards a nearby couch, chatting
amicably with her as the smaller girl jumped and pointed and wildly gestured at the area around her, each action
accompanied by that same trilling song.

Kara was clearly not in a mood for talking, and it was clear it wasn’t just Addy who saw as much. Tatiana led them
wordlessly deeper into the room, towards the west wall, where a door had been left open, exposing a small stretch
of hallway for them to walk down.

Before they could get more than a few feet deep into the hallway, Tatiana paused and turned to them.

“Imnal has been struggling,” she said, bluntly. “You have to be careful what you ask of him. He’s been making good
progress going by the reports I have, but he has a lot to work through, and you should try to avoid riling him up. We
brought him here to a room, where we take visitors, he already knows you're both coming. Keep that in mind, okay?”

Wordlessly, Kara nodded, the stress gradually ebbing out of her body.

Tatiana led them up to the second last door in the hallway, pausing briefly to give them both another look, before
knocking.

“Enter,” a voice, rough with disuse, called out.

With that, they did.

The room inside was simple, outfitted with a couch, a television, some chairs, and a table. Imnal - Master Jailer -
was there, a spiral-bound notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, and he looked strikingly older. There were
lines to his face that weren’t there the last time she saw him, and a fragility that belied how dangerous he could be.
His face was a touch gaunt, his cheekbones prominent against the thick stubble that covered the lower half of his
face.

He was sitting on the couch, back straight, rigid, eyes trained purposefully on the two of them as they entered. The
notebook in his hand had a series of diagrams, mechanical ones by the looks of it, but nothing that looked at a
glance like it might be dangerous.

His eyes flicked between the two of them, taking them both in. He clearly didn’t recognize her, something that wasn’t
surprising considering she had been lacking even a prosthetic when she took him down, and had been wearing that
atrociously designed full combat gear and helmet.

“Supergirl,” he greeted tightly, eyes returning to her. “Your... associate.”

Kara stiffened at his tone of voice, but managed to not say anything.

“How goes the crime spree?” Imnal asked sardonically, a lick of anger in the back of his tone.

“Mister Dhavor,” Tatiana said sharply, her voice scolding.

Like a balloon abruptly introduced to a needle, he deflated immediately. “That was unfair,” he admitted grudgingly. “I
apologize, the news has me on edge.”

At that, even Kara seemed to relax, breathing out with a huff. “We’re just here to ask you a few questions, nothing
strenuous, or even any interrogation. We’ll be out of your hair shortly.”

Imnal shot her a look, one that wasn’t even remotely trusting, but inclined his head with a long, heavy sigh, setting
his notebook down next to him and folding his hands together in his lap. “What do you need to know, then?” he
asked at last.

“We need to know if there are any other guards, particularly Trombusans, who you know of who might still be
around,” Kara said, straight to the point.

Imnal’s face didn’t twitch, but the dead, flat look he shot Kara said more than any expression might. “There aren’t any,
Supergirl,” he replied curtly. “We lost half of our team when the prison’s controls were initially hijacked and redirected
to Earth, as the prisoners gained control of a portion of the ship. We were in another wing, keeping our distance, but
when Fort Rozz crashed for the first time”—Addy did not have to be an interpretation expert to hear the anger in
those last two words—“they broke through our barricade and Nod had us slaughtered like chattel. I only survived
because I managed to sneak away like a coward.”

“Imnal...” Kara began, her voice hesitant, but ultimately firming back up. “There is someone out there who is wearing
Trombusan prison guard armour that fits them perfectly, and has incredibly detailed knowledge on alien technology
that she has been using to spread weapons across the city and America in general. She’s half the reason why every
other gang in National City has a laser pistol now. We managed to take down the person selling it, but not the one
manufacturing it, can you think of anyone?”

Imnal stare turned gimlet and hard. “There. Is. Nobody. Left.”

“But what if there is?” Kara insisted. “Someone who is around my height, wearing armour identical to the one you
wore, and who knows enough to make red sun weaponry? She goes by Snare, do you have any idea? Even a small
one.”

Something Kara said got through to Imnal, who went utterly still. His face froze, half-captured in a moment of horror,
and his hands went still in his lap. “It’s... she—she couldn’t have.”

“Who, Imnal?” Kara’s voice was soft, gentle, pleading.

Imnal’s face tightened, cringed, and his hands balled into fists in his lap. “Guarding prisons was the job my family
was best at,” he began, voice shaky, each word slow and considered. “My father did it, my grandfather did it, and so
did my great-grandfather. We worked closely with the engineers in the Intergalactic Penitentiary on Kornah, not to
mention Fort Rozz.”

Kara nodded, motioning for him to continue.

“I had a daughter,” he said, reaching up to drag a hand back through his hair, his eyes flicking up as horror was
replaced by bitter melancholy. “Yilur Dhavor. She was considered a prodigy during her schooling on Trombus, a
brilliant girl with so much potential, who followed me into my profession despite getting several offers from the
various great schools of our cluster.”

Imnal took a breath, let it out.

“And she died because the prisoners wanted revenge on their captors,” he said. “She died, but she was the only
female Trombusan on the ship who matches your description. This type of work was considered... gendered work;
Yilur was one of two women in our unit, and the other is closer to your associate's height than yours.”

“There’s a chance she might’ve survived, Imnal,” Kara said, just as gently as she had before. “And currently she’s
taking out her pain and anger on the world by handing out dangerous weapons. We’re going to stop her, non-lethally
if we can, and anything you can tell us will help us get to that point. Is there anything you can tell us? Is there any
way, if she is Yilur, that we can get her to stand down and face trial?”

Imnal’s expression fell away, showing nothing. “If she’s alive, she knew I ran away, even when she was right there, I
could reach her body, I thought she was dead. I knew she was dead,” Imnal said, voice monotone. “Nothing I can tell
you will help you. If this is her, and she knew I was helping you? She’d probably fight harder to hurt you. She loathes
me, Supergirl, wouldn’t you?”

They arrived at the D.E.O. ahead of Maggie.

The flight back had been in contemplative silence, Kara quiet and Addy more than willing to let her remain that way
for the time being. Her face had been conflicted, twisted, like she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of any of this
anymore, but Addy knew she’d come to a conclusion eventually.

They’d had to return to get information on Yilur Dhavor, if there was any. Addy personally wasn’t expecting to find
much, but then the D.E.O. had salvaged the databases of Fort Rozz a while ago, so it certainly couldn’t hurt,
especially with Imnal being less than helpful on the matter.

As they landed on the open balcony leading into the building - built, as far as she could tell, for them and remotely
operated drones - J’onn was already waiting for them. There were no other agents around, considering the time it
wasn’t unexpected, and J’onn himself leaned up against a pillar, his eyes trained on the both of them.

Slowly, he pushed himself off of it, and began to approach.

Wordlessly, Kara started forward, walking towards him as well.

“I think we should talk,” J’onn said into the open space, coming to a halt. His hands were folded behind his back, and
he was levelling a blank stare at the two of them.

Kara looked at him, scrutinizing. “Alright.”

J’onn led them back out of the main area, down hallways that had become worryingly familiar to Addy, despite how
ugly they were, and into another out-of-the-way meeting room. It, like all of the other meeting rooms, had the same
large desk and a multitude of chairs, as well as a small screen bolted to the back wall.

Addy closed the door behind them as they entered.

“I have given you both a long leash,” J’onn said, matter-of-factly. “Administrator especially, but you as well, Supergirl.
Despite tacit government approval, you are both still classified as vigilantes as it stands, though how long that’ll
remain with the changes to the legal framework remains to be seen.”

Kara said nothing. Addy said nothing.

J’onn sighed, turning back to face the both of them. “But you both know how big someone like Roulette is,” he
started again, his voice growing tight. “We are directly involved in trying to ensure these venues and their providers
get shut down. As much as I appreciate you taking such a place down, the D.E.O. has to be at least partially
informed. The alien weapons are a threat to all and very specifically among some of the duties the president has left
us with.”

Before anyone could say anything, J’onn continued.

“Alex currently thinks you, Supergirl, are dragging Administrator into this,” he explained, flatly. “I’ve let her have that
assumption, but I know better.”

Addy’s brain jolted, she felt herself take a step back. Suddenly, she was rather upset she had blocked her one exit.

“Addy,” J’onn started, using her civilian name, his voice softening, catching her anxiety. “I know you were at that
Cadmus base, and I know you’ve been working closely with the Green Lantern. I know that the one who genetically
modified you was present at that base, and going by what little intelligence I have, I know for a fact that you’ve been
searching for something. I need to know what’s going on.”

Kara glanced back at her, but Addy wasn’t really thinking. She was frozen like a deer in headlights, and did not like
that one bit.

J’onn knew. At least in part.

But he still knew.

“Addy,” Kara said, slowly. “I think we should be honest.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest, she looked at Kara, feeling a surge of betrayal, only for it to die before it could reach
her throat. Kara was looking at her, softly and with concern. She wasn’t hesitant, wasn’t eager to push this problem
onto someone else.

She wanted to help. Addy had to remember that.

Breathing in, then letting it out, Addy nodded. “Can you tell him?” she asked, voice quiet.

Kara nodded, and turned to do just that. It took minutes, with Kara carefully going over what Addy had told her, in as
much detail as she could. J’onn’s face, with each new anecdote, tended to swing between comprehension and a
growing darkness that made his face stiffen harshly.

Finally, when it was all over and done with, J’onn had one hand pressed to his face, dragging his palm across it.

“You’ve been dealing with that this entire time?” he asked, tone purposefully blank.

Addy nodded, unable to trust her voice.

J’onn looked at her, and Addy did him. She found in his expression a glimmer of something frightfully pained,
something that crawled over his expression but was gone in an instant, leaving her to wonder if it had even been
there, if she had misread some other expression and only got a small piece of it.

“And you’ve found no evidence of the omegahedron?”

Another nod.

J’onn breathed out, a long and heavy sigh. “We haven’t either, if you’re wondering,” he said, hand dropping back to his
side as he reclined against the wall. “What will capturing Snare do to help any of this, exactly?”

“At this point it is a matter of finding what I need—a missing rule I have yet to identify,” Addy explained simply, her
words coming out flatter than she was used to. She felt emotionally wrung out and tired. She was ready to climb
back into bed, but knew she had another meeting with the others before she could. “Any step towards that
knowledge is invaluable, and it is too costly and time-inefficient to do it with the hardware I have available. I would
copy all of Snare’s knowledge of the physics and mechanics of her designs, and see if anything stuck out in it as
errant. These are currently my best options, unfortunately.”

J’onn stared at her for a time, before nodding once. “Fine,” he said, voice flat. “But considering all of this, I need you
to take an agent on your mission against Snare. I’ll be assigning Winn to you for whatever comes next. He is
handling the investigation in the first place.”

“We already have someone helping us with tech-based stuff, though,” Kara interjected, sounding dubious.

J’onn stared flatly at her. “I assumed as much, but someone from the D.E.O. has to be there. I trust both of you, but
it’s still necessary. It’s either Winn or someone without his skills that I trust less. Winn will be allowed to not disclose
some information on the task, such as specifically who else is involved, but we need someone present for this. I
can’t have off-the-books operations like this, people are going to start demanding I reign you in, otherwise, even our
supporters.”

Kara glanced between J’onn and her, eyes flitting, a worried curl to her lip. “I... I’ll have to pass it by the others, but it
should be doable.”

“While you do that, I’ll... I can’t promise anything, Addy,” J’onn said, returning his focus back to her. “But there are
some things that happened on Mars that I may be able to look into. Fifth-dimensional entities aren’t things I know
much about, but they do exist, and they could be a lead from what I know of their abilities.”

Addy blinked, not really expecting it. “I appreciate it,” she said solemnly.

Pushing off the wall, J’onn glanced at the clock, then at the door. “Let me show you to the database so you can look
for details on Yilur Dhavor. I’ll get Agent Schott, as well.”

They reconvened beneath the homestead.

Steel and Winn were present, along with the rest. Lena was leaning back, glancing over the files Addy had printed off
on Yilur, lips pursed. Maggie was next to her, pointing out certain things, but not saying anything, while John, Steel
and Kara spoke off to the side.

Addy was quiet as well, preferring the silence, the white noise of the ventilation system.

Winn had been received with some dubious looks, but Maggie and Lena had both vouched for him, which had won
over John. The only person not yet totally sold was Steel, who argued that he wasn’t the biggest fan of the D.E.O., or
at least a fan of what he’d heard from people he had spoken to when he was tracking down those venues.

Still, everything had settled into an easy peace. Winn won people over by showing he was next to harmless if not
given sufficient time to prepare the things he liked to build, a fact that Addy had made a mental note to at least
rectify. Surely Alex would’ve put him through the gauntlet with firearms training by now, right?

She’d have to check. She quite liked Winn, and he’d be much safer if he could shoot a gun without screaming.

A shrill, sharp beep cut through the quiet, low murmuring dying down into embers of past conversation. Steel
glanced at the bag he’d brought with him, stepping over to retrieve his phone, turning it around in his hand.

“The tracker’s connected up with the satellite,” Steel explained, eyes drifting towards Lena. He offered her a curt,
thankful nod, which she took with grace.

“Now, we wait.”

 291

OxfordOctopus Jul 1, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 31 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jul 8, 2021  #3,146

EPISODE 31​
The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, located out of Oregon and to an extent Idaho, was not the place Addy would
have guessed someone like Snare would flee to.

Which, with hindsight, may have been the point.

The hilly landscape stretched out in front of her, carpeted with grass and bristling with tall evergreens. The shade of
green it gave the area was sharp, bright, brightly and unabashedly natural, a rather intense contrast to the desiccated
plantlife Addy had grown used to during her stay in National City.

Shallow glacier lakes and streams fed the plantlife, dotting the surrounding area and carving out pathways for the
water to travel down, the water a bright blue-green. Creeks burbled in earshot of her, spilling over mossy rocks and
gravel, while the wind whistled between nearby tree branches, carried along by a bright and clear sky, only marred by
the errant wisp of white, the sun cresting its apex above them.

The forest’s wildlife had given their group a wide berth, but it was not gone nor silent. She could hear the distant
calls of birds, singing back and forth. Larger prints sat scattered around the water’s edge, the large impression of a
bear’s paw, quickly pulled free from the muck upon hearing them get close.

Kara was to her left, glancing around like she was, eyes narrowed as she took full advantage of her augmented
sight. John, to her right, was hanging back with Steel, who was checking over his set of power armour. He had slid a
panel open on his arm, revealing a flat, glassy screen, but the glare from the sun prevented Addy from making out
anything on it, unfortunately.

“This looks like the place on my end,” Steel spoke, glancing up from his arm. “Are we on the same page, Agent
Schott?”

Unfortunately, as it was a Wednesday, Lena had been unable to follow them into this mission, being much more
bound to the state of California than the three people who could fly and the one other, Steel, who had vaguely
explained he had made ‘accommodations’ to come out. It had been two days since they’d gotten the information on
Yilur, two days since the satellite had finally managed to pick up the signal Steel’s tracker was giving out, and one
since Snare - or possibly Yilur - had settled down in the rural end of Oregon.

The others had adapted to Winn’s presence, at least. He and Steel had something of a rapport going on, and Maggie
seemed to appreciate the fact that he was mostly non-threatening. John didn’t seem to know how to feel about
Winn one way or another, but had defaulted to clipped politeness and respect. Addy personally had the impression
the major complicating factor there was that John was ex-military and had two warring instincts to deal with: the
part that said Winn was in a similar chain of command, and the part that said Winn could get knocked over by a stiff
breeze.

It was probably hard to place someone, or find what degree of respect you were to give them, when rank didn’t
match personality. She, of all people, knew that.

“Looks like it, Snare should be in the area,” Winn replied, his voice coming clear over her earpiece. He wasn’t actually
with them, not physically, and was instead stationed a few miles out, tucked away into a D.E.O. van that had been
shipped down with him when they’d passed on the general location. She mostly knew this because Winn had, at
length, gushed about being flown over on a secret jet, telling her all about the differences between that and flying
commercial in coach.

“Then we’re clear to begin,” John agreed, a slight echo catching as she heard him both over her earpiece and in
person. “We’re wasting daylight as it is, and we have no idea what Snare has been up to since she fled.”

“Right,” Winn conceded, a moment of silent static following. “For starters, I’m going to open with this: when you’re in
the base, unless there is blatant evidence to the contrary, you cannot trust the earpieces to be fully secure. Lena’s work
is immaculate and I will gush about that later, but we’re working against alien tech, and as I learned with Indigo and
Myriad, it doesn’t play to our rules.”

There was a chorus of assent from the group.

“We don’t know if this is a recent base of operations, or if this is one that Snare established in the past,” Winn
continued. “You could be facing anything from a campsite to a secure base with defence systems. Snare still hasn’t
found the tracker, as far as I can tell, as the minor moments on the sensor correspond to someone wearing it, so even if
it is a camp, I can’t imagine it’s completely unprepared.

“Even if Snare lacks Roulette and her muscle, if things get too dangerous, I’ll call for a retreat and you have to pull back
out. D.E.O. reinforcements have been kept away to avoid detection, and they’ll be upwards of an hour to get to you.
Considering past experiences, holding out with nothing going wrong for an hour is unlikely, so you’re on your own. Be
very, very careful.”

The group fell silent at the words, Addy watching their faces - the ones she could see, Steel being the exception - as
most of them shuffled through a series of uncomfortable expressions. Finally, though, Kara turned away from the
rest, back to her.

“Administrator, if you could?” she asked.

This was her job for this operation. The tracker wasn’t inaccurate, but it was vague in terms of specific location. The
area where Snare could be hiding wasn’t a small one, and to top it off, the area they were in had been, in the past,
developed for mining purposes. There were no shortage of caves and tunnels, both natural and artificial, for her to
huddle away in. She could be in any of those nooks and crannies.

But, then, they made a mistake: they were hiding in a forest. From her.

Pulling on her core, Addy swapped her control specifics over to bugs, feeling her range increase dramatically. Motes
of information flickered into perspective, the wildlife of the forest responding to her presence, the bugs mapping it
out, giving her context, locations. She shut her eyes, blocking out the sounds and sensations of her body, expanding
the channel of information between herself and her bugs, feeling what they feel, smelling what they smelled, seeing
whatever they could see.

“There’s a region of recessed earth which transitions into stone, and a deep cave entrance,” Addy said, opening her
eyes and glancing in its direction. The bugs were sending back information, a light gradient, growing darker the
deeper in the bugs were. None of them had ventured too far in, for lack of available food within the cavern, but the
wooden scaffolding that held the cave entrance open - and revealing its artificial nature - had become host to a hive
of termites. “I believe it used to be a mining operation.”

She gestured in the direction, the others following her finger.

“I’ll take point,” Kara explained, stepping ahead of the group. “My senses should let me catch anything as we go.”

“If Agent Schott needs access to anything through my suit’s systems, I should probably be close to the front of the
pack,” Steel explained, stepping up just behind and to the right of Kara, who gave him a nod.

“Thanks for letting me inside of your systems, by the way,” Winn replied, sounding rather cheerful. “The design of all of
this is really interesting!”

There was a grating sigh, Steel staring off into the middle distance. “Please don’t talk about being inside of me,” he
said, voice exasperated.

Winn, wisely, went quiet.

John stepped up next to Steel, on Kara’s left, and said nothing, leaving Addy to take up the back. It made a rational
sort of sense; she was the one with the greatest theoretical range, and she was, while not the fastest, considerably
faster than either Steel or John by virtue of being efficient about her movement, among other things.

With that, they began forwards, keeping to a tight formation.

Reaching back out to the bugs under her control, she drummed up a small unit of spiders and urged them towards
the mouth of the cave, sending them skittering up the sides of the wall and collecting on the ceiling. From there, she
urged them deeper in, drawing on their eyes, and getting the first signs that this might actually be their target: a
mote of light, hard to pick up with an insect’s poor eyesight, but nonetheless very much there. She gathered more
bugs, these ones perhaps not as fast as her spiders, and sent them in after the rest, just to be sure.

Together as a group, they slipped around the coast of the glacial lake, circling around a mountainous incline. They
moved as silently as they could—those who could fly, under Addy’s insistence during the planning stage, hovered
above the ground, while Steel, unfortunately landbound, navigated between discarded twigs and leaves with careful
steps.

Grass began to give way to raw earth and stone, twigs and other natural debris left behind as they went from a
forest grove to the less habitable regions, where the dirt wasn’t deep enough to set roots down in. They were rather
close to the location already, it was just around an upcoming bend, but before they could get to it, Kara raised a
hand.

Everyone stopped instantly.

Saying nothing, Kara gestured a hand out, towards where earth met the side of a stone hill, clumped into a small
mound.

Wordlessly, Addy drew some of her nearby insects out, sending them towards the lump. The others watched
wordlessly, thankfully already informed as to the nature of her abilities and what she had on offer, though she
watched with some annoyance as Steel shied away. He hadn’t said anything about a phobia of bugs, but then she
could test that later.

Carefully, she had the bugs excavate the surface of the lump, hauling earth away, their limbs touching metal as the
thing below it was revealed.

It was, even at a glance, clearly a cobbled-together explosive. It resembled what even Taylor thought of as a
stereotypical bomb made by someone in a garage. Not by a Tinker, but by someone with an agenda or a bone to
pick and too little sense to make a normal effort. It was a boxy, squarish thing, with a series of metal bits attached to
the outer casing, with blinking LED lights.

If there was any doubt that they had found the location, it was now long gone.

“...That is a bomb,” Kara said, blunt.

“Mind giving me a look?” Winn asked.

Obligingly, Steel raised up his arm, sliding back a panel to reveal the screen again and pointing it towards the bomb
in question.

“Yup,” Winn confirmed, voice grim. “That is definitely an IED. Not sure about the exact particulars, but I’ve seen enough
of them to know what they look like. Most of it seems to be made from stuff you could get on Earth, at least. I can’t say
if it’ll explode like a normal IED, but I recommend caution either way. The best case scenario for setting it off is that it
just explodes and maims you, instead of, I don’t know, disintegrating everything.”

“Do you have any idea on how to get around it, Winn?” Kara asked, her voice a bit tight. “I want to avoid giving away
our location by flying over it at the height I’d need to to make sure it doesn’t have motion sensors covering the space
above it.”

Winn hummed over the line for a moment, the sudden click-and-clack of keys filling in the silence as he considered.
“There’s a chance freezing it might render it inert if it’s a conventional explosive. Or at least, freezing it with your freeze
breath. But that’s not an exact science and, again, I don’t have the slightest clue if it’s conventional or not. Considering
who we’re up against? It’s probably best to assume it isn’t.”

“Point,” Kara replied, frowning. “Maybe we should just give ourselves away? Go for a frontal rush? If this gives away
our location anyway, there’s no point in hiding.”

“...I can try to lift the soil and the bomb without disturbing it,” John interjected, his voice rather careful.

Kara and Steel turned to look at him.

“It’s probably your best bet if you can keep the thing really stable,” Winn replied, a considering twist to his voice.

Kara glanced at John, considered, then nodded once.

Stepping forward, John’s eyes narrowed, and he gestured out with his hand. Green energy rippled, growing out from
the flat disc of his ring, and diving beneath the earth just a few feet ahead of him. For a few moments, nothing
happened, there wasn’t even the sound of moving earth.

Then, the ground moved. Slowly, and with great care, John slowly raised his arm and brought a chunk of earth about
the size of a fridge up with him. On it, the bomb was still there, completely unmoving, and remained that way as
John brought it around to the side, placing it well out of range of the team. The green sputtered, then faded
altogether, and what was left was a crude lump of earth stacked high on a rocky incline, about ten or so feet away.

“Nice,” Steel said, approvingly.

John inclined his head. “I’ve been exploring what the ring can do, and how to do it. I’m mostly just glad it worked
without detonating.”

“You and the rest of us,” Winn replied cheekily.

Turning her focus away for a moment, Addy returned to her insects, which had crawled closer - slowly and stealthily,
as instructed - to the source of light. It was a hurricane lantern placed on a chest-high wooden box, next to which
was an ash-tray with flickering embers within. A woman - Rosie, she could recognize - stood next to it, taking drags
from her cigarette as she silently looked down at her phone. Her gun was leaning up against the wall, fully loaded,
but nonetheless not in her hands.

The space she was in had once been a mine shaft. Wooden scaffolding had been built to keep the thing from
collapsing unexpectedly, slotted into place along the shorter tunnel leading to where Rosie was standing, and being
replaced by reinforced metal pillars when the ceiling grew higher. The walls were all bare stone, crude and ragged
from years of work, and set into one of the walls was a large, thick metal door, sealed and freckled with wires.
Outside of that, there were a few other crates around, some of which were open, filled with straw, and with gun parts
inside of them.

“This is the location,” Addy said, belatedly. The rest of the group turned to look at her, curious. “The IED is self-
evident, but inside of the cave I have already located Rosie, though I cannot scout further in, as they have a sealed
door between her and the rest of the base. Rosie is currently preoccupied, and I do not believe they’re expecting us.”

Kara nodded, and led the group on, moving with a surer pace. They slipped past where the IED had been planted,
over a small hill of stone, and stepped open into a gap in the mountainous walls. It was almost a valley, with the
sloping stone giving way to a grassless clearing, in which was the visible opening to the mineshaft. A long-
abandoned mine track snaked out from the mouth of the cave, at the end of which the cart, rusted over from years
of exposure, sat half-off the track. Next to the opening, there was a large yellow ‘STAY OUT, DANGEROUS’ sign,
alongside one declaring this the property of the US government, and that fines would be given if trespassers were
discovered.

Unfortunately for the government, they had permission.

They stopped on the edge of the clearing, well away from the opening itself, Kara’s mouth pinching a touch. “What is
it with Trombusans and underground bases? First Master Jailer, now this?”

“Trombus—their homeworld—is a karst planet,” John replied simply. “A classification of planet which is defined by
continent-spanning cave systems, in which most of the population lives below ground. Cave systems are something
Trombusans are intimately familiar with.”

Steel and Kara turned to stare at John, who met their looks with an unflinching, unflappable sort of stare of his own.

“I have what amounts to a galaxy-spanning wikipedia attached to my finger,” John replied, sounding almost
defensive. “There is much to learn, and I have the means to do so.”

Kara, at least, seemed to concede that. “Anything else?”

“They have particularly good night vision, and an awareness of vibrations, similar to echolocation, but not quite,”
John explained.

Kara made a noise, but no further comment.

“I believe it would be best if I made the entry,” Addy said, matter-of-fact. “I can fly in, take control of Rosie, and then
the others can follow. It would keep us from alerting those inside, at least for a time.”

Kara looked at her, then at the others. When no complaint was forthcoming, she turned back, and nodded. “Be safe,
alright Administrator?”

That was a given. “Of course.” She turned back towards John, catching his attention. “Could you create a wall for
me? I wish to use it to gain speed from the beginning.”

Looking honestly more curious than anything else, John did as asked, raising a hand out and manifesting a tall, six-
foot wall of solid green energy.

Floating towards it, Addy hardwired the bugs under her control within the cave to come out and into Rosie’s line of
sight, the bigger ones especially. It wouldn’t do much, and she didn’t tell them to attack, however their existence may
offer something of a distraction, if not a particularly long-lasting one.

Discarding her control over bugs, she reconfigured, human control falling back into her grasp.

Rotating her center of gravity, Addy planted both of her feet against the wall, pushing herself until her legs were
sufficiently curled. It was a bit of an annoyance to keep herself in position like this - micromanaging the propulsion
on her body wasn’t difficult, but it did rankle she had such little available force to muster that she actually had to
focus on it - but she didn’t need for it to stay that way for long.

“Ready,” she intoned.

“Remember about the earpieces, guys. Emergencies only, anything over this line could be compromised.”

The eyes of her allies watched her closely. Kara nodded in her peripheral vision, and Addy let herself fall into a state
of focus.

With as much force as she could muster with her body, including the propulsive effect of her flight, she threw herself
from the wall. With something to launch herself from, and with plenty of aid from her innate strength, she reached
the target speed - if not her top speed, she didn’t want to alert everyone in a square mile by breaking the sound
barrier - even before she entered the mouth of the cave.

Rosie easily fell into her range, but not, of course, without unexpected difficulties. She had shielding, because of
course she did; identical to the kind the Master Jailer himself had, meaning she would have to actually get into
contact with the woman to do anything about it. Not that it was a problem, of course, she just disliked people
working against her interests, which was perfectly natural.

Rosie fell into sight as her eyes adjusted, the woman in question having looked up from her phone and was
stubbornly trying to stomp the insects, hissing about how she thought she left this behind when she left California.

She was so preoccupied that she didn’t even notice Addy until she had grabbed the woman by the back of the head.
Rosie had just enough time to start a noise that would evolve into a strangled shout before Addy punched her way
through the shielding and into the woman’s mind and promptly stopped the shout in its tracks.

Not that it, apparently, mattered, as the moment she had accomplished that, alarms began to wail. Loud, ear-
piercing alarms that echoed angrily through the cavern.

Whipping around and expecting some type of resistance, Addy rather suddenly found herself with none. Unlike the
last time something near identical to this had happened, the crates did not upend themselves to let loose cobbled-
together robots, nor did the walls suddenly start crawling with hostile, Kryptonite-fitted drones.

Instead, the rest of the group was rushing in, looking around in panic.

“Administrator!” Kara called out, glancing around.

The alarms, at that point, clicked off. The silence was ringing, especially considering the sheer scream of the alarms
before, and everyone went completely still.

There was a lone crackle. “Sorry about the alarm, you know how it is—psychics are such a pain in the ass,” Snare’s
voice came on over the line, tone dry. “I figured I was better safe than sorry, so I keyed the remaining member’s
shielding into our systems. If the psychic shielding goes down, whether because they’re dead or compromised, the
alarms go off, and would you look at that, I was right to do so.”

“Schott?” Steel murmured, voice low, but still audible. Addy turned to look at him, finding him inching towards a
terminal that had been just out of sight, shaded by darkness. He reached out, tapping a key, and the terminal lit up,
the screen illuminating his face. “Can you get access to this?”

“Plug me in and we’ll find out,” Winn replied, just as quietly.

Steel didn’t hesitate to do just that, pulling a cord out from where the screen was kept and jabbing it into one of the
exposed USB ports.

Which did remind her that she had her own source of valuable knowledge. Reaching out, she - as gently as she could
manage, given the restrictive timeframe - began drawing memories of the place she was in to the surface, as well as
the operation in general. They came fleetingly, as she had promised not to lobotomize anyone else to J’onn, but
before long she had a solid understanding of the layout. It was a winding maze, the mining company that had once
managed it having hit several veins that weren’t all in the same place, but ultimately if Rosie knew the path to where
the others were located, so did she.

“No banter? No wry commentary? Supergirl, I thought you were better than that!”

That, too, meant that she probably didn’t have access to their communication network. Addy spared a glance
towards Steel, who met her gaze behind his mask and pointed at one ear, on the same page.

“You don’t have to do this, Yilur!” Kara shouted, pacing towards the large set of doors, glancing around for any
camera or mic that might pick her up. “There’s a chance to turn yourself in! To face a fair judgement for your
actions!”

At that, they merely received chilling, cold silence. Kara’s face went tense, uncertain, and Addy had to guess she was
torn between wondering if, as Imnal said, Yilur had enough baggage that referring to her as such would set her off,
or if Imnal had been right, and Yilur was very much dead.

“...Ah, guys?” Winn said over the line, voice hesitant. “I’m pretty sure you all have to start moving, like, right now. From
what I can get out of this terminal, Snare’s pumping a lot of energy into the main core of the base. Like, death laser or
powerful bomb amounts of energy.”

Before anyone could reply to that, Snare was back.

“Well, nice to know my reputation precedes me,” Yilur - at least she assumed at this point - said. “Was it the armour
that gave me away?” Her voice was coming out flatter, harsher, edged by something much colder than the
lackadaisical mischief she had been speaking with.

Kara, instead, ignored her. She strode with purpose towards the door leading deeper into the base, took a breath in,
and leaned back, before kicking out with enough force that Addy, even if she was quite a distance away, could still
feel.

The door didn’t survive. It shattered like brittle glass beneath the sudden force, shrapnel sent hurtling into the
hallway behind it, clattering across the ground. With the stakes raised, Addy had the impression Kara wasn’t about to
leave any of this up to chance. Whatever Yilur was doing, she wanted to stop.

Addy could appreciate that simplicity.

“Administrator, disable Rosie for the time being,” Kara commanded, not glancing back at her. “We have to move.”

Mentally sending off a command, she had Rosie walk towards the exit, interweaving a follow-up command that’d
have her be knocked unconscious the second she was outside of the cave itself. Afterwards, she tugged her
presence free from Rosie’s mind, and moved off to the side to grab Rosie’s gun, hefting it up onto her shoulder
before walking up and joining the rest of the group with Kara.

Together and without any further commentary, they descended. The hallway leading out from the door was short,
and quickly dropped into a metal staircase. Above them, heavy electric lanterns were hung on chains, illuminating
the space in small regions of light, some of them still creaking from the force Kara had created. Between each of the
lanterns, long cords sagged, crude work, but nonetheless electric work.

“No, if I had to bet, you probably only figured out it was me because you asked somebody, right?” Yilur continued, her
voice growing more and more clipped, colder with each added word. “My father, I’m guessing. It’s a real shame you
didn’t kill him like he did all the others, but hey, I can’t judge. I had to do some digging to find out he had even been
active, but I had hoped you killed him after all he did. Life’s never that easy, is it?”

Kara still said nothing. Nobody did.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, into what was a 4-way split, multiple openings leading into different locations.
Addy passed up to the front, gesturing towards the leftmost turn, and started leading them instead, keeping her
pace quick. The rest followed behind her, their breathing and the sound of their feet on stone and metal filling the
silence.

“You know, you said I could turn myself in? Let this end?” Yilur probed, the crackle of the speaker system not quite
managing to hide the venom behind her voice.

Kara, next to Addy, hesitated for a moment before finally speaking up. “I did Yilur, it’s not too late, we can put an end
to this without any more violence.”

Unfortunately, it was as much bait as Addy expected it to be.

Yilur laughed, a rasping sort of laugh that was as disdainful as it was cruel. “What gave you the impression I wanted
this to end?”

The corridor they’d stepped into opened up, the stone walls replaced by metal ones. It was made in a spiral, slightly
sloped to lead them further down, and constantly curling. Going by the memories of Rosie, this was by far the
quickest way to get to where they needed to be, where the base was, though worryingly Rosie’s memories had said
nothing about what exactly was waiting for them down there. Whether it had been withheld for practical purposes of
information denial or she just didn’t have enough time to dig them up, Addy wasn’t sure, but she didn’t like either
option.

“When Fort Rozz crashed the first time, Non had his forces overrun the wing my team and every other prison guard had
taken residence in,” Yilur said as they went, her voice growing tinny as they descended. “We were overrun in seconds.
Kryptonians on a warpath, you know how it is—they all died, and most of them slowly.”

The deeper they went down the sloped tunnel, the more small things started to change. The lights were
incrementally brighter, the metal more recent, the construction even more so. She had expected that a lot of the
base had been built within the last year at the most, and this was lending credence to that. The question remained
about how she managed an installation like this with minimal resources.

She supposed she would have the answer to that question soon enough, in any event.

“All of them but me. I managed to survive, and that wasn’t really a mercy. Bad luck, I’d say. Everyone thought I was dead,
I intended to slip away the second enough heads turned, I mean, even my own father thought I was dead. He never
wanted me on the damn prison in the first place, and I can’t really blame him for that.”

Addy caught a glance Kara sent her way, her face scrunched, a mixture of confused and agitated.

“Except that plan didn’t last, of course,” Yilur continued, voice forcefully cheery. “The prisoners wanted our gear, and so
went about stripping the bodies. It makes for good equipment, I built most of it, so I would know. When they got to me?
I fought back, they’d figure it out anyway, and I lost.”

There was a short pause, only the scuffing of feet and the heavy, laboured breathing of Steel to fill the accompanying
silence.

“Non has a particular hatred from Trombusans—sees us as little more than greedy, opportunistic terrorists, and well, we
all know how that man gets about being in charge, so you can only imagine how much he hated being under the control
of them too. I wasn’t the only one to survive the initial massacre, there were, ah, I’d say about fifteen of us? But I was the
only Trombusan.”

Kara’s face was going through a series of riotous expressions, darkening with a lot of things Addy just... couldn’t
read. If she had to bet, though, Addy’s own confusion with them was probably matched by Kara’s own. Non had
always been something of a difficult topic for Kara, and something she rarely liked to think about. Bringing it up like
this and revealing what more he’d done that would go firmly against Kara’s moral compass was likely not helping
that fact, either.

The slope of the ground was beginning to ease up, however, and the lights were now moved from the ceiling to each
wall, illuminating the harsh, metal surfaces and yellow tape in the glow of floodlights.

“Took me three months, Supergirl. I had to fight for every last scrap of food, every drink of water, every moment of rest.
That man was a monster, and I can applaud you, at least, for doing what you did to him, though as far as I can tell, you
didn’t kill him either. You should probably start fixing that fact, one of these days mercy is going to hurt you more than
you could ever imagine. The only one on that place to treat me or any of the other captives with respect was Astra, and
that was mostly a formality—she didn’t have the stomach for torturing prisoners of war, see.”

Finally, the curling tunnel came to an end, the ground levelled out, and they were met with a single remaining
corridor. It was squarish, unlike the others, bracketed by a series of concrete supports and metal fixtures, with
another large blast door at the far end of it. It was built, in every conceivable way, to endure great amounts of
trauma, if the inches of solid metal that made up the walls were any indication.

A camera, just above the door, swivelled to look at them.

Kara drew to a halt, staring up at it, her chin tight and eyes narrowed. “Why are you telling me any of this?”

“Ah, well. I thought you might want to know who you were fighting,” Yilur replied, lackadaisically, voice ever-so-casual.
“Also, of course, I was buying time.”

The walls shuddered, and Addy, for the first time in her life that was entirely her experience, had a rather sudden
intense feeling of deja-vu.

Metal panels on the wall snapped open with little grace, the harsh scream of overworked machinery wailing its way
back up through the spiral they had just come out of. The air heated, tangibly so, as everything shuddered, and out
from each of the panels that had opened - six total - a turret emerged. The turrets were utilitarian in construction,
consisting of a cube-like base, a long, distended barrel, a scope-like fixture atop the barrel, and were made
exclusively from metal, with nobody bothering to paint them or touch up on the appearance.

All of them swivelled directly towards her a mere second after they emerged, a sharp keening rippling up and out
from the metal.

The barrels fired.

A scintillating burst of green energy took shape in front of both herself and the rest of the group, constructed like a
dome cut in half. The lasers slammed against it, and John’s face spasmed, visible out of the corner of Addy’s eyes.
The lasers themselves were persistent, growing larger the longer they were being channelled towards a target.

“After all, the best way to gut a psychic is to not give them minds to control in the first place.”

Addy moved quickly, not liking the direction this was going. Before anyone besides John could do anything - Kara,
already lifting off the ground, and Steel, already beginning to look for targets - Addy whipped a hand down to her
belt, snagging one of the bombs Lena had left them with. She jammed the round of her thumb into the button and,
with that, lobbed it over the lip of the shield, the bomb clattering down amid the turrets.

It erupted a beat later. A sharp, distorted noise, like someone mutilating an amplifier, was accompanied by a burst of
purple energy that licked and crawled across the metal surfaces near to it. The turrets in its immediate blastwave
quite literally exploded; the barrels bulged from the lasers being trapped or misdirected back into it, a red flare of
heat erupting before the entire thing was consumed by the larger blast. The others, not in the direct impact zone,
fared little better; glitching out as one swivelled towards the ceiling at such speeds that the barrel itself was
snapped off like a twig, while another just fell apart. The rest suffered similar fates, breaking apart or discharging
energy back into themselves and exploding, adding to the pile of growing metal shrapnel on the ground.

Steel turned to look at her, giving what Addy assumed was an approving nod. “Quick thinkin—”

Yilur tut-tutted over the line. “Was it really, though?”

Metal screamed as it was shoved bodily from the openings it had once been in, the chunks of the old turrets sent to
join the rest of the scrap pile as new turrets emerged from behind them. Barrels already glowing, they swivelled back
to her, each and every last one of them focused wholly on her—not unexpectedly, considering Yilur’s apparent
frustration with her.

But everyone was already moving.

Addy dragged the gun she had looted off of Rosie up, locking her robotic arm beneath the barrel as she kicked off
the ground and into the air. She took aim, bracing the weapon against her shoulder, and fired; catching the turret
nearest to her with a series of three nails that shredded through the barrel and base of it with little resistance, the
entire thing falling to pieces under the effect of a near-unstoppable object.

The others weren’t waiting, either. Kara had risen into the air much like her, her eyes lighting up bright and harsh as
twin beams of energy jumped from her gaze, her head craning up as she carved through all three turrets on one side,
each one detonating with a small, but not insignificant, blast.

John dropped his shield, evidently realizing she was no longer being protected by it, and traded one creation for
another—a long, sharp blade taking form and swinging down, lodging itself in the turret next to the one Addy had
just finished destroying. He yanked the blade out with a twist of his hand, the construct floating back towards him
just in time for Steel to rush past it, lodging both of his fists into the one remaining turret, and wholesale ripping the
weapon out of the wall like a plug from an outlet.

“There’s a saying: peel off a layer of a Trombusan warship, and you’ll just end up with more warship to deal with.”

More turrets emerged, but whatever she had intended with these, well, Addy knew for certain nobody was about to
give her the chance to act on them.

Already in place, Addy lunged forward, throwing out her foot and shattering the turret nearest to her, using the same
momentum to haul her gun up and driving another three nails with pinpoint accuracy into the turret that was nearest
to it, shattering it like she had the rest.

Kara, next to her, lunged forward to grab a turret by the barrel ripping it completely off, before using the same barrel
to grind the base back into the hole it had emerged from with a series of hard, sharp stabs.

Steel, with a turret still in hand, whipped it around to shatter it against an emerging turret, the both of them reduced
to scrap, while John next to him swung the sword construct out in an arc, catching the remaining two turrets in its
sweep and bisecting them both, the scrap tumbling down to join the now very much inconvenient pile below them.

And this time, at last, there was no response. No witty repartee, no thinly-veiled seething, no stories or comments.
Just silence.

Kara breathed out, wiping her brow. “...I think that should be—”

The panel in the middle of the wall next to her erupted, a scream of metal ripping through the confined space as a
barrel the size of a cannon pushed free and swivelled directly towards Kara. The opening to the barrel lit up, a sharp
orange glow—

Addy lunged forward, swung her legs out, and mule-kicked the barrel, shoving Kara away as she did. The barrel
shattered, and the energy, with no other place to go, promptly detonated. Addy found herself thrown backwards, a
sharp twinge of pain covering her body, to her own shock, rippling across the surface of her skin like a sunburn.

Then she landed in the pile of debris, and the pain was gone. Addy raised her remaining arm up and looked at her
palm, a bit baffled by the fact that her skin was currently tinged red. It was fading already, but—

“Addy!”

Kara crouched down next to her, reaching out to take her hand, pausing just long enough for Addy to nod. She turned
it over, looking across the fading redness of her skin, and frowned.

“I’m fine,” Addy said, pushing herself upright. Thankfully, Kara didn’t impede her.

“Guys you really do not have the time, you need to keep moving or retreat,” Winn interrupted, his voice sounding
panicked. “They’re still drawing in energy, and I can’t actually tell you how much they need, but it can’t be much longer.
The system security would take too long to get through, I don’t have the time, so—please.”

Kara, having evidently lost her patience for this, turned away from Addy, her face twisted up in anger. She walked
towards the blast doors, hands curling and uncurling into fists, before she lodged both of them into the small gap
between each of the sliding metal doors. She spread her legs, widening her stance, and with a sharp shout of force,
warped the metal doors open through sheer force, even as whatever track they were on which let them slide refused
to budge.

The rest of the way forward amounted to a stairwell, leading down into a space Addy couldn’t see, but Kara was
looking at them and making a gesture with her head.

Everyone scrambled to follow after her.

The ringing silence from Yilur was both promising and worrying, but it was also slightly disconcerting. Addy wasn’t
sure if she just wasn’t speaking anymore, but still paying attention, or if the lack of results out of her gambit had
forced her to abandon whatever she had been using to track them. She wasn’t sure, either, what would be worse at
this point.

They reached the foot of the stairs in record time, stepping out into a circular room, open and with lots of exposed
stone still visible.

This was, of course, when the floor itself began to open.

“Don’t let it!” Kara barked, launching herself into the air.

John joined her faster than anyone else could, reaching out with his ring, projecting a layer of green energy that took
the form of a bear-trap, biting down on the opening and stopping it from fully managing it. The metal screamed in
protest, warping as long tears were torn into it by the sheer force, but to his credit, John didn’t even waver.

Kara’s eyes lit back up, glowing brighter and brighter, as bright as Addy had ever seen them, as she stared down at
whatever was trying to escape.

“Now.”

The green energy faded, and beams of energy the size of Kara’s forearms emerged in their place from her eyes,
blasting into the small, narrow opening that they hadn’t been quick enough to stop. The ground shuddered, a sharp
blast of force rippling through the ground as whatever was inside detonated, accompanied by a growing plume of
oily black smoke. Flames licked around where the panel had opened, but the entire suite of machinery was dead to
the world, unmoving.

Kara’s head craned up, and Addy followed her gaze, finding the remaining opening to the area that Rosie’s memories
were leading her towards.

“You guys are almost there,” Winn’s voice chimed in. “I’ve been disrupting the energy transfer as much as I can, a bit
like turning on your oven, air conditioner, and all the lights in your house, but I can only do so much.”

Kara stalked forward, and Addy fell in next to her, eyes focusing on the opening as they all stepped out onto a broad
metal mesh floor, leading towards a raised, circular area.

The last remaining cavern was huge and utterly natural. Stalagmites hung from the ceiling, evidence of there once
being an underground river was obvious from the snaking furrows in the stone, and off near the back, she could see
a fissure where, if one was to get their body through it, would likely lead to even more complex cave systems further
below. The walls were high, much higher than any of the tech around them, and the cavernous ceiling was darkened,
making it unclear just how high everything went.

On that raised platform was a shield, a bubble of force surrounding it. The platform itself was glowing, stripes of
energy visible from beneath glass, and standing atop the glowing portion were Yilur, Steamroller, and Jackhammer.

Addy wondered what happened to the replacement members of the Demolition Team—probably gotten rid of, all
things considered.

Kara didn’t hesitate, approaching with confident and, if Addy wasn’t misreading it, angry strides, her fists tightened
into balls on either side of her hips.

Yilur just stared at them, still in her full suit of armour. A small ways behind her, a terminal was showing a progress
bar, looking to be almost complete. The remaining humans were shuffling nervously, glancing around at the
protective shield that surrounded them.

“I’ve been planning to leave for a while, but you just had to push the issue,” Yilur said, her voice carrying surprisingly
well. She blatantly turned away from them, returning to the terminal with the progress bar, her fingers playing over
the odd, almost hexagonal keyboard. “I wanted to head to some place like New Vorax, what with its lack of laws, but
considering the time limit we have going on, Starhaven will have to do. We’ll go to New Vorax after that, but you can
now safely be assured: getting there will be an even bigger pain in the ass for me than it has to.”

Addy reached out to their minds, joining up next to Kara, and found them all, predictably, shielded, just like Rosie.
She looked at Kara, and shook her head.

“A transmat bay,” Kara said flatly. “You’re running.”

“Retreating,” Yilur corrected. “I won’t be your problem anymore, is what I’m trying to get at.”

“You guys have at most a minute, at this point. I’m getting readings that things are starting to boot up,” Winn said over
the line in a clipped, quick voice. “It’s do or don’t at this point—you don’t have any time left!”

Kara lunged forward, driving her fist into the shield with about as much force Addy had really seen her punch
anything with.

The shield rippled like a pond being roused by a pebble, but the shape didn’t change, nor did it look to actually take
any tangible damage.

“You should stop that,” Yilur chided, still focusing on the terminal. “You’re not getting through it with force, so don’t
waste your energy. I’m going to leave, Supergirl. This benefits us both, I slip away, and I never darken the doorstep of
this absolute calamity of a refugee planet.”

Addy was already getting the beginnings of a plan, though. Her eyes traced the various devices behind the shell of
the forcefield, roving over them, looking for where the shield might be projected. There was a motley of machinery
on the platform, however, ranging from the terminal to a number of workbenches and crates, possibly things they
intended to bring along with them. Her eyes finally settled on one particularly incongruous piece of tech: a squarish,
server-like thing, with a cord the same thickness as Addy’s head, and a series of radio-disc-like protrusions. It wasn’t
in the center of the space like she’d expected, and rather tucked off to the side, to make room for the supplies they’d
scattered around the center of the platform.

She started reaching for the bombs attached to her person.

“You have to answer for your crimes, Yilur!” Kara snapped, though she didn’t strike the forcefield again. “You hurt so
many people, you forced even more into working with gangs, and you gave them weapons of war to do it! We all
know what Roulette was doing behind the scenes.”

Yilur let out a noisy, bland sigh. She turned her head to observe Kara, and even with the full helmet, Addy had a
strong impression her expression was one of pity and distaste. “The guns hurt them, Supergirl,” she said airily. “I just
made them. You can no more fault me for it than you can fault whatever primitive creature made fertilizer on this
planet for the deaths that followed.”

Kara’s fist impacted the shield again.

Addy arrived at the part of the shield nearest to the generator and began dropping her bombs right next to it, making
sure each button was pointing up. She glanced back, finding Yilur and a number of other people already looking at
her.

“Give me the rest,” she commanded, matter-of-factly.

Steel, at least, seemed to have an idea about what she was doing. He rushed over, dragging his own supply of four
bombs out and handing them off to her, after which she placed them button-up on the ground with the rest. John
joined them not long after, and handed over his supply as well, Steel copying her and placing them down just as she
had.

“...Grenades?” Yilur said, sounding almost offended. “You’ll bring the damn cave down on your stupid heads without
hurting the field. It’s your funeral.”

Kara, looking like she wasn’t sure where this was going, came over to their side and handed off her bombs much the
same. Addy placed the remainder on the ground and stepped back quickly, the others following her.

Turning her head, she looked Kara in the eye. “Supergirl, please activate all of those as fast as you can.”

Kara blinked, a rapid-fire thing, glanced for a moment at the bombs, likely remembered the time constraint they were
working on, and nodded. In a moment, she blurred, her figure turning into a streak of red as a series of sharp beeps
ran out, indicators from when the bombs were all activated and primed.

Addy grabbed Steel’s arm, hauling him back with her own flight.

Kara reemerged from being a streak next to her, just in time for all of them to detonate at once.

If one of the EMP bombs could do damage, then the close to twelve they had on offer did so much more than that.
Conflicting fields of energy-warping force rippled out in a shockwave, Steel stumbling back with a shout, purple
energy licking up along the forcefield and breaching through it, slamming into the various machinery nearest to it.
The shield itself warped and thinned, distorting wildly, the colour twisting into something vaguely reminiscent of the
northern lights.

Most of the lights on the platform exploded, shattering like eggshells and raining shrapnel down on those unaware.

Addy raised the gun she’d taken from Rosie up with one hand and fired into the weakest point on the shield she
could find.

The entire thing, with little fanfare, shattered.

Kara launched forward before Addy could even get off the ground, her body blurring once more, nearly vanishing
from sight as the distance between her and Yilur vanished in a breath. The two bodies collided, the noise of it a
heavy thunderclap as immense force met incredible resistance, a resistance that nonetheless failed. Kara and Yilur’s
bodies tumbled, grappling and swinging at each other, through the air and into the terminal and the rest of the mess
of complicated machinery she had been standing in front of, shattering it all like glass.

The entire base let out a massive, wail-like groan, and well over two-thirds of the lights just failed, winking out
entirely, including the platform. An ambient whirring noise that Addy hadn’t even quite noticed died with it, the
transmat platform they had been on going utterly inert.

It took, all told, less than three seconds to happen—from Kara’s lunging to the two of them vanishing into a mess of
shattered machinery.

Addy’s flight finally took solid hold, and with that, she was rushing forward as well. The heavy stomp of Steel’s
footsteps informed her he was rushing alongside her, and with a quick flick of her eyes, she spotted John flying with
her, though he was lagging, if not by too much to be noticeable yet.

Eyes back on the front, Addy caught sight of her targets—Sledgehammer and Steamroller. The former was turning
towards them, while the latter was fighting with his tall, energy-based shield that had clearly gotten caught in the
blast radius of the black box field bombs. The blue pane of energy that normally made up its surface was, for lack of
a better word, glitching, spitting energetic sparks and fuzzing around the edges. The man himself looked half-
wounded, even, eyes wincing with each bark of feedback from his shield.

John apparently saw it too, as before she could rush to exploit the fact, a sharp line of green energy flew past her.
Steamroller was quick, eyes still on them, and raised his shield to meet it. Green met blue, and the shield, to her
frustration, held. It sparked wildly, much more than it had been while at his side, but it nonetheless held against the
force. With each passing second, though, it was losing, the hissing grew wilder, the sparks of energy more violent,
and cracks, hairline and barely-there, began to take hold.

Sledgehammer jumped forward, blocking her line of sight, her eyes flicking up just in time to watch the massive
warhammer he held above his head meet the ground. Red energy erupted from every surface on the hammer like a
small, murderous sun, and fissures of red, much larger than they were when they last fought, spread like wildfire
across the ground, an outpouring of cracks that had herself, Steel and John swerving to avoid, the green beam of
energy falling away from the shield as a consequence. Addy had even been forced to stop, the branches and
fissures much more frequent the closer she got, completely blocking her way.

Where the red lines fell, eruptions of equal magnitude followed. Red lightning jumped from the fissures into the open
air, spilling up like the towering branches in a canopy, for a moment illuminating even the ceiling above her, showing
the hanging stalagmites. The sound was like pressure being released and a live wire at once; a sharp hiss of force
that slowly died out, but one that was defined by the sound of exposed electricity, sparking and popping.

The light show ended, and in its place, Steamroller’s shield came down. It had grown into that of a tower shield, now,
and grew more, rapidly spreading out to make a solid barrier between the three of them and the rest of the space,
cutting them completely off from Kara, Yilur, Steamroller and Sledgehammer.

From within the debris of the machinery, Kara and Yilur exploded out, thrown into the air. Kara threw a punch with
meteoric force, catching across Yilur’s mask, and the thunderous clap that followed was nearly deafening,
reverberating through the space, magnified by the acoustics of the cave. Yilur, in turn, responded; her armour
reorienting and generating beams of multicoloured light, not just red, but a combination thereof that Kara had to
swerve to avoid, narrowly missing being dropped from the air by the red sunlight.

And, to worsen matters, Sledgehammer was turning, moving towards Kara and Yilur, already capitalizing on the
advantage of numbers they’d taken from them.

Addy had enough. She flew low and hard, rushing ahead and tucking Rosie’s gun back beneath her arm. The tall,
mountainous shield that Steamroller had generated met her head on as she rammed the entirety of her force into it,
the thing wavering in a near-identical manner to how the shield which protected the platform had. She reached out
to his mind, in the rather vain hope that Yilur might have not managed to cram a shielding device into anyone other
than Rosie’s brain, and was displeased to find fate wasn’t on her side with this, either, meeting the same harsh,
inflexible resistance that she had come to associate with Trombusan shielding technology.

When this was over and done with, she promised herself, she would look into the matter, hopefully with Yilur’s
knowledge, and find a way around that. A painful workaround, if at all possible.

Steel joined her, throwing both of his arms into the shield, his elbows venting a veritable plume of steam as he did.
The force behind it actually caught Addy unaware, just by proximity she could tell he was hitting closer to Kara’s
weight class for a moment, but when the biceps of his armour began to spark and hiss mutinously in complaint, she
quietly shelved it. So he could hit as hard as Kara, okay, but only at the cost of his armour.

She would have to look into that too, later.

“Back!” John shouted, and she pulled away alongside Steel, just in time to watch a glimmering hammer the size of
an SUV swing through the air, having grown itself from his ring. The head of it hit the shield with force that wasn’t
comparable to Steel’s, but with the surface area, left a heavy, heavy dent. Cracks spread out from the point of impact,
and she saw Steamroller’s face spasm in sudden, regretful fear.

Eyes flicking up, she caught sight of Sledgehammer sprinting towards Kara.

“Supergirl!” Addy shouted, pitching her voice to carry as much as she could. “Behind you!”

Kara took the chance. With a sudden burst of speed and force, Kara tore herself free from the grapple she’d been in
with Yilur, wrenching the woman off of her body and sending the two of them into a crazed spiral. Having apparently
taken Addy’s brief commentary on flight to heart, however, she didn’t let that energy go to waste. Instead, she
dragged Yilur around, using the rotation of her body, and flung her head-over-feet back towards where the shield
was.

With a shout, Sledgehammer had to duck to avoid being creamed by a fully-armoured person being launched at
ballistic speeds.

Addy absolutely did not take any satisfaction out of knowing now they knew how she felt when Scoopshovel had
lobbed Steel at her.

Yilur met the shield and, in its already damaged state, tore through it like a brick through a window. Her body hit the
ground, skidding out wildly as she slipped out of sight.

Addy lunged forward, towards Steamroller, who was rapidly backing up with a terrified look on his face.

Kara blurred past her, after Yilur.

Addy’s hand slammed into Steamroller’s head, and with great and wondrous satisfaction, she broke the irritating
shielding as she had so many times before. Steamroller’s will became malleable beneath her influence, bending so
easily, and she was quick to begin going through what was on the surface and adjusting to the particulars of his
neurology.

John and Steel rushed past her, after Sledgehammer.

Acquainted with her new thrall, Addy had the man throw away his now broken energy shield - overloading it led to
horrible discharges, as evidenced by the burns on his left hand - and turned his attention towards Yilur, while she
personally looked towards Sledgehammer. Back-to-back, with near-total awareness of her surroundings—she was,
most certainly, more familiar with this.

She had Steamroller - or, she supposed, Clay Bates - aim towards Yilur, who had managed to recover her flight and
was once again grappling with Kara, her suit glowing red just enough to take the edge off of Kara’s powers, and fire
twice. Two beams of surprisingly forceful energy slammed into Yilur’s sitting duck of a body, jarring her shoulder just
enough that Kara’s own pushing force could capitalize on it, while the other rammed into the side of her head,
sending her spinning awkwardly.

Kara capitalized on it and drove her knee into Yilur’s stomach, then promptly punched her straight in the crown of her
head, throwing her towards the ground.

In front of her, by comparison, she had raised Rosie’s gun back up and taken aim. Sledgehammer was using his
weapon to keep some distance between himself, Steel and John, making precise, sharp jabs of the pommel and
more considered but not slow swings of the head. He, of course, had either forgotten she existed, or was too
preoccupied with the other two to account for her.

That was a very, very big mistake.

She fired, once, and to her surprise the man did manage to avoid getting skewered through the shoulder with a nail.
His eyes flicked to her, and without prompting, she fired again, forcing him to move closer towards where some of
the electronic rubble had been.

He swerved, teeth gritting, when—

Three shots, each popping from the tip of the barrel with a gunpowder crack. She saw Sledgehammer’s eyes widen,
saw how he was forced to dodge inwards, instead of out of the way of Steel, on account of nearby wreckage. He
hadn’t noticed she had been herding him towards a dead end.

Steel popped him on the chin with a heavy punch, Sledgehammer’s head snapping to the side. His grip on his
hammer weakened, and Steel ripped it out of his hands, twisting it around and driving the pommel right between his
eyes with, perhaps, a little more force than was altogether necessary to put him down.

Nonetheless, put him down it most certainly did. Sledgehammer dropped like a bag of rocks, and Steel looked
between him and the sledgehammer, before propping it up on his shoulder and beginning to move away, towards the
last remaining fight, but from the likely concussed body on the ground.

“Drag him over,” Addy commanded, swivelling back around as she had Steamroller fire a few more shots towards
Yilur, who was obligated to duck out of the way. “I’ll need to take control of them.”

A swelling of willpower itched at her attention, but she couldn’t look back, levelling her gun up, towards Yilur, who it
would seem finally saw the writing on the wall.

She was alone, against three highly trained combatants and one of her own who was now under one of the
combatant’s thrall.

As though for emphasis, Sledgehammer’s body thumped down next to her, and Addy merely raised her foot, nudging
the side of the stunned man’s face, and took control through her boot. She had never once said she needed to touch
someone with her hands, she just needed close enough contact for it to work.

Unfortunately, as expected, Steel had done just enough damage that piloting Sledgehammer at this point in time
was... ill-advised.

Lethal. It would be very, very lethal. For Sledgehammer, anyway. So she opted to shut down the parts of his brain
that could reasonably come back to bother her if he spontaneously regenerated - if not necessarily cutting off what
they were used for - and let his bruised brain rest for the time being.

There’d be interrogations much later anyway.

“Surrender,” Kara said, her voice having gone the gamut of tones since they’d entered. It had started at hopeful, then
sympathetic, then pleading, all in hopes of getting Yilur to turn herself in.

Now it was just flat. Commanding. Kara had never been too specific on what she had been raised for when on
Krypton, in what part of the society’s system she’d partake in, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise Addy at this point if
she would’ve been slated to be a politician, an ambassador, or even a general. It didn’t really show when Kara was
being Kara, but that sliver of indomitable willpower and force of personality tended to come out when she was in
costume.

She was a lot like Taylor, in that way.

Unfortunately, similarly to Taylor, Kara also apparently mostly fought stubborn, unyielding and incredibly difficult
people.

Yilur, promptly, made to flee. Her body pitched into the sky, her armour shifting, bursts of energy acting like
accelerating thrusters. She swivelled, turned towards the caverns.

And Kara lunged and breathed out. Ice took shape in the wake of the heavy mist that followed, and before Yilur could
even really escape the cavern, half of her body had been adhered to the wall by ice. The woman let out a howl of
rage, twisting around, her arm lighting up with energy as she aimed it down at the ice, intent on breaking it, intent on
freeing herself.

There was no escape.

Kara slammed a fist into her helmet, sending the woman’s head cracking back into the stone behind her, before
grabbing hold of Yilur by the shoulder and wrenching her free of the ice, throwing her right down at Addy’s - and by
extension, Steel’s and John’s - feet.

Without prompting, green energy snapped out, wrapped around her and welded itself to the surface, binding Yilur in
place. Addy glanced at John, and he looked back at her, giving a single, firm nod, his ring glowing as he maintained
the construct.

Yilur just howled, unfettered rage and hate. Her words came out slurred and in a language Addy couldn’t speak
before, but the tone was distinct. It was crazed, it was like how Taylor had been, trapped in the locker. The woman
wasn’t entirely here at the moment, and with some thought, Addy could acknowledge why. That time spent being
imprisoned on Fort Rozz had done no favours for Yilur, clearly, and being trapped once again, to be imprisoned once
again, was as good of an explanation as any would be for why she was thrashing like this.

Kara looked down at the woman from where she floated, and all Addy could see on her face was pity. Kara’s gaze
drifted up, not meeting her own, but focusing on her. “Remember Addy,” she said, dropping back to the ground.
“Gentle, like you promised.”

Turning back to Yilur, Addy nodded once, hunched down, and reached out to touch Yilur’s head.

In the end, it was simpler to relocate after everything had been done and over with.

The criminals were all bound, laid down and unconscious on the roadside, Yilur included, though she had been
moved so Addy could maintain contact with the woman as she combed through her knowledge.

Winn’s van was parked off to the side, the doors open as he handed out some water and food to those who needed
it, Kara greedily gnawing away at a donut, while Steel had opened up the bottom half of his helmet to take short sips
of water. Addy’s own glass of water was next to her leg, the ice cubes half-melted, leaving the outer surface damp.

Going through Yilur’s memories was a matter of time, to avoid doing any lasting damage to the woman, or even too
much discomfort. It was certainly possible to rip an entire mind out of someone’s head as she had with Aleksandir,
for example, but that much interference with something as fragile as a brain had a high chance of doing severe
amounts of damage, as well as corrupting a good portion of the data. Fleshy storage such as brains were already
finicky enough, and being too rough with them never worked out well for anyone involved.

So, in the pursuit of getting the knowledge she needed without maiming someone or having entire chunks of
information corrupted beyond recovery, she had to take things slowly and with precision. As one of the foremost
individuals who understood neurology and how to manipulate it, this wasn’t difficult for her, just time-consuming. It
amounted to spreading her influence out and very carefully combing over regions of the brain in slow and practiced
methods, before copying the memories to some of her storage systems.

It was safe, it was precise, it had a 0.0007% chance of data corruption, and it was painfully slow.

At this point, she had been at it for close to an hour, and was barely two-thirds of the way through the process.

That said, she wasn’t actually all that upset about it. Imnal had almost downplayed the depth of Yilur’s knowledge on
technology and how to fabricate it, especially technology relating to weapons and large-scale warfare. Yilur was
much more a scholastic prodigy than she had ever been a more physical one—in her memories she had often left
the act of putting her creations together to a small fleet of helper robots, but her time on earth had shown she
wasn’t bad at the more hands-on aspect of the creation process, either.

She also knew roughly three languages that Addy didn’t, and was more than happy to add to her database.

The actual knowledge on technology had added to her own in tangible and incredibly relevant ways, with relation to
her work. She had a much stronger understanding of, as an example, what exactly she was working with when it
came to the black box field generator, including the scientific studies on similar phenomena to it. She had the same
sort of internal understanding of the things she’d built that she would’ve needed access to the Tinker hub for in the
past, and her scanning wasn’t even done yet.

Addy was genuinely surprised by the sheer depth of it. Yes, all evidence pointed towards Trombusans being highly
advanced in a way that Earth hadn’t quite arrived at yet, but even Yilur’s knowledge within her species was
considered somewhat excessive for her age of barely thirty, not including her time spent temporally dislocated on
Fort Rozz.

And, above all else, a kernel of what she was missing. Tucked away in the theoretical physics and mathematics of
the woman’s brain was something about the universe that Addy had not known about. It wasn’t much, Yilur was not a
theoretical physicist or even someone who bothered to study things like the multiverse theory, but she did have to
know some of it to understand how other species' tech worked. There was enough there to build from, enough there
that, with the right tools, she could actually begin to make progress.

It wasn’t perfect, of course, it was only a crumb, but that was, happily, all Addy or any of her kind had ever needed.
Just a crumb, just something to base something else off of. To say ‘if this is true, then this mustn’t be’. It was, of
course, a bit more complicated than that, and she still hadn’t fully integrated the knowledge as it was partially
incomplete without her later knowledge from additional schooling - which was what Addy was going through right
now - but... it was certainly promising.

She was actually getting somewhere. A plan of hers had actually worked. A plan that would need to wait until she
could get home and start running simulations again. She could refine them this time, no need to risk getting caught
on her work computer now that she actually knew what she was looking for, thankfully.

If not for the fact that Addy considered herself to be the closest thing to a god - or at least, she hoped so - to exist,
she might even say it was a miracle.

“So,” Kara’s voice rang out, Addy glancing up to find the woman standing next to her. “Got anything?”

Addy nodded. “I believe I have enough to begin building a structure out of,” she said, not quite able to hide the
excitement in the way her voice was just that much quicker. She felt light, airy, even if this wasn’t an exact answer
she was definitely getting somewhere. “I have also acquired a rather large array of practical knowledge that will aid
me elsewhere.” Especially on the power generator knowledge Yilur had—a prerequisite, it would seem, for building
energy weapons was to know how power generators worked, and for Yilur’s people, that meant hyper-efficient fusion
reactors.

She’d almost certainly get in deep and profoundly unpleasant trouble if she actually tried to build any of them—the
government did not seem eager to hand off nuclear material to anyone but itself, but there were other options she
was beginning to find as well. Even if the kernel wouldn’t give immediate results, she could definitely now build
contingencies with some effort, at least. Sure, Yilur like everyone else seemed to have no real idea where the
omegahedron was, but theoretically she didn’t entirely need it anymore, given enough space and some less than
legal to acquire materials, anyway.

Not to mention all the energy efficiency information—she was going to put that to use very soon. She’d have to make
a trip to the Fortress later down the line to maybe acquire some of the materials, or at least see if they could help
her synthesize some of them.

Kara blinked at her. “It worked?”

Addy shrugged. “It hasn’t worked, I still do not know how to breach, but I now have an invaluable stepping stone to
arriving at that knowledge.”

Kara seemed to understand that much, nodding along. “We won’t give up either way,” Kara murmured, her voice firm.
“We’ll figure this out, even if it takes us a long time coming.”

“I don’t think it will take that long.” She had a target, after all, and a target meant she could focus her efforts. That,
definitionally, meant things were going to start going much faster.

“Well, that’s good news!” Kara said cheerily. “We’re, uh, there’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and while I do understand you
don’t want to reveal too much, we have something of a family tradition to talk about what we’re thankful for. It’ll be
nice to have something like that to talk about, even if you can’t say it exactly! Eliza’s coming over!”

Addy blinked, mentally checked the date, and adjusted. Lena had given her tomorrow off, she had been mostly
confused about it, wondering if something in the meeting was going to be so disruptive that it would necessitate a
break afterwards, but evidently it was just because it was an American holiday of such little significance to her that
she had just not opted to keep memorized.

A touch sloppy, in her opinion, but then she only had a few days she liked to celebrate. “I have to go into a meeting
with Lena in the morning, but I should be home in time to see Eliza arrive,” she conceded.

Kara smiled, and this one was gentle and soft. “You can trust Lena, okay?” she said, crouching down next to her and
sparing an awkward glance at Yilur, who Addy had propped up against her knee for the sake of efficiency. “She’s a
good person, so if you want to tell her that you’re feeling better, or something, I’d say do it.”

Addy... hadn’t really considered that, but thinking about it, she was feeling better. She had a goal, she had a purpose,
and she had studying to do. These were things she was more than familiar with. “I’ll consider it,” she tentatively
agreed, and received another smile in turn.
 320

OxfordOctopus Jul 8, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 32 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jul 15, 2021  #3,177

EPISODE 32​
Soft, early morning daylight spilled in through the windows, casting glowing bands across plain white floors, a
tangible feeling of warmth kissing her skin wherever the sunlight landed. Fading purples were, with every passing
second, being traded for light blues, sunrise washed away with the passage of time.

Addy’s eyes drifted from the floor, across the door she was waiting in front of, and towards Jess. The woman sat
behind her desk, face a perfect mask of neutrality as she took sips from a thermos full of coffee. The smell of it was
distant, barely-there, unlike the intense, earthy notes Addy was rather used to by this point. Living with Kara meant
an excess of coffee was a granted; if not Noonan’s, then any number of Kara’s finicky odd coffee machines, not one
of which was the same as the other, would deliver highly concentrated cups of bitter-tasting stimulant on a regular
schedule.

Jess’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, glancing at her eyes, before returning to her work. It was hard to tell what
was going on beneath the indifferent mask she wore, but then Addy had always respected Jess’s distance in that
way. It would be rather rude to dig into the core of who Jess was if she wouldn’t let the woman do the same to her.

Unfortunately, however, she had little else to do but stand around and think, because it was six-thirty nine in the
morning, and Addy was stuck waiting for Lena.

She had come dressed to impress for this meeting, mostly because she rather felt like it today. Her crisp, pale
orange t-shirt was freshly ironed, her pale blue pants had gotten a similar sort of treatment, and she had spent the
time after waking up but before she left cleaning any signs of dirt or dust off of her canary-yellow shoes.
Multicoloured laces had replaced the white ones she did sometimes prefer in them - as, after all, her only problem
with white as a colour was when it was used as the main colour, as an accent it was perfectly passable - leaving
both of her feet delightfully colourful.

She had opted against wearing her hat to the meeting, acknowledging she’d have to take it off if she did, and instead
left her hair down, to where it reached just past her shoulders after the months of regrowing it had undergone. It had
made wearing her messenger bag a bit obnoxious, she would grant you, considering the strap kept catching on her
hair, but with some meddling, it had all been worked out, and her hair sat on top of the strap now, rather than below.

All-in-all, she hadn’t dressed only for Lena, but also for Eliza, who would be coming over shortly. She had wanted to
look more put together than usual, so she had accordingly put more thought into her outfit, an amount that she really
should’ve been giving her outfits in the first place. Not to say that she just chose colours, like some sort of artistic
illiterate, but she had been less careful and nuanced with the decisions on account of her priorities shifting away
from such things.

Speaking of Eliza, Addy let her mind drift further back, to this morning. She had woken up before Kara - who had
finally, after years of working for Cat Grant, managed to sleep in past 5 - and started to get ready. Kara had woken up
not long after and assisted her in making breakfast, while at six Alex had arrived looking already hungover and tired
beyond reason.

J’onn, apparently, had given her Thanksgiving off, and as such she was even more obligated to come around for it.
She would’ve anyway, or so Kara had told her, but Alex seemed to prefer to avoid family gatherings until the last
moment possible, and to slip away the first moment she could, when it wasn’t just her and Kara.

All of that said, after Kara had managed to get food into Alex, she had gotten a bit better. Enough that, when they
saw her off, Alex didn’t look like she was searching for escape routes.

The rest of the people intending to come to the Thanksgiving dinner were to arrive significantly later than this,
thankfully. Winn was due to be there sometime around four in the afternoon, after he got off work, while James and
Lucy apparently had their own traditions to do before coming over to participate in Kara’s, meaning they’d be around
closer to five. Eliza herself was going to be coming around between twelve and one o’clock in the afternoon, which
was apparently half the reason why Alex was there so early.

Addy still really wasn’t sure what to feel about Thanksgiving, truth be told. She hadn’t particularly assumed it was
that big of a thing, honestly, especially when reflecting on Taylor’s memories about the topic. Taylor had never been
too interested in it outside of the chance of turkey sandwiches which generally followed the holiday, and even those
had vanished after Annette had died. Certainly, the Hebert household had their own traditions and rituals for
Thanksgiving, and both Danny and Annette tried to get time off to help manage the arduous task of cooking a turkey,
but it was never treated with any real sense of urgency.

After all, it wasn’t like school was closed on Thanksgiving, or stores, or even really anything of importance. It was
always overshadowed by Christmas, and Addy just... hadn’t really put much thought to it, as much as it grated to
admit.

Kara and Alex were a whole lot more serious about it, though, and as far as she could tell, so was Eliza. It was a
holiday they flew across the country for, it was a family bonding moment, and it was obvious everyone was trying.
Kara was probably going to try to be the mediator between Alex and Eliza, the fact that Alex was at Kara’s at all
spoke of her willingness to at least try to remain in contact with her family, and the same could be said for Eliza.
This was clearly something they put a lot of effort into, which just clashed with her own recollection of the holiday.

It gave her a lot to think about.

Not enough, of course, for her to miss the sharp buzz that rattled up from Jess’s desk. The woman twitched in
surprise at the noise, but didn’t seem to startle as she reached over to pick the phone off of the receiver and bring it
to her ear.

Addy watched on in silence.

“Yes,” Jess said to whoever was on the other line. Her eyes drifted up, meeting Addy’s again, this time for long
enough that she felt obligated to skirt her gaze to the side. “Yes, alright, she’ll be right in.”

The phone clattered back into its cradle, and Jess reached below her desk, pressing a button. The door vibrated with
a similar sort of drone to the one that the phone had made. “Miss Luthor is just inside,” Jess said, offering her a
placid smile and gesturing towards the door. “Go on in.”

Stepping forward, Addy rallied herself, grabbed the handle of the door, and pulled it open, stepping inside.

Lena’s office was as it always was: without much personality. The walls were almost completely made up of
windows, letting in the pale blue light, the floor was white, the walls were white, the ceiling was, as expected, white.
There were a few abstract sculptures tucked away on shelves and filing cabinets, which framed one side of her desk,
while the other side was mostly dominated by a screen display. Lena herself was at her desk, which was black and
white and about as boring as the rest of her office, a slim monitor tucked off to one side. She was perched on her
plush, leather chair, and her eyes drifted up to find Addy’s face, a focused look behind them.

“Close the door please, Addy,” Lena requested, her voice gentle.

Addy felt like squirming beneath the stare and the tone both, but managed to do as she asked, pulling the door shut
behind her and stepping deeper into the office, doing her best to ignore the glaring lack of colour. She made her way
up to the desk, pulling out another colourless chair and depositing her very colourful self down into it, pulling her bag
up so that it settled on her lap.

Lena, across from her, was silent and watching her with that same intense stare, focused beyond reason or comfort.

Finally, after a beat, she opened her mouth.

“I know you’re Administrator.”

There had been a fairly long list of things Lena could’ve said that Addy had started compiling in her head when this
all started. Requests that she quit, or that she was about to be fired, or laid off, or really a large variety of possible
options stemming from slights and difficulties Addy was well aware she had, and was doing her best to compensate
for.

That, she hated to admit, was not on that list.

Addy blinked, keeping the startling urge to jump like a spooked deer tucked away in her gut. She could feel her
muscles clench unhelpfully in response to her not immediately running away or making some kind of physical
movement, the feeling almost identical to the one she developed when she stopped her body from tapping its foot.
She did manage to keep it tucked in, however, at the cost of not really finding herself in a place to say anything.

After all, the only thing she could say was no, I’m not, or acknowledge what she said, and this was Lena. Lena
wouldn’t be making a baseless claim without evidence to back it up.

Lena took her silence as assent. “I didn’t want to drop this on you, and I really don’t want to spook you, but I had to
get it out there. I know Addy, the arm gave it away when we took on Roulette’s venue,” she explained, her voice firm.
“I don’t think I have a problem with it, your work is unaffected by it, and you’re clearly helping, but... I do need
answers. I need to know, Addy, what did you do with the black box field generator when you stole it for a night?”

Ah. That explained a lot. She hadn’t been caught just at Roulette’s or something like it, this was a building mound of
evidence stemming from the fact that Lena had somehow managed to catch her taking the black box field generator
away that night. For some reason, it almost softened the blow of her identity being revealed like this.

Taking in a breath, Addy let it out, and felt part of her unclench at last. “It was the better option,” she said, succinctly.
“We were fighting a parasite that fed off of energy, it had mutated after draining Supergirl, Martian Manhunter, and to
a much lesser extent, myself. The original idea was to overload it with power, but due to the adaptations it made, to
do so would result in vast collateral damage, and take too much energy as an aside. So, I opted to use the field
generator to reverse the draining process, and effectively made the parasite release energy rather than take it in.”

Lena let out a relieved noise, slumping a bit in her chair. Her hand came up to drag across her forehead, left exposed
due to the way she wore her hair up in a tail. “Okay, that’s good—that was what I was hoping for,” she said, relief thick
in her voice. “But that doesn’t... in fact, that makes all other explanations even weirder. It doesn’t explain any of the
other activity you got up to, the simulations, or even the people who told me you weren’t doing so well—”

Addy felt her heart drop back into her stomach, and it apparently showed enough on her face, as Lena’s voice trailed
off, and a more gentle expression came to replace the breathlessly relieved one.

“I don’t understand what was bothering you, or even what still might be,” Lena said, slowly, voice ever-so-careful.
“You don’t need to tell me, I understand privacy, but... as your friend, Addy, what’s going on?”

Addy found herself at a crossroads again, a thing she was becoming increasingly frustrated about. She had two
options, and both of which Lena seemed like she would respect. She could say nothing, shelve this away, avoid the
topic altogether and move on. It would keep the problem from influencing her relationship with Lena, but on the
other hand, did it... really matter anymore? One of the reasons she had kept it from Lena was the fact that she wasn’t
as involved with the entire process as the others were, not to mention she didn’t want her to think less of her.

She remembered how keeping it hidden had affected things with Kara, how it had spiralled out of control, how she
had been left scraping for answers with only tangential connections. How Kara had, in the end, found out anyway.

And, she remembered that she was on a smoother timetable now. She had avenues of approach, she had ways
around this, she wasn’t crawling around in the dark looking for an answer she could only guess was there because
the rest of the universe had been twisted to reflect it.

Breathing in, then out, Addy let herself give in to the urge. “My species requires a great amount of energy to remain
functional, an energy requirement we would meet in the short-term by trading energy between different members,”
she began, slowly. “It was part of the hierarchical structure my species operated under. Not all of us were equal,
some were just batteries to replenish lost amounts of energy.”

Lena stared at her. “And the long-term?”

“Isn’t an option,” Addy said bluntly. For more reasons than just lacking the tools. She happened to live on Earth at
this point, and would prefer it remained non-harvested. “My people are colony organisms, but I am alone, which led
to a series of problems that I am only now getting around to fixing. Among them is that I am running out of power.”

There was a pause, the words visibly working over in Lena’s head. “How long?” she said at last, sounding like she
was dreading the answer.

“It goes down each time I am forced to access my core to use my abilities,” Addy admitted. “If I was to do nothing? I
have in total over a thousand years of my life left remaining. Unfortunately, if I want to reverse the trajectory, I have
little over a hundred years before I lack the requisite energy to do the maintenance and upgrades even with the tools
I need without very long periods of hibernation. I’m aware that sounds like a lot, but my current situation is
untenable, as at any moment I could require my core’s energy, not to mention I’ve had to... shut down a lot of myself
to maintain this energy level.”

Lena nodded, breathing out a bit more steadily. “Okay, that’s time we can work with—but, I need to ask, how does
this relate back to what happened?”

Addy shut her eyes. “My true body—my core—is dimensionally displaced. My kind are experts at travelling between
dimensions, and by extension, so was I.” She opened her eyes, catching the curious look on Lena’s face. “Then, I
ended up here somehow. This universe has subtle but fundamental differences to the one I had existed in
previously. To reacquire energy for my core, I would need to find a way to manipulate the boundaries of this universe
as I had my last, and that has been an ongoing point of difficulty for me.

“I was using the computers at work to run simulations, testing the nature of this universe, and attempting to find
ways to recreate inter-dimensional travel,” she continued, feeling oddly vulnerable with the way she was laying it out.
“My laptop at home is substandard for such an activity, and considering my complete unfamiliarity with the rules of
this universe, I was making blind leaps to try to find answers. Permutations were getting too long, and on top of that,
I was running out of time overall.”

“So you panicked,” Lena said, with sudden clarity.

Addy stiffened. “My focus sometimes strayed elsewhere during work hours,” she corrected tightly. She most
certainly did not panic. “In the end, my behaviour was noticeable to my peers, and you were informed. Once it
became clear that simulations were no longer a viable pursuit with the time I had left, I began looking for alien
scientists and researchers who could provide the necessary missing piece that I had yet to understand. As of
yesterday, I now have a place to begin, and I predict my problems now can be solved.”

That had been one of the major issues, Addy could recognize. When she had been groping around in the dark
looking for some way to travel between universes, the pervasive, nagging worry that it just wasn’t possible for her
had been very much present. Barry’s existence, to other people, might disprove that notion, but Addy knew better.
Barry was something of an anomaly, operating through odd energy that Addy should’ve really spent more time
researching, and ultimately she had been unaware if it was just something he could specifically do due to the
presence of said energy.

She was now most certain that wasn’t the case, but it had been a potential problem.

“What about the energy source?” Lena asked, a confused look on her face.

Addy managed to restrain herself from shrugging. A viable energy source was something she could make now, and
she definitely wasn’t bitter that she had been led around on a wild goose chase for the omegahedron. “My core
exists on a barren version of this planet,” she said simply. “It consists of a large mass covering most of it, and there
are variations of that planet which I will colonize and seed with large numbers of power generators, such as solar
arrays and geothermal batteries, as well as convert raw mass into energy. This will be done in combination with
some of the research I have done into crystals, as I now have much more efficient ones to produce. With enough
time, I’ll produce enough power to no longer lose any when fully activated, and eventually produce enough power
that I gain energy even with all of my systems operational.”

Of all the ways for Lena to react, the absence of any reaction was a little worrying. Her face was blank for a few
moments, and while Addy had the strong impression she was thinking very deeply, she had to actively stomp on the
urge to tap into her brain to find out what.

“Sorry,” Lena breathed, and the lights came on again. The staggering void of emotions on her face was replaced by
something wearier, hints of age that Lena usually made effort to conceal showing through. “This is a lot to process,
generally.”

More knots squirmed their way into her stomach. Her brain churned a little, trying to find something to say, and only
came back with one thing. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she was, which was odd, because she didn’t really know what
she was even sorry for. It could be several things.

Lena’s eyes softened, and she shook her head. “No, Addy, I’m just... the scope of things has to be adjusted,” she
explained, a bit choppily. The rhythm Lena usually spoke with was gradually coming back to her voice, the
confidence behind it, but it wasn’t all there yet. “You’ve made me aware of facts of the universe that until now had
only been theoretical. Travel between universes—it’s not only theoretically possible, but it’s also practically so.”

“You will need to do a lot of additional reading,” Addy conceded, feeling the tension ebb out of her a little. “I cannot
recommend any human sources of reading material on the topic of the multiverse theory or theoretical travel
between parallel universes, largely on principle, but what exists should at least provide better context.”

After all, she had very much been in Lena’s position before. While in practice most of her insights into the universe
had been utterly unrelated to her needs at the time, there had been enough that she had gone looking for a few
research papers. In the end, most of it had been... close, but not as precise as she’d wanted, a bit like reducing the
calculation of a circle to merely 3, or possibly 3.1 in some of the better papers.

“Speaking on that,” Lena said after a moment of belated silence. “We need to talk about your productivity, in that
case. Addy, I’m going to be blunt with you, as I think you’re more receptive to it: you cannot work on personal
projects during work hours like that.”

Addy couldn’t quite manage to prevent the convulsive wince that emerged on her face. “I am well aware that I failed
at my duties in that regard.” Had she done the same in the gestalt, to say that she would’ve been used for spare
parts would be putting it very lightly. There was room for some amount of personal work, but the liberties she had
taken with her workplace were well beyond that threshold.

“As long as you know,” Lena said. “If you want to work on this, it’ll be outside of work hours, and I can help you there.
I have access to some of the more state-of-the-art computer systems available. Which brings me to my last point—
Addy, why didn’t you ask for help?”

She stared at Lena, the woman’s face had gone a bit tight, frustrated.

“For both the black box field generator and interdimensional tech, you could have asked for help with either. Even if
you just came as Administrator before I found out, I would’ve helped you. You didn’t need to work around me.” The
last few words came almost stricken, audible hurt clipping the edge of her voice. “I... I know trust isn’t easily
developed, but I had hoped you would’ve at least tried.”

Addy clenched her hands in her lap, eyes turning down to stare at the marvel of alien-adapted human technology
that was her prosthetic. She had known Lena was capable of a lot of things, but...

“I didn’t want to be let down,” she admitted quietly. “I didn’t want you or someone else to tell me it wasn’t possible.
That I was stuck slowly dying.”

The truth hurt, she had come to realize.

Lena made a sharp noise. “Addy,” she said, voice emotional. “I would’ve tried—I know we’re... not as close as you are
with Kara or Winn, but I would’ve kept trying, as long as it took.”

“Thank you,” Addy said, not entirely sure what was in her voice, just that it was thick and knotted around her throat.

Lena breathed out, a soft noise. There was the sound of shifting fabric, the creak of her chair as she readjusted
outside of Addy’s line of sight, still trained on the prosthetic. “Okay, right. Let's... you said you had an idea on where
to go from here, could anything I can offer help you get there?”

Addy pulled her eyes up, finding Lena staring back at her. “Access to a high-powered computer with my own suite of
simulation software will allow me to identify what things I’m still missing. I have a viable target range, so the amount
of time it should take is largely dependent on how fast the computer can run through the simulation. In theory, it
could be done in a day, up to a few months in the event I am very unlucky.”

Lena nodded. “Right, I’ll get you set up with that—it is for later, though. We do have a computer system that’s used by
the research teams for this sort of thing, but there’s a big waiting list for it. It’s why I was going and upgrading our
systems. We're getting a few more identical machines sent in within the next couple of weeks, and you’ll get first
dibs on one of the two. I can’t promise you infinite access, we do need it for team projects, but I can delay it being
known about for a month or so.”

Lena hesitated for a moment, her head tilting to one side.

“It’s... please don’t take this the wrong way, Addy, I honestly didn’t expect any of this to go that well,” she began, Addy
straightening at the odd tone. “I had several bad to horrible scenarios I was worried about, but... I need to know, are
you actually comfortable with me knowing your identity like that?”

Addy blinked, a bit confused. “Of course I am?” she said, not really sure where this was going. “I trust you.”

“I know,” Lena breathed. “But this is a lot of trust. My brother... if he knew Superman’s identity, there’d be catastrophic
results.”

“And you aren’t your brother,” Addy provided blandly. “If I had ascertained you were like him, we would not be having
this conversation. I would not be working for you. My belief that you are trustworthy is literal, Lena.”

That, for whatever reason, brought Lena up short. She opened her mouth, shut it, then tilted her head. “...Addy,” she
started, voice slow. “I’m sorry if this is insensitive, but you just made me remember something. Did you read my
mind?”

Addy nodded. “I do so with most people I meet,” she declared matter-of-factly, since most of the secrets were now
thoroughly out the window. Lena’s face went through a complicated mixture of expressions, but she said nothing, so
Addy continued. “Or at least for those I need to place some trust in. I discovered you had no ill-intentions towards
me during the interview, and...”

She remembered something.

Forcing herself to stare Lena dead in the eye, Addy put as much emphasis into her voice as she could manage. “I am
not Maxwell Lord’s illegitimate child, and would prefer it if you ceased thinking that.”

Lena opened her mouth, looking more confused than worried now.

Addy beat her to the punch. It was terribly rude, but by necessity, she could not let this stand. “Maxwell Lord merely
played a part in the process that allowed my mind to become what it is now. Neither my past self, nor Taylor, are
who I am in the end. He merely modified my body enough that I could reestablish connection and in the end that led
to me becoming who I am now: just Addy Queen.”

Whatever composure Lena had, it was at this point long gone. The woman was mostly gaping at her at this point,
looking terribly confused. The expression was fading fast, after all, Addy would not choose to work under anyone,
and Lena Luthor was nothing if not unreasonably intelligent and deductive for her species.

That said, what replaced the confusion was a mix of mild apprehension and what seemed to be nausea.

“You’re the result of an experiment,” she correctly deduced.

“I am one of two attempts at recreating Supergirl’s abilities,” she agreed simply. “My body is not from this universe,
nor is my core. The anomalies that came from my body being slightly different from the genetic norm on this planet,
in combination with the existence of a node in my brain that my kind used to connect up with their hosts, resulted in
this comatose body being moved around by several researchers and in one case a doctor. At some point, Maxwell
Lord procured me through an intermediary by the name of Doctor Aleksandir, and he used a different but similar
gene-editing therapy on me that was used on the being they called Bizarro.”

“Then...” Lena seemed to still be in a state of shock. “Is Supergirl psychic? Can she turn invisible?”

Ah. “No, those are abilities that, in a similar vein to my dimensional travel abilities I will hopefully regain, are derived
from my core self, which is connected to this body. As I said, it exists on a parallel barren version of this planet.
Supergirl is in fact so psychically inert, telepathy and mind control don’t work on her without a lot of effort. With the
exception of invisibility, that is merely highly advanced technology."

Lena’s face scrunched, and she raised a hand to press into her forehead. “I’m really going to have to get you to tell
me what exactly you can and can’t do at some point,” she said, sounding horribly lost. “But not now, I don’t think.”

Addy shrugged. “If you insist.”

That got a laugh out of Lena for some reason. “Well, you’re not any different now that I know all of this.”

“The only way that could happen would be if I was behaving dishonestly and you now could see the underlying
intent,” Addy pointed out. “I am not that type of person.”

“No,” Lena agreed. “You really aren’t. Actually, I’m relieved—I was honestly a little worried you would have to spend
your Thanksgiving with Maxwell Lord. He made it seem like you had a terribly adversarial relationship, and there’s
nothing like family holidays to bring that out.”

She sounded like she was speaking from experience. “I will not be having dinner with Maxwell Lord, who is not my
father, and never will be my father. I will be having it with Kara, Alex, and their mother, Eliza, alongside several
friends,” Addy explained instead of pointing such a thing out. But, with that said, an errant thought itched at her, and
she felt the sudden urge to bring it up. “Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?” she asked, feeling like she already
knew the answer.

Lena raised one brow at her. “No, I don’t have any. The remaining members of my family consist of myself and my
mother, who is more liable to try to poison me with food she had her personal chef cook, and all of the friends I have
made are on the other side of the country.”

There was an easy answer to that. “Then you could join us,” she declared. “The party can certainly endure one more
visitor, and I believe Kara would be excited to see you.”

Lena stared at her, an odd look on her face. “I... really couldn’t, Addy,” she said, sounding terribly solemn. That
wouldn’t do. “I can’t intrude on a family meet-up like that.”

“But it’s not just for family,” she insisted before Lena could work herself up again. “If Kara may bring friends, I will
too. You are my friend, and I want you to have an enjoyable Thanksgiving despite not understanding the point of this
holiday.”

Lena didn’t quite glower, but the look on her face was edging painfully close to stubborn. “You and I both know that
my presence would be divisive.”

“It wasn’t when you came to play board games,” Addy rebuked.

Lena folded her arms. “I remember differently, and last time, Kara’s mother wasn’t there.”

This was beginning to annoy her. “In that case, I will make sure that everything works out,” she stated bluntly, making
sure her tone left no room for argument. If it had to come down to it, she would wrangle dissenters just like she had
been taught in the gestalt. A softer touch may be required, and it wouldn't involve jettisoning someone out into the
void of space, but one could hardly say she was lacking in experience when it came to managing troublesome
entities.

It was quite literally her job description. That and the countless number of other things she did.

“Well,” Lena said, clearly scrambling for another way out of this. Too late, the trap was set. Propriety bound them
both, and Addy was more than capable of exploiting it. “What if they don’t agree? Alex didn’t seem too happy to see
me, and Kara might not be up for it.”

Addy levelled a flat look at her.

Lena squirmed.

Reaching into her bag, Addy ignored further spluttering from her boss as she retrieved her phone, composed a text,
and sent it off to Kara.

Within seconds, her phone was buzzing wildly in her hand. Four texts in as many seconds, each basically amounting
to ‘yes of course she can come over’.

To emphasize it, she lifted the phone up and pointed the screen at Lena.

As she did, six more texts buzzed into being.

Whatever was on them made Lena flush, a blotchy sort of thing that crawled up her neck and to her ears. More
curious than anything else, Addy turned the phone around and found nothing particularly scandalous. All it ended up
being was the same regular praise Addy had grown used to hearing Kara launch at Lena whenever there was a
chance. Whether it was when she was on the television, or when Kara just suddenly thought about her in the middle
of the day, or when Kara was telling her about her work and segued into business practices and it circled back
around to Lena.

Actually, thinking about it, Kara talked a lot about Lena.

She wondered why.

Turning away from a text that declared she would be ‘hauling out the good booze’ if Lena was coming, Addy levelled
her most stoic of faces at Lena.

“So?”

Lena hesitated, biting her lower lip. “Okay,” she said, sounding rather rattled by her own proclamation. “I’ll be around
at five, and I’ll bring some wine or something.”

Victory achieved.

Addy opened the door to find the apartment in a state of utter chaos.

Alex was seated on the couch, arms folded tightly over her chest, looking terribly unimpressed. Meanwhile, Kara’s
figure blurred in and out of focus as she deployed liberal use of her super speed, blitzing back and forth between her
room and the living room. With each lap, a new crumpled outfit would blink into existence on a nearby piece of
furniture, or the television, or the nearby bookshelves. They appeared everywhere, really, except the floor.

The outfits were already in huge numbers, and with them had come a surplus of jewelry. There was even that fist-
sized diamond Addy could vaguely recall Kara finding during their last cleaning session.

Shrugging her shoulders, as this wasn’t precisely unusual with Kara, Addy stepped inside and shut the door, finally
drawing Alex’s attention. Face rather embittered, Alex’s head snapped towards her, and a mulish look crawled over
her face.

Toeing her shoes off and pulling her bag over her head, Addy cast a wide look around the apartment, Kara not
ceasing her rapid movements. Turning back to Alex, she placed her bag down on the dinner table as she walked up
to her side. “How long has she been like this?”

Alex jutted her jaw a bit. “Since you told her Lena was coming,” she explained, sounding not particularly thrilled
about the notion.

Addy levelled the same look she shot at Lena towards Alex, making sure it was suitably intense and disapproving.

Unsurprisingly, Alex didn’t so much as quail beneath it.

“Lena is a good person,” Addy echoed Kara’s words. “She deserves to have a good Thanksgiving. Despite my own
misgivings surrounding the holiday, it is something you all celebrate, and I merely extended the offer.”

“Yeah, okay, I get that,” Alex muttered, finally glancing away and slumping a bit. Victory number two for the day. “But
what if Lena causes contention? Mom’s coming and that’s already its own issue, not to mention James getting all
edgy around her as well.”

This line of conversation again. “I expect manners out of people,” Addy began, sparing Kara a short glance as the
sudden rapid movements came to an end, catching only the sight of her ducking back into her room. Turning back to
Alex, she watched the woman give her a bit of an unimpressed look. “If people cannot live up to those expectations,
I will make them a requirement.”

Alex’s expression shifted towards wary. “Addy, you can’t—”

“Can and will,” Addy interrupted. “I have no need for mind control for something this trivial. You cannot stop me.”

That seemed to, if anything, annoy Alex more. “Yeah, because it’s that simple,” she groused. “Fine. Look, if this goes
bad, the burden to defuse this? It’s on you.”

“It already was,” Addy said simply.

Before Alex could get a response in edgewise, there was a single, triumphant shout from Kara’s room. Addy turned,
seeing Kara emerge from the archway leading into her room hefting a familiar tuxedo up.

“I found it!” Kara chirped, sounding giddy. She waved the full tuxedo around like a flag, and where it was from finally
clicked. It was the tuxedo she wore to the gala, wasn’t it? It was certainly in pristine condition. “This is the one Lena
liked. And, anyway, I like it too, it’s neat and I’m wearing it.”

Alex let out a beleaguered noise. “Kara,” she said, and for some reason Addy had the strongest impression she was
expecting something like this. “You’re not wearing a tuxedo, in your own home, to a Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I am so,” Kara cracked back, clutching the tuxedo to her chest protectively. “It’s totally cool! And normal! I’m just
being fancy because Lena’s fancy, you know?”

Alex pushed herself up from the couch, wandered around it, and stepped in front of Kara. She reached out, placing
both hands on her shoulders, and forcing an amount of eye contact that would have Addy wanting to curl up into a
ball. “We will go and figure out an outfit that fits you like that tuxedo, okay? But for the love of god, Kara, do not wear
a tuxedo to your own Thanksgiving dinner.”

Kara got a frustrated look on her face. “Why not?!” she said, sounding wounded by the notion. “It’s fancy! And other
people like it! Heck, I like it, Alex! If I want to dress up, I can! I can wear whatever I want!”

“Kara, would you like Eliza to figure out why you’re getting dressed up like that?” Alex less asked, more threatened.

Kara blinked at her with a blank expression. “Because it’s fancy? Because I like it? Eliza always wanted us to dress
up nice, and anyway, it’s for Lena.”

Alex nodded. “Repeat that last bit for me, Kara, slowly. Each word. Say it with me.”

Kara began saying it, but trailed off, her mouth silently finishing the ‘it’s for Lena’.

Her entire face went a red so blotchy Addy was worried she had suddenly started choking on something. “Alex!” she
hissed, spluttering, pushing away from her. “It’s not like that! Not everything is—is romantic! Rao! I just wanted to
show off for Lena, that’s totally platonic!”

Addy had never seen the expression that creased over Alex’s face before. It looked a lot like something in her had
just deflated, as if she had suddenly taken on much more weight than was altogether visible.

Stepping away, Alex brought her hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Midvale set us both back,” she muttered,
not even bothering to quiet her voice, considering Kara could hear everything anyway.

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?"

Alex just shook her head, stepped up, and started pushing Kara back towards her room. “Nope. We’re not talking
about this. Let's get you something that fits you like the tuxedo, okay? No more talking, move it.”

Her target was locked. Her weapon was prepared.

Addy let it fall like a guillotine.

Chop, went the stalk of celery. A lot of chops, even, because Taylor had known a lot about knives and by extension,
Addy did too. She reduced the entire stalk of it into bite-sized fragments with some quick motions of her wrist,
before reaching for the carrot. Celery was demolished, carrots were bisected and then roughly chopped; onions fell
apart in bitter defeat, their acidic fluids unable to adequately affect her eyes.

The smell of turkey filled the house profusely, roast bird smothered in a motley of spices that left everything
smelling distinctly festive. It was hard to put into words, but it was just another one of those associations that she
had come to acknowledge as part of the human condition. Sometimes, things smelled like a holiday, and she was
beholden to them.

Finishing off her carrot, she kicked the bits into the bowl at the end of her chopping board with her knife. It was to be
added to the gravy, along with the rest of the vegetables she was preparing, as Eliza had insisted on it being all
homemade.

Tradition, she had called it.

Addy remembered the carton of stock in the fridge as she reached for another carrot, and mentally called it
counterproductive.

“Perfectly chopped,” Eliza praised, glancing over at where she had neatly piled the mountain of brutalized celery,
carrots and onion. “So, what were you saying about that Hawaiian goose?”

“The Nene is a distinct species,” she picked up, having to cut the conversation off minutes ago as Eliza did more of
the hands-on work in the kitchen. “They’re most closely related to the Canada goose, having split off from them
some five-hundred thousand years ago, likely due to being waylaid onto the islands they now reside on due to
storms. They have a rather distinct call, much higher-pitched naturally than the rest of the goose population on the
planet. I believe that’s where their name came from.”

Eliza hummed, the noise muffled somewhat by the sounds of banging and clattering out in the living room. “What
drew you to the Nene particularly?” Eliza asked, raising her voice to talk over the rabble in the background. “I hadn’t
heard of them before you told me about them.”

Eliza had asked after her personal research into geese populations as a way to pass the time while they were doing
work in the kitchen, as Addy was the only person actually allowed in it. Or, rather, the only person Eliza trusted not to
mangle something. Kara knew how to make some specific and niche cultural foods, like potstickers, while the less
said about Alex’s TV dinner addiction the better.

“They’re the most endangered species of goose,” she explained matter-of-factly, reaching for the last remaining
carrot. “I have been donating a portion of my slush fund every month to help conservation efforts. I helped them
afford the legal costs to battle a claim on their island when a tech giant wanted to buy it and renovate it for use as a
mansion. The conservation group sent me a handwritten letter for it, which was very considerate of them.”

Eliza stared at her for a moment, before smiling. “There’s certainly worse places you could put your money,” she
said. “Conservation efforts are always a net positive in my experience.”

“I do have a backup plan,” Addy said, feeling rather obligated to so that Eliza didn’t think she was just throwing
money to the whims of some group she had a limited relationship with. “If the conservation efforts get overturned,
I’ll personally rehome all of them myself. That said, funding an operation to maintain their natural habitat is less
costly and more legal than abducting an endangered species of region-specific goose.”

Eliza breathed out, giving her a look that Addy couldn’t really place. “I am just glad you’re trying to do it safely,” she
said, putting a rather odd amount of stress on the last word.

All things considered, planning for Thanksgiving had gone well. Eliza had arrived more or less on the dot for when
she had claimed she was coming over, and had started working on the dinner immediately. At first, she had
hesitated to include Addy in it, but after Kara had put a knife into the stone countertop, Alex and Kara had both been
banished to wait out the rest of the day and Addy had been called in.

Her capabilities were apparently good enough to earn her praise from Eliza, which was nice.

Winn, James and Lucy were all here already, and it was just Lena that was the odd one out. She had confirmed she
was coming, but had apparently gotten caught in traffic, and was running a bit late.

Speaking of Winn and James, the two of them seemed to have reconciled and if anything became much closer, and
Lucy seemed all too happy about the fact. Alex was well into her cups at this point, but Eliza had been surprisingly
decent about the entire thing, and as a result there hadn’t been many, if any, hurled barbs.

Kara was, of course, fretting over every last thing in the apartment, but that was a given.

“Addy, can you check the turkey for me?” Eliza asked, smiling at her.

Addy nodded, kicking what was left of the onion she was working through off to the side as she maneuvered around
the kitchen space. Hunching down, she pulled the oven open, and true to Eliza’s sense of doneness, the turkey
looked very much ready to eat.

Standing up, she nabbed the oven mitts off of the surface of the stove - if only not to make Eliza panic again -
slipped them on, crouched back down, and retrieved the turkey from within, plopping it, metal tray and all, up on the
stove. Eliza wandered over, sticking a thermostat into it, and getting back a satisfactory result, if her pleased hum
was any indication.

“Alright,” she declared, glancing back towards Addy. “I’ll finish up here.” Her hand reached out, oh-so-gentle, and
brushed across Addy’s cheek, gentle enough that even Addy didn’t really have a problem with it. “Thank you for the
help, Addy. You are, by far, the most helpful cooking assistant out of my three girls. Now, go and enjoy yourself,
dinner will be coming soon.”

Addy felt herself lock into place, a warm heat crawling over her face, one she definitely couldn’t blame on her
proximity to the oven. A buzzy sort of feeling suffused both her chest and her face, and before she could become
even more embarrassed, quickly slipped away from the stove, ignoring Eliza’s indulgent smile, and off towards Kara
and the rest of the people there.

The living room was chaotic, as it so often was when Kara, Winn, James and Lucy shared any amount of space. That
said, it was a happy sort of chaos, cheer written on faces as people took sips from their beverages, most of which
were alcohol, and by extension were poisonous, but Addy had at this point grown used to the selective poisoning
habits of humanity.

Winn and James were talking rapid-fire about a hacker, Addy tuning the noise out as she wandered over to the chair
she had chosen as her own, dropping down into it.

Kara smiled down at her from where she was standing, still fidgeting. “Everything good?”

Addy nodded. “Supper should be ready at any time.”

“Look, all I’m saying is if I had money to spend, I’d be putting it on being alien or alien tech-related, okay?” Winn butt
in, folding his arms over his chest. “They’ve been hitting big nasty tech companies, and big nasty tech companies
don’t skimp on digital security.”

“He’s right,” Alex pointed out, taking a rather large swig of her wine. “It’s half the reason why the D.E.O. is even
looking into it. He’s gotten past enough security systems that it’s either an unreleased vulnerability or alien tech.”

“Yeah, but these are personal hits,” James said. “This person is only hitting companies with bad press, and that
means a connection, you know? These sorts of companies hire from the same pool of people. I don’t think it’s an
alien, I think it’s personal, and I think this person knows enough to do what they’ve been doing.”

Alex shook her head. “If these hits were connected, we probably would have an idea about it by now.”

“Well, Alex... that’s not always the case?” Winn hedged, sounding awkward. “Remember Stewart Leon?”

Alex made a face. “I wish I didn’t.” She turned to James, saw his blank look, and made to clarify. “Leon was an ex-
government agent, high-ranking, and hit a lot of information networks. He started selling it to foreign governments,
compromising a number of operations. We had to be briefed on him because he got fairly close to—”

There was a knock.

Everyone went silent and utterly still.

Another knock followed.

Kara jumped for the door, Addy following her mad, admittedly non-super speed scramble around the sofa, right up to
the door. Kara was quick to correct her outfit - a button-up shirt, slacks, and a big clunky watch for some reason -
smoothing down wrinkles and adjusting her collar.

With that, she reached out and opened it.

Lena stood at the threshold of the door, an awkward look on her face. She was dressed casually, almost as casually
as she had been coming to game night. Her hair was down, and thrown over one shoulder, and her make-up was a
lot less severe than it usually was, though the distinct bright red lipstick was there as it almost always was. She was
cradling a bottle of wine in one arm, the label written entirely in Italian, and her expression was a little nervous.

“I hope I’m not too late?”

“Of course not!” Kara breathed, a smile blooming across her face. She reached out, easing Lena in, whose eyes
strayed to the sleeves of Kara’s shirt, lingering before flicking back up to her face, a tinge of colour floating over her
face.

Somewhere behind her, Addy heard Alex let out a noisy, annoyed sort of sigh.

Closing the door behind them, Kara led a nervous-looking Lena up to the rest of them.

“Kara!” Eliza called out, glancing towards her. “Come and help me set the table up!”

Kara nodded, scrambling off towards where Eliza was, leaving Lena to just sort of hover in place.

“We should probably find our seats,” Lucy said.

Addy watched Lena just about sag with relief.

It wasn’t hard to organize the seating arrangement this time around. Addy took her seat in the top right corner of the
table, Lena sitting on one side of her, and Winn on the other. Next to Lena, there was a space left open for Kara, and
next to that space was where Eliza would be sitting. Following Eliza, it circled back around: from Alex, to Lucy, to
James, and finally to Winn.

Kara carted out the plates alongside Eliza, setting the turkey up in the center of the table while she placed heaping
bowls of stuffing, mashed potatoes, and roast vegetables along with it. A fancy-looking metal gravy boat was placed
next to the turkey, and with that, everyone settled in.

Lena, a touch awkwardly, extended the bottle she had brought towards Eliza, only now having the chance. The
woman took it, stared at the label, and seemed to boggle for a moment.

“This is a very generous gift, Miss Luthor,” Eliza said, thumb brushing over the label. “Thank you.”

“Lena,” Lena corrected, her smile still terribly awkward. “Please. It was just a vintage I had, it wasn’t much.”

The expression on Eliza’s face seemed to indicate she wholeheartedly disagreed with that, but nonetheless, she
settled the bottle down next to the turkey.

“Right—can I get the first chance to say something?” Winn started, leaning down to begin pushing himself upright.

James rose with him. “I would also like to say something, too. What I’m thankful for is—”

Alex shot to her feet and levelled a glare so uniform and completely unyielding that even Addy was mildly
impressed. Without a further word, both Winn and James dropped back into their seats, thoroughly cowed.

“I’m going first,” Alex, drunk on both poison and apparently courage, declared.

Eliza just looked on, her expression rather bemused.

Alex steadied herself after a moment, breathing out. “I am thankful for my friends, my family,” she began, voice firm.
Her eyes panned to each person at the table, lingering for a breath on Eliza and Lena. “And... I am thankful for finding
myself over the last few months. I’m just going to say it: I’m... uh, I’m gay.”

That earned some surprised responses, though not from Addy herself nor Kara. Eliza did look mightily shocked, but
the expression quickly faded, replaced immediately by a thoughtful look.

“That does explain Josie,” Eliza commented idly, Alex shooting her a perturbed look. “But I am very proud that you’re
comfortable telling me—us this part of yourself. I will always accept you, Alex, whether that means I’ll walk you down
an aisle to meet your husband or, in this case, wife.”

Alex flushed. It was, Addy recognized, not a usual expression on Alex. Alex Danvers did not flush, Alex Danvers
would oscillate between unyielding rage and bitter depression if given the opportunity, but she so very rarely flushed.

Yet, flush she did. The tips of her ears became a mightily bright shade of crimson as she deposited herself back
down into her seat and reached for her wine glass.

James took the chance to stand up next. Winn looked a bit peeved at having the next speaking slot taken, but
dutifully remained sitting.

“I am thankful for my friends,” he said softly, glancing around at them all. “I am thankful for Kara’s brightness, I am
thankful for Winn’s constant chatter, I’m thankful for Addy’s quirks that bring new dimensions to things.”

James took a breath.

“And I’m thankful for my fiancee’s love and patience with me,” he announced, eyes turned towards Lucy.

She raised her hand to reveal an engagement ring on one finger.

“Woah!” Kara chirped, nearly launching herself from her chair. “You guys are getting married?! When?”

Lucy shrugged, patting James’ shoulder as he dropped back into his seat. “Within the next year is the hope, but we
don’t have many concrete plans just yet. We... we’ve both finally settled down enough to consider it, though. I won’t
be out on tours, James won’t be on the other side of the country, it’s working for both of us.”

“Golly!” Kara blurted, Addy watching as she just about vibrated in her seat. “Congratulations!”

At that, there was a chorus of similar sentiments.

“You’re a good fit for each other,” Alex said, raising her cup.

“I knew about this for, like, a while,” Winn revealed in a happy little voice. “But I am as stoked about it as everyone
here is!”

“I wish you both a wonderful life together,” Eliza said, sounding genuinely happy.

Eyes turned to Addy, looking for her response.

“I will endeavour to find you a suitable gift for your wedding,” Addy offered. “I am very happy for you both.”

“If you can somehow mail a violent swan to my father, I will literally ask for nothing else from you,” Lucy said with
enough seriousness that Addy did genuinely consider it.

“Don’t do that,” James cut in, apparently seeing the writing on the wall.

With that, Winn was up next.

“I am thankful for my friends and my new job,” he explained excitedly. “Did you know I got a badge? Because I got a
badge. Also, there is so much I can explore and experiment with. I never really considered my skills would lead me
here, but I’m really happy they did.”

Just as quick as he was on his feet, he was back in his seat, looking longingly at the turkey.

Kara stood up next. “I am thankful for my friends and family, ‘cos of course I am,” she gushed, smiling brightly at
Lena, who looked like she was going blind beneath the sheer radiating happiness that was rippling out from Kara.
“But I... am also thankful for how I’ve changed, how much I’ve learned, over this year.” Her eyes turned, landing on
Addy. “I’m a better person than I was yesterday, and that’s a good feeling.”

Addy wanted to squirm, but managed to stop herself from doing so.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Eliza who stood up next, but rather Lena. She blushed a bit at the attention everyone placed on
her, but still managed to rise from her seat and address them all.

“I am thankful for the new friends I’ve made,” she said, slowly. “I... don’t get much of a chance anymore to be the
person I was before I had to take over the company. Each and every time I can, it’s a treasure for me, so I am so
thankful for that.”

Even James seemed to soften at that announcement, raising his glass towards her. “You make it really, really hard to
dislike you... Lena.”

That was possibly the first time Addy had heard James use Lena’s name without making it sound like it was almost
an insult.

“James!” Kara scolded. “You can’t just say things like that!”

Lucy reached over and swatted him on the back of his head. “Yeah, James, manners.”

“I will enforce them if necessary,” Addy pointed out, giving him a look.

Lena just shook her head. “No, that is high praise. I know there’s baggage between our families and friends, James,
and I’m glad I’m not exacerbating it.”

James smiled, a sharp quirk of his lips, one that Lena mirrored.

Lena sat down, just in time for Eliza to rise up to replace her.

“I am thankful for my family,” Eliza said softly, a smile creasing the lines on her face. “I am thankful for the way it
continues to grow, I am thankful for how all of my girls continue to help, instead of hurt. I’m thankful for each and
every moment I get with them, and all the people they introduce me to.”

With that, Eliza sat down, and now it fell onto Addy to make her speech.

Rising up from her seat, Addy scanned those at the table, considering what she was about to say. “I am thankful for
how I’ve changed,” she said, slowly. “I am thankful for technological advances, and I am very thankful for the new
flock of ducks I see on the bus ride to work. It is a very lovely pond. I do not know where I would be, if things had not
played out the way they did, but I feel as though I would be less happy.”

There, that should be good, right? People were smiling at her, so it probably was.

“Now! Time to eat!” Kara less announced, more commanded, and at once, people lunged for the platters of food.

Addy didn’t pay much attention to the near struggle, patiently weaving in and out whenever Kara was busy fending
off James’ advances with her fork, demanding access to the turkey skin. She managed to get a small piece of turkey
for herself - not being a particularly huge fan of meat in the first place - and a much more heaping amount of mash
potatoes, vegetables, and stuffing.

Staring down at her plate, listening to the ambient chatter, Addy was struck by the fact that she wasn’t sure whether
she would actually like the turkey or not. Taylor had liked turkey, as it was a filling food that went good on
sandwiches. That said, Taylor also liked tea, something Addy found most disagreeable when in most forms. The
only exception to that rule had been boba tea, and that mostly came down to the tapioca balls.

Carefully, she cut a piece off of her larger chunk and deposited the turkey in her mouth.

It was... dry. Bland. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, really, Taylor’s memories had confirmed exactly this,
but... it was somehow less agreeable now that she was the one eating it. She swallowed it with great effort, before
sending a considering eye towards the gravy boat. Surely, if it was too dry, she could just add more liquid, right?

...But then it might get soggy, and that would be even worse. Like warm lettuce, soggy meat was a truly foul textural
combination if not done properly.

Eyes returning to her plate, she considered the mashed potatoes. That could probably do something. She scooped
some of the fluffy mash onto her fork, speared another piece of turkey, and brought the combo to her mouth.

She chewed.

No, too much texture. It didn’t blend well, and actually made her want to spit it out. The mashed potatoes were nice,
but the dry turkey kept getting in the way. Ultimately, she managed to swallow it down, and opted to nudge the turkey
to the edge of her plate.

“I believe I will abstain from meat tonight,” Addy announced, getting a few looks. “The turkey is well made, but I am
simply not a fan of meat.”

Eliza hummed, but nodded, an understanding look on her face. “Of course, and Kara will not eat up all the stuffing
before you can get extra servings, won’t she?”

Kara, busy with cheeks full to bursting with the aforementioned stuffing, shot her a guilty look but managed to nod
without dislodging all the food in her mouth.

At the very least she wasn’t talking with her mouth full anymore.

“Do you eat meat regularly?” Lena asked, sounding rather curious. “I remember you brought wraps, but I can’t recall
if they had any meat in them.”

Addy shook her head. “The only type of meat I am truly fond of is deli cut meat, as thin as it can be, and only ever as
a way to add nutrients. Most of the time I prefer vegetables, especially crunchy ones.”

“You know, I am vegetarian for the most part,” Lena began, pausing to take a quick bite of her own turkey in flagrant
disregard for the definition of ‘vegetarian’. “I have some recipes I could give you. What’s your opinion on tofu?”

“I don’t really have one,” Addy admitted.

“There’s this really good brand of soy sausages that came out recently,” Lena gushed. “I think you’d like them, and I
think even Kara would—”

A hole in spacetime ripped into existence a foot above what was left of the turkey.

Addy’s sensors went wild. Dimensional activity screamed at her from her core, picking up on the presence, the
breach wrenched open in front of her. It was a whirling, churning vortex of blue-black, the anomaly a twisting matrix
of spatial knots. She collected as much data as she could, rising to her feet, proximity helping her sensors pick up
on it from their relatively low bandwidth—this was exactly what she needed, she could fix her problems in hours
rather than weeks—

Most of the table jumped away with a scream, Lena included.

Addy reached out, aiming to touch the frayed edges of the breach before it could close. The amount of data she
could get, she might not even need the supercomputer—

A hand grabbed her arm and wrenched her away.

“Addy!” Kara shrieked.

Tumbling back, Addy watched miserably as the breach slammed shut, the resulting small shockwave of force
sending most of the plates on the table right onto the floor. Even Lena’s hideously expensive wine was shattered
against the rocks, leaking everywhere.

Kara wheeled on her. “Addy you do not put your limbs into unknown pockets of warped spacetime!” she hissed,
anger thick in her voice even as it lowered to a near-whisper. “You also have an audience right now!”

Addy stared forlornly at the place where the breach had been, and felt a growing irritation begin to crawl up her
spine. She could’ve gotten so much information from that. “I wasn’t going to put my limb in it,” she corrected, feeling
rather waspish. “I was going to touch the edge of the wound, at most I would have lost some of the skin on the pads
of my fingers. Also, Lena knows.”

“She does?!” Kara yelped.

“Everything about me,” Addy supplied. Well, close to everything. She still hadn’t told her about her species, but she’d
get to it eventually.

“And... what does she know, exactly?” James cut in, reminding Addy that he, Winn, Lucy and... well everyone else
was still here. His face was a perfect mask of neutrality, but she could read the underlying thread of fear behind it
all.

“Yeah, I was kinda... wondering what that was about too?” Winn less said, more asked.

Addy gave it a moment to think over. “It is something Lena knows that none of you currently need to know about,”
she said diplomatically. Now was definitely not the time to bring up her power problems nor her recent progress in
interdimensional travel, in any event.

For whatever reason, that started an argument.

“It’s clearly important,” James said sharply, crossing his arms. “Why shouldn’t we know as well? We’re your friends,
Addy! Something’s up, we’ve all noticed!”

Winn, looking a bit wounded, nodded. “You haven’t been totally yourself lately, and like, I do get boundaries and stuff,
but I was hoping I could help.”

Alex, at least, had already internalized things like this and was instead staring off into the middle distance, like she
was trying very hard not to get angry.

She really must’ve been craving that turkey.

Addy couldn’t relate.

The sharp clap of Eliza’s hands meeting cut through the argument before it could really gain steam. Eliza spared
them all a glance, level and unimpressed. “I think my daughter, Alex, who I know is listening right now...”

Alex jerked, glancing back at Eliza guiltily, but was at least now listening.

“I think she should bring this to the D.E.O., where she works. Shouldn’t you?”

Ah, she was covering for Kara. Right.

Addy spared a glance at Lena, finding her boss to be looking very, very lost at the moment.

“You know?” Alex said, the slur in her voice long gone. “That’s... probably a good idea. I’m going to call J’onn.”

The D.E.O. base looked no different on Thanksgiving than it had on any other day of the year.

Addy could at least praise them for consistency.

J’onn stood in front of all of them - even Lena had been dragged over, to help debrief on the situation - and the look
on his face was somewhere between deeply exasperated and pained. “An interdimensional breach opened over your
Thanksgiving dinner,” he repeated, apparently still processing what they had just told him.

There was a series of nods around the room.

Addy, more than a little bored with the back and forth, glanced around. Alex was sitting next to J’onn, nursing a tall
bottle of water that she was chugging with great enthusiasm, Susan replacing each empty bottle with a new one.
Lena was standing next to Kara, looking at the space around her with faint fear behind her eyes, Winn just looked
embarrassed, and James and Lucy, already more than familiar with the location, were talking in hushed tones
between each other.

Addy, by comparison, was just tired. She should be using the data she just collected on the breach to compile the
perfect simulation that would fix all her problems by now, but unfortunately the D.E.O. apparently took precedence.

“We can’t rule out that this was an attempted attack, even if it failed,” J’onn pointed out, slowly pulling himself to his
full height. “We’re still waiting to see if there were any other breaches in the rest of the world, but it seems a little too
localized to be random chance.”

Ah, she should probably put a pin in that. “Not to discount the chance that this could be targeted,” Addy began, eyes
turning towards her. Everyone here knew her capabilities, anyway, there wasn’t much more to hide. J’onn raised an
eyebrow at her, sure, but she just nodded at him to show she was certain about this. “From the readings I acquired
before I was prevented from gathering more information—”

Kara coughed awkwardly.

Addy ignored it.

“This was an attempt to move from one universe to another. I can give you exact locational data if you got me a
computer, but the signature implies there was a scattershot of similar phenomenon across this part of California,”
she continued. “Or at least, the energy levels imply as much. Had they used that same amount of energy on a single
breach, all of us would likely have been inside of it when it manifested.”

J’onn tilted his head. “And that disproves an attempted attack, how?”

“It doesn’t, but it is now more likely that if it is an attack, it was an attempted attack on a population center, not
necessarily myself or Alex specifically.” It was rather odd, not mentioning Kara, but she had to keep the veneer up
that Kara was uninvolved and that it was Alex, if anyone, who would be targeted for her association with the D.E.O..
Kara would tell Lena in her own time, of course, or she would if Addy had anything to say about it.

“That and the breach wasn’t properly formed,” Addy continued, folding her hands together and feeling rather
suddenly in her element. “The most accurate example I can use that doesn’t involve fourth-dimensional geometry is
that their attempt made breaches like you might make holes, if you folded a piece of paper up into an accordion and
shoved a long metal pin through it. I imagine someone made a mistake in their topographical calculations, if this
was intentionally done.”

By the readings, they aimed for a place that didn’t quite exist, and as a result their attempt to breach into another
universe worked under improper logic.

J’onn breathed out, rubbing his nose. “I still can’t in good faith rule out an attempted attack, but—”

An alarm blared, loud and shrill throughout the D.E.O.. Such was its volume that Addy found herself cringing away
from the nearest speaker, resisting the urge to cover her ears with both hands. Everyone around her jerked much the
same, startled into motion, looking around for the source of the alarm.

“Agents!” J’onn’s voice bellowed over the alarm, the agents present in the open area immediately jerking to attention.
“Attention! That was a class-three alarm, I need to know why it went off!”

Off to the side, near the long rows of terminals and computers, someone slammed their hand down on the
keyboard. The alarm cut, going from piercing to completely silent in an instant, and that same agent jerked to his
feet, scrambling ahead. “Director J’onn, sir!”

“Agent Harris, report!” J’onn barked, his voice curt and hard. Addy watched his eyes for a moment, the way they flit
around the space. She let her gaze drift to his hands, saw the way they clenched and relaxed, as if trying to grip
something that simply was not there.

“Reports are coming in, sir—there’s been a bioterrorist attack on a local alien gathering place,” Harris said rapidly.
“Off of King’s Road, in the south of the city. We don’t know the casualties but we’re being flooded with calls.”

That was the moment when Addy’s phone decided to ring.

The entire room fell into a clipped, tense silence. Eyes, even Agent Harris’, turned to her, searching, too intense.

Feeling an onset of dread, Addy reached towards her pocket, fingers trembling as she tried desperately to remember
what the address of the bar was. Her fingers closed around her phone, and she yanked it up to stare at the screen—
the caller ID displaying Carol.

A deeply unpleasant feeling rippled through her, one that she would liken to having her stomach fall out of her belly
and land somewhere near her shoes.

Pressing the answer button, Addy dragged her phone up to her ear. “Carol?”

“Addy,” Carol breathed, relief so thick in her voice that Addy already knew. “Thank god—oh god. Addy, the bar’s gone.
Everyone’s dead.”

Not too far in front of her, Addy watched Kara’s face twist into horror. The only other person in the room who could
hear what she did.

Addy swallowed thickly. “I’ll be right over, stay away from the site, it’s being reported as biological warfare,” she
dictated quickly.

“I—okay. Me and Kori are fine, but—the bar, it’s just... Please be here soon. Please.”

“I will be there as soon as possible. I will head to the park,” she explained. “I have to go.”

“Okay, okay—we’ll head that way.”

The line went dead.

Addy turned her gaze up towards the crowd, to J’onn, whose face showed he already had a good idea about what
was going on.

“The bar was attacked,” she said. “That report is for it, I believe. I am going to go over there and attempt to help
them.”

There was a clamour of voices at that. Some of them were objections, though most of those were just telling her to
stay back until they could get a better idea about what was going on.

“This is the second time a place you are frequently at was hit, Addy,” J’onn said, voice clipped. “It is unlikely to just be
a coincidence that not half an hour after a dimensional anomaly appeared in your apartment, that a bar you are
known for going to was attacked. I would caution you to remain behind, in a secure location.”

“I don’t care,” she responded simply, already thinking about the best route to arrive at the bar. There was a horrid itch
in her brain, a tumorous thought that was beginning to swell.

What if M’gann had...

Addy’s fingers tightened into fists. “I am going.”

J’onn stared at her.

She stared at him.

The crowd watched on in silence.

He gave in first.
 329

OxfordOctopus Jul 15, 2021 View discussion

Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 33 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Jul 29, 2021  #3,231

EPISODE 33​
Addy could tell she was getting close to the bar from the lights alone.

The city below her was a sprawling network of lights, like veins crisscrossing the underside of someone’s arm.
Primarily yellow, it was as a result all too easy to pick out the streaks of red and blue near the bar, sirens wailing
distantly from the cluster of police vehicles, D.E.O. vans and hazmat teams. It cast the building, usually so tucked
away and easy to miss, in a spotlight.

For a moment, she let herself watch the people below her, scurrying like ants, carrying bodies out of the
contaminated building. She let herself be angry, angrier than she would normally allow. She let the memories of
every last person she had met in the bar wash over her, even the ones who she didn’t bother to get the names of.

How many were gone? Was Itnar?

Their deaths should be transient, problematic, certainly, but not bothering her as much as they were.

Dragging her gaze away from the building, Addy tried to steady the emotions brewing in her head. She shut her eyes,
took in a breath, and let it out. Assess the damage first, identify what caused it, proceed with elimination. There was
time later for making a larger list of the dead and gone and dealing with whatever feelings might come with that.

For now, she had to find a target.

Opening her eyes, Addy let them drop to the park a small ways below her. Aliens and humans milled in groups,
staring out across the street towards the bar with a variety of expressions on their faces. They ranged from horrified
to simply pinched, though not a single person, human or otherwise, looked remotely happy.

She scanned across the crowd, finally finding who she had come here for. Carol was off to the side, sitting on a
bench with Koriand’r, her head in her hands. If not for the slouch of her body and the other signs of emotional
distress on her body, the two of them would make quite the picture. They were both dressed up, Carol wearing a full
dress that, had they been visible, would’ve matched her eyes. Koriand’r, by comparison, had a pale, shimmering gold
dress that contrasted sharply with the colour of her skin and hair.

They had both been out tonight, somewhere fancy if Addy had to make a guess.

And they came back to the bar to find it like this.

Their clothes made her think of Lena, how the D.E.O. had shuttled her off back home after everything had been laid
on the table. How she had sent worried looks towards Addy on her walk out. How she had promised to offer aid if
they asked for it, in the case of contamination clean up and things like it.

How did Lena feel about this? About all of those dead people? What about Kara? Addy had no frame of reference for
her feelings, and it left her terribly disjointed. Should she be this furious? This angry? She was usually calmer than
this, but the thought of a place she cared about—that she had just come back to, being destroyed like that, it...

No, she was going in circles. It was bad enough that this was upsetting her this much in the first place, letting
herself spiral into whatever errant thought that was going to be was better left shelved for the time being. Addy shut
her eyes, took some deep breaths, just like she was taught, and reached for her center again.

It took a few moments, but she did find it.

Descending from the sky, Addy made sure to keep out of the general line of sight. Even if she was wearing
something to conceal her identity, she didn’t have the time to go all the way home, grab her costume, put it on, and
then head back out. It would be best not to take chances with anyone making any connection between her fashion
style and Administrator, in any event.

Landing off to the side of the park, in an alleyway that led right to it, Addy reached up and pried the motorcycle
helmet from her head, taking in the now unfiltered air with as big of a breath as she could manage. It smelled, as the
area normally did, mostly of concrete, but it beat the muggy scent in the helmet. Not to mention how the helmet
pressed against her ears—it was rather unpleasant, all things considered.

Turning the helmet around, she stared at the neon yellow colour, and quietly made a note to praise Susan for her
choice in colours. It was garish, yes, but it wasn’t black, and that made all the difference.

But for now, she had things to do.

Tucking the helmet beneath one arm, Addy strode quickly out of the alleyway, climbing the set of concrete steps that
led into the raised park area. Eyes turned to look at her, curious. She recognized some faces, including Itnar, and
there was a small flood of relief that he, at least, was still alive. She still couldn’t spot M’gann anywhere, though, and
the thought from before had her stomach twisting into knots.

It didn’t take long for the onlookers to turn away, gazes returning to the bar, though some did linger. She made her
way along the concrete path that snaked through the park, passing by ungroomed flowerbeds and trees, stalking
right up to the bench Carol and Koriand’r were on.

Carol’s head tilted up, catching her gaze, and less than a second later she was on her feet. Koriand’r, next to her,
jolted at the sudden movement, scrambling to her feet, eyes scanning the crowd around them before they landed on
her, and her body relaxed fractionally.

“Addy,” Carol breathed, slumping back down into the bench, a sharp exhale of relief filling the silence.

Addy closed what was left of the distance between herself and the other two, and finally got a chance to give Carol a
closer look. The first thing that stuck out was, despite the make-up, the pallor of Carol’s face was hard to miss, and
so were the strands of hair stuck to her forehead from all the sweat. Her eyes were nervous, glancing around, and
there was a slowly healing bruise of some sort cuffing her wrist, a bruise Carol’s hands kept fiddling over.

“I need you to tell me everything that happened,” Addy said, pushing the observations away, forcing herself to look at
Carol, not just her state.

Carol glanced back towards Koriand’r, who gave her a look in turn. Finally, her gaze turned back to Addy, and she
breathed out.

“Me and Koriand’r were out on a date,” she started, voice still shaky and the slightest bit pained. “A private outing,
just between the two of us—I... wanted to make it special, the bar is too familiar and too much what it is to make for
a good first date. So we splurged, went somewhere upscale.”

That... was not what she was expecting, but then she hardly paid attention to what Carol and Koriand’r got up to in
their pastime. She would've congratulated them, but considering the situation, she shelved the acknowledgement of
them becoming paired for another day.

“After the date, we came back to the bar—I just needed to pick up my schedule for next week, you know?” Carol said,
her eyes jumping up from the ground. She fidgeted again, legs pulling together, her body trying to draw into itself and
become smaller. “We were, I don’t know, maybe twenty-five feet away when I saw someone come out—heavily
cowled. When he turned, I thought it was J’onn, not all of his face was shadowed, and I jogged up to say hi, but when
I got close, I saw all of these cybernetic implants added to his body. And then I noticed he didn’t have a psychic
signature, in fact, he had the absence of one.”

The silence stretched for a moment, Carol taking some breaths to steady herself.

“Then people—people started screaming,” she whispered, hoarse. “White smoke billowed out of the front door of the
bar, from where he’d walked out, and it sounded so painful inside. Then this... cyborg—he attacked me.”

She raised her wrist, showing the ringed bruise.

“He grabbed me and tried to haul me closer to the smoke, I fought back, but his mind was shielded, and it was
everything I could do to stop him from it. Kori jumped in, and together we managed to drive him off, and neither of
us were exposed to... whatever they released inside.”

Koriand’r reached over and took Carol’s hand, murmuring something quietly, brushing her thumb back and forth over
the band of bruises. Carol relaxed a bit more, her expression losing its faraway quality and becoming more present,
more aware of things going on around her.

Carol took another breath in, let it back out. “Kori wanted to go inside, to see why people were screaming—she’s a lot
more durable than most of us, but... I stopped her. Because when the cyborg was trying to drag me inside, I felt... I
felt all of the lights, the psychic presences, blink out. There was nobody left in there for her to save.”

Koriand’r glanced up at her, nodded once. “I’m thankful she did,” Koriand’r admitted, voice strained. “As far as I could
tell, whatever that smoke is, it’s selectively lethal. Aliens only. The cyborg didn’t seem affected by it, and he
presumably set it off himself. I don’t know if it’s only the cyborg or some other criteria, but that’s what I could figure
out.”

Addy digested the words with a slowness that was unusual to her. She had to, each word she scraped over in her
mind, trying to find answers. J’onn’s form was itself an adopted identity—the original person to have it was Hank
Henshaw, who himself had been working closely with Cadmus. As much as J’onn had been willing to say, he had
been absolutely certain the man was dead, and yet...

There was a possibility that, like Jeremiah, Hank Henshaw had somehow survived. Cybernetics could replace a lot
of damage, Addy knew that rationally and had the subsequent memories of Defiant to prove as much.

Ignoring the growing pit of dread in her stomach, Addy refocused on the two of them, forcing the words to come.
“Was M’gann there?” Her voice was hoarse, hoarser than it should’ve been, because if she was, Addy would never
get the chance to apologize—

Her words were met with silence.

The pit grew larger, a yawning chasm of what she understood to be raw guilt. Yet, the edge of it faded as she
glanced between Carol and Koriand’r, because the two of them didn’t look grim, but rather were looking at each other
with strained eyes. Finally, Koriand’r glanced away, back at her, and shook her head.

“M’gann has been missing, Addy.”

Her mind ground to a sudden halt. “What?”

Koriand’r fidgeted, looking a bit wary of her tone. “Neither me nor Carol are too close to M’gann? She’s a good
person, but we run in different circles when we’re not with you. A couple of weeks ago, she kinda stopped coming to
work, and both of us just assumed she had gone on vacation or something like that.

“But a few nights ago, the owner of the bar came forward and asked for help finding her. He couldn’t put out a
missing person’s report because M’gann isn’t a citizen of the US, even if she’s been around for nearly half of its
existence, and it wasn’t that M’gann said she was going on a vacation and didn’t come back. She just stopped
coming to work one day, completely vanished, and nobody could find her.”

The timeline... Addy’s mind started shifting back into gear again, but not in a good way. The timeline matched up
almost perfectly with her giving blood—had she run away?

“...Addy,” Carol said, her voice sliced through with apprehension. “What do you know?”

Oh. Her silence had been damning, and maybe her expression. She wasn’t sure what was on her face right now, only
that she was growing increasingly overwhelmed.

“I...” Addy hesitated, the words curdling in her throat. “J’onn needed a blood transfusion at the D.E.O. after he had
been attacked by an Argonian Parasite. I asked her to come help, and when she refused to, I forced the issue with
her. I was desperate, and did not want J’onn to die, so I gave her an ultimatum: she could come under her own
power, or under mine.”

Carol’s face twisted sharply. “Addy,” she hissed sharply. “What the fuck?”

“I wouldn’t let J’onn die,” she explained, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. “I refused to. I had to, because if
he died, I wasn’t sure what I would do with myself.”

Carol looked at her for a long, long moment before breathing out sharply, reaching up to clasp a hand over her face.
“Fuck. I can see why you did that, but—Addy, you can’t do shit like that. Did she at least make the journey of her own
volition?”

“She did,” Addy said. “She came on her own, and I was looking to apologize, even if she wouldn’t forgive me. I am
aware it was a decision made in haste, and could have been achieved by talking it through, rather than resorting to
threats.”

Carol stared long and hard at her, before nodding once. “I expect you to do that. M’gann might not be my closest
friend, but she was still someone I worked with. She didn’t deserve that.”

A sharp pain cut into Addy’s chest, and she breathed out. “No, she didn’t,” she agreed.

“This lines up a bit too well though, doesn’t it?” Koriand’r said suddenly, glancing her way. “Your actions aside,
M’gann went to the D.E.O. to give blood to your boss, and then went missing not long after, right?”

Addy nodded.

“It’s entirely possible the D.E.O. did something to her,” Koriand’r replied bluntly.

“She could’ve run off,” Carol pointed out. “It wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to do that.”

Koriand’r shook her head. “I feel like I know M’gann well enough to say that she wouldn’t take a lot of shit sitting
down. If she was going to leave because Addy here leveraged her psychic abilities, we’d all know about it. For her to
just vanish is the opposite of that.”

The gaping maw of shame and guilt that was her stomach now grew larger, apprehension climbing into her throat. If
the D.E.O. had M’gann, she was only there because... because Addy had done what she did.

Right?

“Look,” Carol said, voice crisp and blunt. Addy jerked back into the present, breathing a bit harshly. “I’m going to text
you my address where me and Kori are going to go and hide out for a while, okay? The boss might not have been in
the bar when this happened, so I’ll try to get in contact with him, but until then, you need to go and help with this. It’s
anyone’s guess if the bar will even reopen.”

They were right. She had things to deal with now, M’gann could possibly be detained at the D.E.O. for reasons
beyond her, but nonetheless as a result of her actions. She had information that implicated Cadmus in the attack,
which in turn could help the team turn their focus onto them, rather than looking for loose ends.

“I will contact you when I have more information,” Addy explained, her voice wound tight even to her own ears.
“Thank you for telling me this.”

Carol’s expression softened, and she shook her head. “Take care of yourself, Addy. We might have to live with what
we’ve done, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be better.”

Feet touching the ground, Addy landed silently on the open platform leading into the D.E.O. building.

In the trip over, her emotions had time to blend, mix, and congeal into something else. The gnawing guilt that had
settled into her had found a place to go—it had found her anger, her indignation, and fed it. She rationally understood
that, she understood that she was unbalanced, but she could not help it.

She was just angry now. Angry at herself, and now she would find out if she had a reason to be angry at other
people.

Her entire body was taut with it, the heat of her emotions a felt thing, an experience she never hoped to have again.
It crawled in her muscles, made them clench, it fogged her skin and made her face feel utterly inflexible.

Agents had turned in response to her arrival, Susan breaking off from the crowd to jog ahead. Addy, reaching up,
pried the helmet back off of her head, and stepped down the stairs leading up to the drone platform, handing the
helmet off to Susan once she got close enough.

“Addy?” Susan asked, seeing something on her face that Addy couldn’t check for herself.

She ignored her, stepping past in silence. The agents made room for her, crawling around the space like ants, too
packed in to be comfortable, but nonetheless willing to give up what space they had just to get out of her way. The
others - Kara, J’onn, Alex, Eliza and Winn - were all at the far end of the room, around the control center, one by one
turning to look at her.

Addy watched their expressions, watched as they saw what Susan did, worried looks passed between them. They
probably thought she was here to bring news of the bar, and to an extent she very much was, but that would come
later. A piece of valuable information that would take resources the D.E.O. currently could not give without dropping
their other leads.

She had leverage, even if using it this way would be something Kara might disagree with.

Alex stepped down, half-walking, half-running, towards her. “Addy, did you find—”

Addy ignored her, looked at J’onn, and tilted her head. “J’onn, where’s M’gann?”

J’onn froze, as still as a statue, and out of the corner of her eye, Addy watched Alex just about flinch away from her,
a startled look spasming across her face.

Ah. So Koriand’r was right. She had hoped that wasn’t the case, that M’gann might have just left, gotten away from
all of this. She had known the chances of that were substantially lower than the alternative, but she had hoped.

That was her second mistake.

M’gann was in trouble, and at this point, it was completely likely to be her fault. Guilt crawled around in her stomach,
only to be snuffed back by the spike of anger she felt. They took her action, they twisted what she had done in an act
of desperation into a reason to do something to a person with who she had once been friends with.

Something about that was unacceptable. She would never claim to have been an innocent party during the incident,
but her goals had not been... this.

Neither Alex nor J’onn said anything, which in of itself was its own form of confession. Addy caught Kara’s eyes
narrowing, picking up on what was going unsaid in the moment.

“J’onn,” Addy tried again, her voice coming out dull even to her own ears. “I will not ask again. Tell me where M’gann
is.”

Finally, it got movement out of J’onn. The man glanced her way, hesitated, likely calculated the consequences of
denying her this much, and then looked away.

“We detained M’gann,” he explained, not looking at her, his eyes trained on a screen where an emergency news
broadcast was discussing the attack on the bar. “She was discovered to be a White Martian, and it was in the best—”

“Where is she,” Addy repeated, interrupting him.

J’onn finally looked at her, his face a perfectly still mask of neutrality. “She’s a threat to security,” he explained into
the silence, voice clipped. “A threat to national security, even.”

More excuses. “How does this matter?” Addy inquired, stepping past Alex, closer and closer to the stage. She felt
the rage simmering again, bubbling up in her throat. The urge to yell was ever-present, but she kept her facade of
calm. “I am a threat to national security, Kara is too. Has M’gann acted on behalf of the White Martian government?”

J’onn’s face spasmed. “We are uncertain.”

“Is she behaving in a way that correlates with White Martians as a whole?” Addy pressed, arriving at the foot of the
stage, staring up at him.

J’onn looked away again. “We are uncertain.”

“You... detained someone based entirely on that?” Kara’s voice picked up, sounding quietly furious. “Megan—or
M’gann, she hasn’t done anyone any harm. She’s not like the other White Martians even if she is one.”

“Release her,” Addy cut in, blunt, before this could stretch on any longer. M’gann had been captured and detained
because of her, because she had used M’gann to help J’onn, because... because...

“No,” J’onn simply replied.

Addy felt one of the few remaining bits of her patience and self-control begin to fray. She didn’t bother this time
around, reaching out to her core, unspooling her power, pushing it out. She didn’t use it, not yet, but just let it sit
there, active as the sun.

She watched J’onn’s face snap around to her, suddenly very much aware of the weight of her threat. He hesitated for
a moment, before grimacing. “We don’t have the time for this—”

“I don’t care,” Addy replied just as simply. “This is something I am partially responsible for, is it not?”

J’onn’s face scrunched, and he balled his fists together. It was possibly the most anger she had seen him actually
show, though even those glaring indications of his anger were quickly stuffed back behind that frustrating mask of
complete neutrality. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain this, but because of M’gann’s blood transfusion, I am
being converted into a White Martian.”

Another stab of guilt, but it was distant, overwhelmed by the ringing in her head.

“M’gann must have understood that would happen,” J’onn continued darkly, fists balled at his sides. “She told me as
much, she is very much the perpetrator of this. As far as I can tell, I am the last remaining member of my species,
Administrator, and she completed what her brothers and sisters couldn’t. She is not being released.”

The ringing in her head grew louder, and louder, and louder. Every word J’onn said, every last comment, it made
sense, but she didn’t feel that way. Certainly, she understood his anger over being the last member of his species
and now possibly having that taken away.

But the emotions were overwhelming that, making it hard to make those assessments. Breathing in, then out, she
forced her head to turn, to look towards Kara, who was staring at her with a worried look.

“Can you help me with this?” she asked, voice stilted as she tried to keep a lid on the brewing storm in her head.
Being overwhelmed was something she had experienced before, but normally it either didn’t last this long or she
broke down first. She couldn’t do either of those at the moment. She needed Kara, needed someone to help.

Kara nodded firmly, glancing back towards J’onn. “Release her, J’onn, you and I both know this isn’t right.”

J’onn’s eyes darted between the two of them, a stare levelled their way that Addy had never been on the receiving
end of before. It was cautious, wary, and cold. The sort of stare he looked at Maxwell Lord with, the sort of stare that
demanded control.

“If you don’t release M’gann,” Addy started, finding her thoughts, the inklings of a plan beginning. “I will make myself
a problem for everyone.”

J’onn’s eyes flicked to her, focusing.

Reconfiguring her power, first she omitted Eliza from the effects of her power, then increased the range substantially,
no longer trying to control anything. No, instead, she warped the signal, the nature of the broadcast, and turned it on.

Raw psychic static bathed the room they were in. Mental interference that caused headaches and bombardments of
intrusive thoughts.

Around her, every agent in proximity cringed away sharply, reaching up to clutch their heads. Some shouted, others
were silent, but they all reeled beneath it. It was a crude truck, it was not one she enjoyed doing, but it was working.

Even J’onn, a powerful psychic himself, winced in pain at the intrusion.

After a few more seconds of it, Addy turned it off. “This is a small fraction of what I am capable of,” she said, slowly.
“I will grind this entire operation to a halt until M’gann is released. I can render this entire building a mental hazard if
need be. I am giving you one last chance, J’onn, release M’gann.”

She would need to fix this, too. The first step was getting M’gann out, getting her to safety, and later J’onn’s
problems could be addressed. Biological manipulation wasn’t completely outside of her wheelhouse, though at this
current moment it certainly was without a larger configuration, but it wasn’t something she was entirely unfamiliar
with.

Kara looked at her, giving her an approving nod, apparently for her restraint, before glancing back towards J’onn. “I’ll
do the same,” she said. “Not the psychic interference, but if need be I will make myself as much of a problem as
Addy can be.”

That, it would seem, tipped things into their favour. J’onn’s face twisted into a sharp grimace, and he shook his head,
glaring at the both of them. “This is a mistake,” he said. “But very well, I will release M’gann.”

Addy stalked down rows upon rows of empty, plain white cells, each one fitted with forcefield doors.

Behind her, she could hear J’onn, Alex and Kara following after her.

“Kara, we couldn’t know if M’gann was a threat—” Alex was saying, had been saying since they started walking. Each
one was a justification of some kind, and not particularly good ones either. There wasn’t a lot of passion tucked
away in any of it, just words, grasping at straws for a way to explain herself. Absolutely none of it had any conviction
behind it, leaving nothing to indicate Alex believed even half of the things she was saying.

Kara’s intake of breath was sharp in the quiet hallway. “Alex,” she said, voice clipped but somehow calm. “Be quiet.”

Addy reached out to her powers again, pulsing it. The returning ping was where it was when she had done this the
first time, just a few more cells down. Her presence was bright, not quite as powerful as J’onn’s, but still more sharp
and easy to identify in comparison to human brains.

“You should understand some of what J’onn’s going through,” Alex cut back in, surprisingly. “Surely you know that
not all aliens are good, that some of their cultures are evil. Wouldn’t you react the same way about a Daxamite?”

“I really hope I wouldn’t, Alex!” Kara snapped, anger finally audible in her voice. “I, personally, thought I had grown at
least a little as a person over the last year. I hoped I had adjusted to the fact that not everything is black and white in
terms of morality, and I would really hope that even if I had a head full of unpleasant comments on Daxamite slavery
and warfare I would not detain them like this without cause!”

The ringing silence that followed was close to deafening, but at the very least Alex didn’t seem to have anything to
say in response to that.

Addy stepped out, stopping in front of her destination, and forced herself to turn to look into the cell.

M’gann was in there, sitting on a bench left up against one of the walls. She was in her human form, hands folded in
her lap, with a blanket placed off to one side. Her eyes were shut, but the stiffness in her figure made it clear she
wasn’t sleeping, merely resting, at best. She hadn’t seemed to notice them, despite the yelling—the cells were
probably soundproof, in that case.

On one ankle, there was a sleek metal shackle of some kind, with a series of blinking lights on the side of it.

“Open it,” Addy said flatly, not even bothering to look at Alex or J’onn.

Behind her, there was some shuffling before, finally, the sound of Alex walking closer picked up. She came to a stop
next to Addy, leaning down to press a series of numbers on the keypad next to the door.

M’gann’s head jerked up in response to the button presses, head snapping around to stare at the four of them. Her
eyes were wide, a mixture of emotions crawling over her face, among them guilt and, even worse, fear.

Addy was the one who got them to this point. She had to fix it.

Finally, with a last, long beep, the forcefield covering the door fell, dropping away and leaving nothing but air between
M’gann and freedom.

“M’gann, you are now free to go,” Addy said, keeping voice as calm as she could manage.

M’gann stared for a moment, confused. After a few more seconds, she managed to gather herself and get to her
feet. “I... didn’t think—”

Addy’s eyes flicked down to the shackle on her ankle. “One moment,” she said, stepping forward.

M’gann froze, but didn’t react otherwise as Addy hunched down, reached out with her flesh arm, and promptly tore
the metal shackle off of her leg with a single sharp tug of her hand. It fell apart in pieces, circuitry scattered across
the ground, a few wires hissing with electricity before going utterly dead.

Wordlessly, she discarded the larger chunk she had torn off, tossing it into the corner of the room.

“Addy, that was government property—” Alex began.

Addy did not let her finish. “I intend to bring you to Carol’s place, given the situation, I feel as though you could use
both the support and the protection,” she interrupted, ignoring Alex’s sharp hiss of annoyance. “Is that agreeable?”

M’gann blinked, eyes flicking between her and the rest of the group. “Yeah—it should be. I’m not sure how long it has
been, but it’s possible I don’t even have an apartment anymore. Rent was due soon, I think.”

Solitary confinement muddling with the passage of time. Problematic, she would have to inform M’gann of the date
and time on the trip over.

Stepping to the side, Addy gestured for her to step out. She watched M’gann stumble, taking a few moments to lose
the stiffness that came from a lack of movement over a prolonged period.

Turning her gaze away, she stared at J’onn. “I will return to debrief you on what I have learned of the incident at the
bar once I have made sure M’gann is safe,” she declared.

J’onn merely nodded curtly.

Addy looked back to M’gann, took in a breath, and led her away.

Addy watched Carol hand a cup of tea over to M’gann, who took it with careful, shaking hands, thanking her in a
terribly quiet voice. M’gann herself had been quickly wrapped up in a series of quilts and blankets, covering the
majority of her body in a layer of lumpy fabric.

Off to the side, Koriand’r was deeply in thought, staring up at the ceiling from where she was sitting.

Addy felt detached from the moment, really. She was only here because she had not yet been told to leave, and
honestly wasn’t entirely certain what to do with herself. The anger had faded with the trip over, reduced down to low
simmering embers, and that let the guilt take center stage again. It was exhausting, having emotions, she was more
than tempted to find a workaround to dull them entirely, but didn’t.

No, this was a punishment in its own way.

Carol’s house was a mixture of pastels and dark leather, an almost even split of the two. Leather jackets with metal
spikes lining their surface hung side-by-side with floral blouses and pale pink raincoats. An umbrella that was
patterned with pale yellow paw prints sat in a skull-themed umbrella holder, next to a goth-looking, pitch-black
umbrella. There were other things, too, the art on the wall ranged from flaming skulls to carefully painted images of
nature.

She wasn’t sure whether or not both Carol and Kori liked designing things this way, or if one of them liked one thing,
and the other another. If it was the latter, she most certainly didn’t know which would line up with who.

Eyes drifting back from the walls, she caught M’gann’s gaze, the way it lingered on her, wary and careful and a whole
lot of other things Addy was having a hard time deciphering.

Addy breathed in, let it out again, before stepping forward.

“I’m sorry, M’gann,” she said, quietly. “What I did to you was something I was aware was not right to do, I expect
other people to take my own desires into consideration, and yet did not extend the same privilege to you. I ignored
your boundaries because I was afraid of losing someone, and in doing so I hurt you in more ways than just one.
Because of my actions, you were detained by J’onn, and altogether I have hurt the same person I acted so poorly to
save. The things I did were poisoned from the very outset, and I understand that there may be no forgiveness in
this.”

M’gann stared at her for a time, quietly taking sips from the cup of tea she was cradling in her hands. Steam wafted
around her face as she blew on it a few more times, before finally sighing. “I’ll... need time, time for myself, time to
deal with this,” M’gann admitted, voice a bit uncertain. “But... I expected this to happen, Addy. I saw this coming, it
was why I was reluctant to do so in the first place. I knew the consequences of my actions, but I didn’t want J’onn to
die any more than you did, and I wanted to help. I just knew the consequences would leave everyone involved
unhappy.

“I can’t say I’ve forgiven you immediately,” M’gann continued quietly. “But it’s... more complicated than you taking the
whole blame. I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I could’ve done it better, how things might’ve worked out. If I
had told you I was a White Martian, we could’ve talked about the consequences of it, come to a decision. You still
did force me, coerced me under threat of mind control, to do it, and that’ll... that’ll take time for me to come back
from, so I will need some distance for now, but... I understand, Addy, and I think with time I think this wound can
heal.”

The words hurt, but it wasn’t a totally bad hurt for once. Guilt gnawed, her anger raged, she still felt betrayed and
sharply disappointed in the actions of people she knew, but it wasn’t, for once, completely overwhelming. The
feelings were easier to swallow, to acknowledge as mistakes.

She would be better, next time.

“The D.E.O. currently has everyone working on the attack on the bar,” Addy explained matter-of-factly, addressing all
of them, instead of just M’gann. “If they do come looking for you, M’gann, contact me through Carol or Koriand’r and
I will make a point of discouraging further action against you. As it stands, I must return to pass on the information
Carol gave me about the bar. I apologize for the interruption, and I hope your recovery is smooth.”

Turning away, Addy made for the door.

“You did the right thing.”

She paused, glancing back, finding Carol looking at her. Her face had lost the harsh, rocky edge it had maintained
until recently. She wasn’t smiling, she still looked grim, but it wasn’t as angry as it had been.

“Doing this, it means you’re not evil, Addy,” Carol explained. “I can’t speak for M'gann, I won’t, even, but... you did
what you could to repair the damage you caused, and that’s sometimes all you can do, remember?”

Addy thought back to their first big and personal conversation, the one when Kara had been infected by red
kryptonite and she had yet to know about it. She had thought Kara’s anger had been caused by what she had done to
Indigo, and that had played a part in it. She had asked what to do, what she could even do, and the sentiment Carol
had given her then was not terribly different from the one she was giving her now.

Nodding once, Addy spared M’gann one last look before turning back to the door.

The D.E.O.’s medical bay had been somewhat repurposed as a lab for the time being, largely for access to the
various state-of-the-art scanners and workstations. She had found herself shuttled back into it not long after arriving
by a wary but relieved Susan, who had commented on her calming down. Addy had said nothing in response to it,
not really in the mood for conversation, but Susan had accepted that, as she always did.

The hour was now closer to the morning than it was to the night before, and Addy could feel it. Like her anger, her
adrenaline and focus had waned with time, growing murkier and distant. The anger that she now felt was cold and
flinty, but muffled, not the burning hot chunk of coal in her stomach that it had been.

Kara, off to her side, looked to be in about the same place. She looked more awake than Addy felt, but the
expression on her face had waned from apoplectic to just incredibly indignant about what happened.

Eliza, a few paces away, gestured at the screen of her laptop. “We brought a sample of the contagion back from the
crime scene, and we’ve confirmed it’s a virus,” she explained matter-of-factly. “That said, whatever this is? It’s very
alien. The DNA sequence is unique, but for a while, I thought it was just an alien virus of some kind, until I
remembered...”

She turned back to her laptop, bringing up two images. Side-by-side, it was a pair of DNA sequences, almost
identical for but the later ends.

“We found fragments of Kryptonian DNA within the virus,” Eliza explained matter-of-factly. “The virus itself is
incredibly attached to these fragments, I’d say it’s almost built around it, and there are signs someone tried to
remove it, before giving up. We found, in a similar vein, human DNA in a similar configuration added to the virus as
well. I’m unsure, but... it’s likely that the virus cannot affect either Kryptonians or humans, and only everything else
that can reasonably be infected.”

Kara stiffened, mouth opening and closing. “What?” she asked at last. “Why would anyone—how could anyone? The
Kryptonian genome is complex, you’ve done research on this, right? How... even if someone got my DNA, it wouldn’t
explain being able to make a virus like that from it. Humanity is hundreds of years away from that.”

Eliza nodded once, glancing at J’onn and Alex, who both had taken up residence on the opposite side of the room to
Kara and Addy. “You’re right, Kara. Whoever did the engineering on this virus was highly advanced, to the point that it
was unlikely to be a human. As I said, the virus isn’t built from Kryptonian DNA, it’s just highly attached to it—
arguably designed to contain it.”

“Cadmus is likely to be the one who planted the virus,” Addy cut in, glancing around the room. “I spoke with Carol
about it. She and Koriand’r were almost at the bar when it happened, and a man who emerged from it looked
identical to J’onn’s human form, albeit with cybernetic implants. He attempted to force Carol close enough to the
aerosolized virus to get her infected, but failed in doing so. Going by his proximity, it’s out of the question that he
wasn’t exposed to the virus, and now his immunity is almost certainly unrelated to the implants he has.”

J’onn froze again, jaw clenching, before shaking his head. “That would have to be Hank Henshaw,” he explained
tightly. “Who should be very much dead. I pushed him off of a cliff in an unexplored part of Peru, but... considering
how Jeremiah survived that trip? It’s not impossible that Hank Henshaw did too.”

“Then Cadmus is responsible for this,” Kara said tightly. “But... Cadmus couldn’t have created the virus. If it’s alien in
origin, then I know where I can find out more about it.” Her head turned towards Addy, looking at her. “I’m going to
bring the sample of the virus to the Fortress, do you want to come with me?”

Addy nodded.

Kara looked back at the rest of the group, frowning. “If I can’t find anything there, we’ll circle back around, but this
has Kryptonian DNA in it, and if any place would know about it, it would be the Fortress.”
Last edited: Jul 29, 2021

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Threadmarks: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 34 View content

OxfordOctopus She/Her
(Unverified Jackanape)

Aug 5, 2021  #3,259

 EPISODE 34​
Ice and crystal creaked, resonated in a way that, had Addy not been listening for it, she wouldn't have picked up on.
Crystal scraped against crystal, like shifting tectonic plates, as the door to the fortress gradually eased itself open.
From within the fortress, a shaft of pale-blue light was cast out over the environment, a narrow band that illuminated
the frigid dark that swallowed the arctic this time every year. Wind pressed, drawn towards the opening mouth of the
fortress, towards what little heat was likely to be found within, and disturbed the snow that had settled over the
landscape, sending powdery clouds in every which direction.

Addy stepped to one side, narrowly avoiding a falling chunk of frozen snow, which shattered against the ground like
glass. A few more lumps of snow and ice fell as the door finally slowed to a halt, raining down intermittently on their
surroundings.

Off to one side, Addy watched Kara set the golden key to the fortress back down on the snow with a breath.

The only thing illuminating their surroundings was the light from within the fortress and the starry sky overhead, not
that the latter provided much in the way of appreciable visibility. Addy was not even remotely a fan of her limited
low-light vision, but all things considered, Taylor's had been measurably worse in more ways than just that, so it was
at least something.

Dusting off her skirt, Kara pulled herself back up into a stand and cast a look back at her. Kara's face was brittle, a
sort of tightly wound expression that Addy couldn't put any real emotion to.

Kara breathed in, let it out, the air around her face fogging. "Let's go."

Wordlessly, Addy followed after Kara as she started forward, her boots crunching against the rigid snow beneath her
heels. She would like to revel in the feelings of the crystals around her, the way she understood them significantly
more than she had in the past, how she could pick up on their baser frequencies, but they weren't here for fun. They
were here for something serious, and thus, Addy kept both her thoughts and her enjoyment of pacing across the
crystalline ground to herself.

The fortress looked as it had the few other times she had been there. That wasn't to say she could recall both with
much clarity—the first time she'd come around had been for Indigo, and she hadn't dallied, whereas the second time
around she had been brought there for medical aid. Most of the memories for the second incident were particularly
blurry, not incomprehensible, but certainly not as clear as the first.

Tall crystal walls formed a natural-looking, hollow interior. They stretched tall, tall enough that even with the crystals
themselves letting off a faint ambient light, it was rather difficult to pick out the details near the very roof of the
structure. It was still vast and empty, without any appreciable furniture or any signs of personality, but then Addy
could recognize that it wasn't here to serve a personal purpose. Clark, for better or for worse, had taken the gifts of
his planet and made a sanctuary for himself and a vault for the knowledge he had been bestowed.

Addy, at the very least, could respect that. Though she was not so ignorant of her own vices to not admit the fact
that everything being made out of crystal played a large part in her leniency in judging his design choices.

Before she could get more than a few steps in, Kara's hand lurched up from the side, forming a barrier in front of her.
Addy felt herself pause, her gaze slipping over to Kara, who was staring worriedly towards the terminal, lips a tight
line.

"Something's not right," Kara said, slowly, her eyes flicking back and forth at speeds Addy could only just barely
follow.

She heard it, then: robotic parts whirring. Eyes slipping away from Kara, addy tilted her head towards the ceiling as
she watched Kelex descend from what appeared to be a hidden charging or repair station, fitted into the side of one
crystalline wall. The crystals closed the gap it had emerged from, returning it to the smooth, lineless surface it had
once been.

Kelex paused, barely a few meters above them, and observed them both in silence. After a few more seconds, the
bluish tint of its head transitioned, changing into a reddish-purple hue. "Intruder detected," the robot declared, voice
tinnily echoing through the space. "Notice: intruder, vacate the premises immediately."

Kara, to her side, jolted. "Kelex—"

"Notice: Mistress Kara Zor-El," Kelex interrupted, head not swivelling away from Addy. "Interference is not advised as
of this time. Repeating warning: intruder, vacate the premises immediately."

"Kelex!" Kara barked, sharp and almost angry. "Status!"

Kelex merely ignored her. "Failure to begin retreat has been acknowledged as resistance," the robot declared, and the
purple transitioned fully to red. "Beginning removal."

Kelex's head - resembling, in a sense, an old CRT monitor in shape - glowed, a bright spark of energy that swallowed
up the details of the metal that contained the screen. Addy slipped to the side, just quick enough to avoid the
accompanying burst of energy that leapt from the screen to where she had been standing. The beam slammed into
the crystal floor with a noise, one that rattled up through the entirety of the fortress, a resonation that carried itself
back and forth, making the entire structure ring with violence.

A second later, Kelex was bisected by a pair of lasers; Kara's own powers more than capable of destroying the robot.
Its chassis exploded, shrapnel raining down over the ground in scattered clusters, each one adding its own ring to
the gradually weakening song she could still hear in the crystals.

Off to the side, Kara was breathing hard despite her lack of strenuous activity, her eyes trained on Kelex. Her eyes
were hard, bitter, and while it wasn't for the first time, the accompanying muttered curse in Kryptahniuo was a good
enough sign as any that she was upset. "At least there are repair bays for this type of thing," Kara muttered after
another moment, glowering at the shrapnel. "Not that any of this makes any sense. Why didn't he recognize you?"

Addy's eyes shifted back to the shrapnel, and an idle thought pushed itself to the surface of her brain. "It did not
identify me as unknown," she pointed out. "Just that I was designated as an intruder."

Kara glanced back at her, considering her words. "That still doesn't make any sense. The only reason you'd be an
intruder is if you were unknown, and Kelex helped map your bio patterns to make sure even as your body changed it
would be able to recognize you. Kelex is an attendant robot, Addy, it's not supposed to attack under most
circumstances."

"Tampering?" Addy inquired, glancing back towards the door to the fortress. To say that this place was difficult to
get to would be underselling it. The fact of the matter was that most individuals didn't even know where it was, let
alone had the means to both arrive at the location - a piece of icy shelf surrounded by arctic waters - and access it
through the use of that abominable key of Clark's.

Kara made a noise, eyes scanning back across the environment. Looking for threats, by Addy's guess. She could
approve. Her scan came to an abrupt halt after a moment though, landing back on the central terminal to the
fortress and the platform it was raised on, her eyes narrowing into slits. Without waiting another moment, Kara
started forward, walking towards it with long strides of her leg.

Obligingly, Addy followed after her, stepping around what debris she could, and over what she couldn't.

Kara's steps faltered, then ground to a halt, her eyes panned down, and Addy followed them.

On the stairs leading up to the terminal was a puddle of frozen blood. Not a particularly large one, barely the size of
a CD, but nonetheless the bright red stood vibrant and harsh against the surroundings.

Kara's eyes jumped up, towards the terminal, as Addy walked up to join her at her side. More bits of blood, these
ones located on the terminal, smaller puddles and thin smears.

Wordlessly, Kara jogged up the few steps to the terminal and leaned forward, pressing her hand into the surface. The
terminal lit up, the crystals around them resonating beneath the new activity, and a sequence of Kryptonian glyphs
flashed across the air in front of her.

Kara frowned, then glanced back at her. "Addy, can you scan the area for people?"

Good idea. Wordlessly, Addy reconfigured her core and sent out a pulse. No control, just information, meaning she
could spread the field fairly wide, wide enough that it filled every last inch of the fortress, plus a small amount extra.

There was only one returning ping—Kara's.

"Nobody else is present," she explained, glancing Kara's way.

Kara's mouth pinched more tightly, and she turned back to the terminal, typing through a series of glyphs before
finally letting out a breath. "God damn it Kal," she muttered as additional screens began to pop up around her, an
actual interface now available. "If you got hurt and someone reprogrammed everything I will be so upset..."

"I believe we would know if he was injured," Addy found herself pointing out, if only to quell the uneasiness in Kara's
voice.

Kara just shook her head, bringing up a few more screens. Addy spared a glance over the glyphs—incident and
security reports, it would seem. "You'd say that, but once I only found out he had gone missing because it was on the
news," Kara explained, a thread of bitterness shining sharply through her voice. "He's not really good at keeping me
up-to-date sometimes."

Finally, after a few more moments of prodding, she stepped back. The interface fell away, blinking out of existence,
and was replaced entirely by a holographic display. It was tinted in sharp blues, with the rest of the colour spectrum
giving only slight touches to the hologram, but it didn't stop her from recognizing who was being displayed.

It was J'onn. Or, rather, Hank Henshaw, she supposed, going by the pieces of technology that had been implanted
into him. His leftmost eye, from brow to just below his cheekbone, had been replaced by a riveted panel of metal
with an additional camera lens wedged into it. There weren't many other overt signs of modifications, but that was
hardly indicative of much—the heavy cowl he wore over his entire body made it nearly impossible to make anything
out underneath it.

On the hologram, Henshaw marched towards the terminal, his pace only halting as Kelex slipped into view. The
robot floated in front of Henshaw, while the man himself reached into one pocket.

"Intruder detected," the recording declared, Kelex's tinny voice audible. "Notice: intruder, vacate the premises
immediately."

Wordlessly, from within his pocket, the image of Henshaw dragged out a thin vial, popped the cork, and poured the
liquid over his hand. What he didn't catch spilled to the ground exactly where they'd found the first pool of blood,
though no small amount of it remained smeared over the man's palm.

In the recording, Kelex halted, head tilted to one side. "Miss Addy," it said, sounding confused. "Your biological state
has seemed to have regressed, and the balance of your genetic material is worryingly skewed towards human. I insist
you undergo an immediate medical screening."

"That will not be necessary," Henshaw said flatly, and the recording promptly ended.

Kara stared wordlessly at where the recording had once been, before glancing back at her. "They had your blood,"
she said, matter-of-factly.

Addy acknowledged that much with a tilt of her head. "It does not entirely surprise me, they did bring the researcher
who oversaw my modifications into Cadmus."

Kara took in a sharp breath. "Addy, you have nigh-unrestricted access to the entire fortress, if what Kal told me is
true," she explained, stepping back towards the terminal and beginning to type again. "They could have taken
anything out of here, and I don't even know half of what Kal had in that armoury of..."

Kara blinked, stared at the glyphs in front of her.

"They didn't take anything from the armoury," she said, confused. "There's no record of it, and you don't have the
permission to wipe it. Then... what did—"

Another few taps, and the display changed, leaving just a single line of glyphs.

Kara stared vacantly at it. "Project Medusa?"

As if on command, the terminal again flickered. The glyphs scattered, pulling away to the fringes of the holographic
display, before something else came to replace them. A figure took shape, becoming more distinct over the
following few seconds, as though static was being gradually siphoned away.

In the place of the glyphs, the top half of a man was now projected. He was an older man, late forties by the look of
it, but none of that stood out to her. For all that the display lacked an appreciable colour range, it was basically
impossible not to see all the features the man shared with Kara. It was incredibly distinct, more than even the ones
that Kara and Clark shared between them. It was the shape of his nose, the quality of his hair, the arch to his brow
and even the curve of his jaw.

The man smiled, skin wrinkling in all the same ways that Kara's did whenever she smiled. It was the type of smile
that would give people laugh lines well into their future, carved out through moments of great happiness. "Hello,
Kara," the projection said, the synthetic twang to his voice not quite managing to smother the composed quality of
his voice.

Kara blinked at the image a few times, looking like she wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. "...Dad?"

Ah. That would explain it. Addy glanced between Kara and the projection for a moment before stepping forward,
climbing the few stairs up to the terminal, and taking her place at Kara's side.

The hologram didn't acknowledge her, but then she hadn't expected it to. The eyes of Kara's father remained trained
on Kara herself, though his body shifted so that he could fold both arms behind his back. "What do you wish to
know?" the hologram asked, voice a complete monotone.

Addy watched the realization settle in for Kara. Her face fell minutely, less than Addy had truthfully expected it
would. The reality was that, as she had come to expect from Krypton, none of their programs were truly sentient,
even if seeded with knowledge. She had picked up on that much when seeing Kara's mother - Alura - as a hologram.
They might have a degree of initiative—Alura had seemed plenty interested in documenting her as a new species—
but they weren't entirely real.

Kara breathed in, then let it out, visibly taking a moment to ground herself. "Uhm," she hesitated, swallowed, the gulp
noisy enough to echo. "What... what is Project Medusa?"

"Project Medusa: a weaponized virus that I created in defence of planet Krypton," the hologram replied matter-of-factly.

Kara froze, her entire expression locking up as melancholy was replaced by horror. "Wait," she breathed, limbs
regaining motion. "A virus you created?" The last few words came out terribly brittle, like Kara already knew the truth,
but was afraid of it nonetheless.

Addy... Addy understood that feeling, knew it personally. Wordlessly, and against some of her comfort, she reached
over and touched Kara's shoulder gently. Kara turned to glance at her, but upon seeing no urgent problem, that this
was merely a display of comfort, her posture sagged ever-so-slightly, relaxing into the touch.

"It was a joint partnership between the Science and Military Guild," the hologram continued, eyes still entirely trained
on Kara. "We bioengineered the virus to attack non-Kryptonian physiology. In the event of an invasion, Project Medusa
could be deployed to kill all alien combatants, while keeping our civilians and infrastructure safe from harm."

Kara stared vacantly at the hologram, her body tensing again, even despite Addy's touch. Her expression shifted
glacially, and Addy watched as horror turned into something like nausea. "But Kryptonians weren't the only ones
living on Krypton," she replied, voice hoarse.

Kara's father shrugged, an emotionless upwards tilt of his shoulders that had Kara almost flinching at it. Possibly an
actual behaviour the man used, but not one she expected to see from his simulacrum. "They were within the
boundaries of what was agreed to be an acceptable loss of life, given the alternative," the hologram supplied, voice still
monotone. "It would be a tragedy, but an occupation of Krypton was considered a worse outcome."

The tension reached a peak, and Kara almost lunged at the hologram, nausea turning to anger as Addy found her
hand falling free of Kara's shoulder. The woman stalked forward, up to the terminal, though notably didn't touch it.
"Growing up, you told me your work was saving lives!"

Addy wanted to tell her she could get nothing out of the hologram. Her father was dead, alongside the rest of
Krypton, and whatever this was, it was a pale imitation of what had once existed. She could create something like
this for Taylor, something that contained her knowledge, but not who she was, nor the intricacies of her personality
and motivations. She knew these types of constructs personally, because it had always been a temptation just to try,
just to see if she could get even a fragment of Taylor back.

She had never done it, though, because she knew the reality of the situation and how much worse it would be to
have to snuff Taylor out a second time after it failed.

But she didn't say a thing. She didn't need to.

The hologram did it for her.

"I was saving Kryptonian lives," it explained, voice rote, and Addy knew it was the most complex explanation on his
motives that Kara was going to be able to get out of it. "It was the perfect weapon."

Kara stared at the hologram for a long, long moment, before finally letting out a breath. "I should've expected this,"
she whispered, voice rattled. She reached out and, with a few taps, dismissed the entire display, her father's visage
shimmering out of existence, replaced once again by the floating interface. "A perfect weapon. Just like that perfect
prison, huh?"

Addy said nothing, because there was nothing she could say. She reached out again, though, pressed her palm into
Kara's shoulder, and felt her relax minutely. She did what she could to help, because she knew anything she would
say wouldn't be able to.

Kara glanced back at her, trying for a smile but only managing to provide her with a sharp grimace. "I... I'm going to
check to see if Henshaw somehow got into anything else that was kept here, okay?"

Addy let her hand fall, breathed in, and forced herself to say what she didn't want to. Kara was clearly upset, she was
rattled, and she didn't need this additional piece of information.

But it was necessary. It was what Addy had noticed.

"Kara, how did he know to look for Project Medusa?"

Kara froze for a breath, then her entire face scrunched, eyes slammed shut, and she turned back to the terminal. Her
breathing was choppier, harsher, and her fingers spread across the terminal to an ominous creak as the materials
weathered the loss of her control.

After a moment, Kara recaptured her calm, and let out a long, tired breath. "I think we both know there's only one
answer to that question, Addy."

They had been right the first time, all the way back when their biggest problem was a potential assassination of the
President.

Cadmus had somehow acquired a Kryptonian, and not any Kryptonian, but one who knew about something as
secretive as a genocidal, biological weapon like Project Medusa. Something that, in all likelihood, not even Clark had
known about.

Addy watched Kara pass the data crystal off to Alex, who quickly turned away, back towards the computer, and
slotted it into the kludgy-looking add-on that Addy had the distinct impression Winn was involved in making. The
monitor lit up, displaying a progress bar as it went through the motions of processing the data on the crystal, and
after lingering on it seemingly just to be sure it was actually loading, Alex turned back to the rest of them.

Kara strode back over to her side, letting out a breath.

The room they were currently in was one of the numerous research labs that Addy had come to realize were tucked
away in the D.E.O.'s main building. In the interest in honesty, Addy would admit that the D.E.O. having a research lab -
or several, at that - didn't particularly surprise her, nor was it unusual for them to have one in the first place. The
building the base was located in wasn't the tallest high-rise in the city, but it was certainly still rather tall and full of
people, and the D.E.O. claimed primary control over the vast majority of it.

The fact of the matter was, if there was a place to find secretive test labs, it would probably be in one of the tens of
floors the D.E.O. was obligated to share with a scant few other government agencies, all of which operated under
similar levels of secrecy.

In the time since they'd returned and had been shuttled off to this particular part of the building, Kara had been filling
everyone in on what they'd found. From describing what Project Medusa truly was, to the fact that Hank Henshaw
had used Addy's blood to bypass security measures in the fortress—it had apparently left everyone in a grim and
unhappy mood.

Especially, of course, the last bit of information.

Across the table from them, J'onn observed them both with a tensed, furrowed brow. "And you're certain Superman
has not been abducted or replaced?" he inquired, voice careful.

Kara nodded. "I called him on our way back," she explained, folding her arms across her chest. "We have a set of
secret code phrases and to confirm identities. Unless they found a way to copy all of his memories, then Superman's
not the one they used to find out about Project Medusa."

By Addy's recollection, he had seemed more than a little horrified at the notion that something like that was being
kept in the databases of the Fortress, even. He had also, thankfully, taken note of Kara's extremely reasonable
request to at least upgrade his security for the time being. Cadmus knew where he was keeping all of his incredibly
dangerous weapons and information, and it was in everybody's best interest that they were unable to make a second
attempt.

"I'll keep some agents on him, just to be sure," J'onn replied, breathing out through his nose. "While we cannot truly
rule out whether or not he's been compromised—he is, after all, more susceptible to mind control than either you or
Administrator, that is at this point not a worthwhile avenue of conversation to pursue. We have to move forward
under the presumption that Superman was not the one to give the information on the virus away."

Kara looked like she had more than a few things to say with regards to the first few words J'onn spoke, but the
wariness gradually bled from her face, dropping into what Addy had come to recognize as firm acceptance. "I'm not
sure who was involved with Project Medusa," she admitted matter-of-factly. "But going by the purpose of the virus
itself, I can't see non-Kryptonians being involved."

J'onn conceded as much with a nod. "No, I cannot either," he agreed. "While we do have some information on the
non-Kryptonian inhabitants of Krypton, it would be unusual for them to be involved with something like this. I'll be
looking into what Kryptonian prisoners on Fort Rozz might have been involved with this. I can't promise anything, at
the moment, but it's a place to start."

Glancing away from the conversation, Addy looked towards where Alex was. Eliza was at her side, and they were
having a conversation as they poured over the data they were extracting from the crystal. Their voices were hushed
and low, but unhurried, with the few words she could catch relating back to sequencing and genetic encoding that
was almost always more Shaper's area of expertise. Addy could understand some of it, of course, because if she
didn't she wouldn't be this adequate at controlling anything more complex than a cactus, but it didn't interest her
even slightly.

"We know what they can do with it," J'onn picked back up, drawing Addy's focus again. He was leaning forward,
staring at the two of them with a firm look on his face. "Now we need to know when and how Cadmus will use this.
We should, in that case, begin with the basics. Cadmus currently has a virus that is, as much as we can tell, one-
hundred percent lethal to anything that isn't human. They've modified it, which means they must understand it to a
certain extent, and they've recently deployed it in a test to see if it works by targeting a civilian area which is known
to be populated with aliens."

Kara nodded slowly. "Which raises the question why they haven't deployed it again, if it works so well," she said, at
last.

"It could be a matter of production cost," Addy interjected, drawing gazes. "The virus may be difficult to culture and
keep alive, or they may be working towards a much larger deployment of the virus now that they're aware of its
effectiveness."

"We already have the water and sewage systems under watch," J'onn replied. "It's general practice when dealing with
bioterrorism like this. There have been no reports of anything like that, though I don't think we'd know about it until it
was too late."

"Do we know the lethal dosage?" Kara inquired, though she didn't sound like she particularly wanted to know.

Eliza looked back at them from the computer and shook her head. "Everyone was too saturated in it," she explained
bluntly.

"Then we have to assume it's low," J'onn mused tiredly. "Anthrax protocols, in that case. Exposure to even trace
amounts of it could be lethal, and I don't want to find that out the hard way."

"At the bare minimum, it will take weeks before I'd be comfortable giving the a-okay for anyone to return to the bar,"
Alex said, joining the conversation for the first time since they'd arrived. "Three weeks, and a strict sterilization
protocol for at least the latter half of that."

"What else could be holding them back?" J'onn asked, sounding like he was speaking mostly to himself. "We cannot
rely on the idea that they're merely building up to something larger. It is likely, but it is only one possibility."

"Well," Eliza said, glancing at the monitor. "The answer to that might be that you can't just suspend a virus in some
water and spray it at people."

Everyone turned to look at her, though Alex took on a thoughtful look.

"It would need a dispersal agent," Eliza clarified. "Especially for something this complex. Alex, can you go looking for
anything on that?"

Wordlessly, Alex nodded and turned back to the computer, typing away.

The tension between the five of them was not something to be understated, Addy recognized. J'onn was on edge in
a way he rarely was, even if the mask he wore currently was very much the J'onn she remembered. Kara wasn't
speaking much to either of them, and when she did, her voice came out as the voice of Supergirl, not Kara. Eliza was
the only one out of the three of them to not get the treatment.

Addy herself wasn't sure what she felt either. She was angry, most certainly, that J'onn had twisted what she had
done the way he did. She understood his reasoning, if only rationally, and the fact of the matter was that what they
did to M'gann had been driven by emotion. Rationally, what J'onn said was not incorrect—that any White Martian
could be a potential infiltrator was not lost on her, as by all accounts White Martians had designs on other species
that were rarely pleasant.

But the truth hanging in the air was that J'onn hadn't really done it for that reason. He'd done it because he was
angry, because he wanted to hurt M'gann because of what she did, and for what her kin had done. Had M'gann been
an actual threat, Addy was almost certain she would have noticed by now and dealt with it. M'gann had been more
her acquaintance than J'onn's, though she still didn't know how close the two of them had grown when she wasn't
looking.

Evidently, it wasn't close enough, considering he still did what he did.

For the time being, however, Addy couldn't let that impact her judgement, as J'onn had let his emotions impact his.
The virus was an imminent threat, in the hands of Cadmus, and Addy had a small list of people who would die
horrifying, addled deaths if Cadmus managed to deploy this in a more meaningful capacity than they had.

"Found it," Alex said, Eliza glancing back towards the screen. "An isotope, though it's not one of ours—all of this
information is classified under Kryptonian systems." She looked towards Kara for a moment, pursing her lips. "You
wouldn't happen to know what I-8891e would fall under, would you?"

Kara shook her head. "No. But the 'I' there means it's not an exotic element isotope. That's as far as I ever got taught,
before... everything happened."

There was a brief moment of sombre silence.

J'onn glanced back at the two of them. "Are you certain Hank Henshaw took nothing else?" he asked, leaving Alex
and Eliza to return to their attempts to figure out what exactly they were looking at.

Kara gave the man a hard, long look, like she was searching for something in what he said, or maybe how he said it.
Finally, she just shook her head. "It's all they took," she confirmed. "Which means they knew what they were looking
for when they went there. I even went through activity logs, they only ever looked up Project Medusa after activating
the translation function on the interface so they could read it."

J'onn, promptly, swore beneath his breath. "I'll expedite the search," he said, solemnly, glancing for a moment at
Kara. "I'll make sure we know who they might have in their custody, I promise you."

Kara's lips stretched into a thin, flat line. "I'll hold you to it," she said, with no small amount of weight behind the
statement.

"It looks like we're dealing with a high-numbered isotope," Eliza cut in, not glancing up from the screen. "Long-lasting,
very stable."

"It'd be a pretty advanced one too," Alex replied, glancing back towards the three of them. "I wouldn't know the
numbering behind it, but I'm not sure anyone could actually make what they need, if this crystal is correct, with the
tools we currently have."

"Maybe take a look at research papers?" Kara offered. "We're looking for something fairly specific, and if it did
happen to be created, by all accounts there'd have to be something on it, right?"

J'onn hesitated, glancing at the two of them. "It's possible they had an alien make it," he pointed out. "Or have access
to alien technology which would allow them to do so."

Kara grimaced. "I hate that," she declared bluntly. "I hate that I can't be sure Cadmus isn't torturing some chemist
from a cluster over into making their weapons of war."

"...They might not be," Alex remarked, sounding mildly relieved by the fact. "Because your first idea got us
somewhere. Mom? Can you take a look at this?"

Eliza glanced back over Alex's shoulder at whatever was on the monitor, and Addy watched her face cycle through a
series of expressions that went from pinched to begrudging to mildly horrified. "Isotope-454," she read for the rest of
their sake. "Created originally as a joint project between Luthor Corp's medical division and Lockley
Pharmaceuticals. L-Corp now owns the manufacturing rights alone, which means it's the only place it can be
sourced from. It matches all the parameters, I... think this is what they were using as the agent."

Kara sucked in a sharp breath, already moving towards the door. "Which means Lena's a target," she said. "J'onn,
send a backup team, police, anything you can—we're going to make sure Lena's safe, and move from there."

J'onn nodded once at the two of them, reaching for his phone.

Addy turned and rushed after Kara, following her out of the door.

Addy's feet hit the pavement just in time to hear the screams.

The front entrance of the L-Corp building had already gathered a small crowd, though they kept their distance. The
windows to the building had been blown in through some unseen force, leaving glass scattered throughout the front
lobby. A few bodies were laying around, limbs twisted, heads smashed until they had taken on an unpleasant dent.
By the looks of it, Lena's security force that she had hired to protect her from exactly this.

Not that they were able to protect her now, unfortunately.

Lena was in the front lobby too, pressed up against the very back wall, near a window, half-hidden behind a
secretary's desk made of a mix of polished stone. In front of her, slowly walking forward, was Hank Henshaw, his
cloak in tatters around him, displaying the full breadth of his augmentations.

The man's bare skin was riddled with plates of metal, sleek and shining, lit up by fixed lights across his person.
Where his spine had once been, there was now a shaft of metal that she could only see the beginnings of on the
back of his neck. His left arm had been completely amputated, replaced by a metal construct much less subtle than
her own, while the other arm itself only showed augmentations around the shoulder, gleaming metal sticking out
from beneath dark skin, not that she had any assumption that there wasn't more lurking beneath.

Henshaw's fingers sparked with energy, and he began to raise his hand towards Lena.

"Supergirl!" Addy barked, watching Kara already move forward, the only sign she had heard her being the slightest
twitch of her posture. "Go after Henshaw!"

While she didn't get a nod, the sudden boom of force as Kara's body streaked across the front lobby and slammed
into Henshaw's side was enough. The two of them were thrown away with a thunderclap of force, slamming into the
ground and tearing up entire chunks of the expensive flooring as they fell into a tumble of limbs and thrown
punches.

Addy didn't wait, pulling on her flight and whipping forward as she watched Kara and Henshaw drag one another off
to the side. She kept low, to the ground, and at the edge of the area, giving herself a wide berth from the two of them
just in case Henshaw figured out what she was about to do and took up a scorched earth response to it.

Feet touching down next to Lena, Addy watched her jolt, head swivelling around with a scream caught in her throat,
only to go still and rigid once she caught sight of her.

"We're moving you away from this," Addy explained quickly. Lena just nodded, a bobblehead of fear, and she reached
out to take her arm, wondering how exactly to lift another person in the least awkward way possible—

"Administrator!"

Addy listened to instinct, rather than wait to ask for clarification. She dragged Lena down with her by the arm, the
two of them tumbling to the hard, cool tiles of the floor, one of Lena's legs getting tangled up behind her own, knees
crammed together. Lena's face stared up at her, a combination of surprise, confusion and fear, but Addy didn't get
much of a chance to watch the play of emotions over it.

Where they had once been, twin beams of bright blue energy ripped through and hit the wall behind them. The
shockwave from the impact was bad enough to nearly send the two of them tumbling again, Addy having to dig her
heels in and brace one hand against the ground to resist the press of force, her hand gripping tight around Lena's
bicep to keep the other woman anchored.

A scream ripped out of Lena's mouth, fear turning to not unwarranted terror. The sound of it, though, dwarfed all
else; other noises became muffled, distant, almost out-of-focus. The scream hurt this close, too, rattling through her
head, reverberating around her environment, leaving her with the faintest impression of a headache, and with each
passing moment, for reasons Addy did not know nor had - at the moment - the time to investigate, the sound of it
grew clearer, more exact, to the point where she was picking out individual shifts in pitch, the slight disharmony from
echoing soundwaves.

Her pulse grew louder in concordance with it, thundering in her ears and pressing harder against her neck, the
underside of her wrist, all within fractions of a second—

Then, the focus shifted. Lena's scream fell away, replaced by the rumble and shift of stone, cracking and shifting as
it came undone. Addy's eyes jolted up, finding a spider web of cracks where the beams of energy had once hit the
wall. They were growing rapidly, spreading out, threatening to swallow everything between the two large, rectangular
windows that framed the space they were in.

There was a harsher crack, a larger break, and Addy watched a chunk of stone the size of her head wrest free from
the rest. Her perception slowed, the world turning glacial for just the moment, even as her heart, seemingly
unconcerned with the fact, kept the same pace it had before.

Hand still tight around Lena's arm, Addy hauled the two of them to the side before she could hesitate any further. As
though it had been triggered by interaction, Lena's scream fell back into sharp focus, the groaning of stone as the
rest of the wall finally gave in and crumbled receding into the back of her perception. She, unfortunately, had to drag
Lena across the tiles rather than a more dignified method of transport, as the woman was certainly in no state to get
up with what little time they had left.

With that, the world reasserted itself, everything sped up, and the stone facade that hid the metal framework the
actual walls were made up of fell apart in its totality, collapsing into a rough heap of shattered stones where she and
Lena had been not a moment before. The focus of her hearing spiralled out again, catching the clatter of stone-on-
stone, the sound of a metal hitting something fleshy, the sound of Kara trying - and failing - to smother a grunt of
pain.

Turning around, partially to hide Lena behind herself, but more importantly to get a better view of the fight. Kara was
a dozen or so feet away from Henshaw, scrambling back to her feet as the man himself turned back towards the two
of them. Both of his eyes glowed, not the way that Kara's did, but nonetheless arriving at a similar display. Blue
energy arced beneath his skin, illuminated the gaunt cast of his face from where bones didn't seem to sit as they
should've in the network of muscle that made up his jaw and cheekbones.

Addy's eyes skirted to the heavy stone desk in front of her, and she lunged. Her fleshy arm slammed into the side of
the desk, fingers carving deep furrows into the material. Her skin buzzed, her pulse thundered, and before Henshaw
could reasonably fire on them again, Addy whipped the table around and launched it at Henshaw across from her as
hard as she could.

It was, then, something of a surprise when the desk streaked through the air with a tremendous bang, at velocities
Addy wouldn't hesitate to call bullet speeds.

Velocities which Addy knew best of all she was incapable of getting things to. That was, if anything, much closer to
Kara's level of force.

The desk - more of a streak, bands of darker stone standing out among the marble in a blur of black and white - hit
Henshaw with enough force to be reduced mostly to powder, the only chunks left being those that wouldn't look out
of place in a gravel pit.

The man himself didn't get reduced to powdered flesh, unfortunately, because he was made from sturdier materials,
but it did send Henshaw flying back, his back slamming into the back wall with a thunderous bang. What chunks
hadn't been reduced to dust landed in a scattershot around him as he tumbled down from the wall, landing on one
knee, his head swivelling to look at her, revealing that her impact had also managed to peel the skin from the half of
his face with the metal plate on it, revealing the metallic skeleton beneath it.

Kara lunged, not wanting to miss the advantage, and stomped Henshaw's head into the ground with enough force to
crater it again.

Addy pulled back, wrapping her arm around Lena and pushing off the ground once again. Her flight jerked, more
sensitive than she was used to, but she got them both into the air and halfway out of the window in a few short
moments of recalibration.

Henshaw tried to rise, pushing up with a snarl of rage.

Kara pulled her arm back, fist clenched.

The spacetime next to them tore apart like wet tissue paper.

A whirling blue-white tempest of force and dimensional instability screamed into existence, this one as large as a
rather small car. The shockwave from it sent Kara stumbling to the side, losing her balance, while Henshaw was
thrown bodily back into the wall with a heavy grunt. Around the whirling tempest of warped spacetime, chunks of
rock the size of people's heads floated into the air, gravity losing its grip on the real world.

The opening pulsed, and then slammed shut with another shockwave. Tables were thrown over, Kara, having taken
flight, was launched into the ground, and Henshaw was dragged further towards where the rift had once been,
tumbling head-over-heels and hitting the ground with enough force to sound like a gunshot. Gravity rippled out from
the shockwave, briefly disrupting Addy's attempt to land without injuring Lena, but it was weaker, this far away, and
she weathered it without falling from the sky.

Henshaw managed to get to his feet this time, and stumbled away from where the anomaly was, the look of
complete bewilderment on his face giving away the game.

Cadmus either didn't have anything to do with the anomalies, or it did, and it was just that nobody was keeping
Henshaw in the loop.

Kara crawled back to her feet as well, fists clenched at her side.

Behind Henshaw, the cavalry finally arrived. Police cars and D.E.O. vans screamed to a halt in front of the building,
Alex jumping out of one of them, already equipped in full. She brandished an alien gun of some kind, one that more
closely resembled a handheld cannon, while at her side, from one of the cruisers, Maggie scrambled out and joined
her, gun raised.

Arrayed around them, the rest of the force scrambled out, bigger weapons carried with them. Tactical assault
weapons, in most cases, turned their barrels towards Henshaw, standing in the middle of the ruined front lobby, and
out of them, Addy could see more than a few alien weapons.

Henshaw's eyes flitted between her and Lena, outside of the building, to Kara, and then to the arriving force.

"Put your hands in the air!" Alex barked. "You are under arrest for—"

Henshaw wheeled on the incoming squad and his eyes erupted with energy. Kara let out a shout, sharp and
panicked, as twin beams of blue energy swung across the space where Alex, Maggie, and a number of agents and
police officers were. Most dropped, saved by the slight angle to it, but the screams that rippled up from the crowd
weren't all from panic.

Notably, Maggie's scream was from pain.

Kara yelled, launching herself forward, only for Henshaw to wheel on her and swing with more than a little force
behind it, his fist catching Kara on the crown of her head and sending her to the ground with thunderous force. His
other arm lit up, blue circuits visible beneath the layer of skin, and his palm aimed towards the two of them, just
outside of the window.

Kara jumped in front of them, arms stretched out wide.

Henshaw smiled.

His arm swung to the side, and the orb of energy that launched from his hand curved, twisting around his back and
growing in size as it was flung towards the crowd behind him. It was slower than the lasers, yes, but it was still fast
—

With a shout, Kara threw herself around with speed that had Addy's eyes unable to track, catching the ball of energy
with her chest. The thing detonated with force, ripping up what wasn't already destroyed, turning the entire lobby into
a cloud of dust and debris. There was shouting from inside, panicked, but not as many pained as Addy had come to
expect.

Not too far away, a window shattered, and Addy stiffened, pulling Lena behind her back, scanning the area for
Henshaw, waiting.

He never came.

The dust fell away, Kara picking herself up and out of a crater on the ground. Behind her, the officers and agents had
been saved from death, though Alex was hovering over Maggie, hand on her shoulder as blood wept from between
her fingers, shouting for medical aid.

And Henshaw was nowhere to be found.

 308

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