LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 30.2
“Kara, help me unload the ship?” Kal shouted when the kids finally started dispersing.
“Sure, where do you want the containers?”
“Just follow the harbormaster’s directions.”
Kara nodded and flew at the boat, a crane was already pulling out containers, but it was taking a long time to pick each one up. Grabbing one of the red rectangles, she lifted it and quickly found a man signaling at her.
“You know, I don’t usually help with the unloading but, with your help, I made it in almost half the time.” Kal released a container two meters beside her own and cracked his neck. “If we finish this fast I can even carry the ship back today.”
“Why deliver it yourself? I doubt this was enough for everyone to eat.” Kara looked at the thousands still watching them. “Not if the whole country needs help.”
“It’s not. But even with the Justice League helping alleviate it, the drought still happened, and there was almost a famine because of political reasons. Batman and Wonder Woman had to work extremely hard to get through their delays.” He explained while flying back to pick another container. “Our presence here stops anyone from getting ideas, and the UN support means that, if we have to fight off a local government, people around the world are relieved, not scared.”
They unloaded a few thousand containers in about ten minutes before Kara’s sensitive ears heard the announcement through Kal’s Justice League comms.
“There’s a large flood happening in Brazil, can anyone respond?” Said Batman’s voice.
“Green Lantern here, I’m currently on Mars, but I can be back to Earth in five minutes.”
Lifting his fingers to his ear, Kal answered. “Superman here, finished early with the delivery, I can be there in a few minutes.”
Waving at the people, Kal flew up until he reached a safe distance from the ground, then accelerated up, Kara followed after him until they reached a much higher altitude than before.
Without a lot of resistance from the air, they could accelerate even faster, to the point that, only four minutes later, Kara caught sight of the green trail as John Stewart entered the atmosphere in a straight line towards their destination. Another few minutes and they started going down.
The flood was… powerful. Waves of water were running through the streets at an extreme speed and carrying cars and debris through the city. Kal didn’t even wait to coordinate things, immediately plunging through the waters and coming up with a half drowned man before releasing him on top of a building and moving on.
To the side, Kara saw Green Lantern lifting a couple of kids onto a green platform. “There’s a mining dam a few kilometers out of the city.” He told both of them using his communicators. “Can you check if it’s compromised?”
“Let me take a look.” Kal turned towards the direction and concentrated for a few seconds, then exploded into action, flying straight towards it in a hurry.
Looking around herself, Kara was momentarily lost as to what to do. On instinct, she opened her pouch and released a couple hundred of her civilian drones, then she saw part of a small building collapsing.
Flying fast, she smashed through the concrete and saved a man wearing only a pair of small shorts, pulling him out and into the rain before grabbing a blanket and throwing it on top of him.
Her drones started sending information directly into the interface on her eye. Monitoring a large part of the city and highlighting the areas where human life was at risk.
There were too many.
Looking to the side, she saw Green Lantern using his ring to slow down the waters and stop most of the debris from continuing down the streets even while he rescued another couple from inside a drifting car.
Plunging into the waters herself, Kara lifted a small dog on her arms and floated up, her prosthetic eye flying at astonishing speeds as she used it to deliver her orders.
A second later, she had to return to the waters and lift an entire car on top of a building and out of the street, an entire family inside it. A little girl almost jumped out of the window, screaming desperately for her little dog.
Still sending orders to her devices, Kara unconsciously drifted down until the girl could grab the dog, squeezing it tightly against her chest while it licked her face. Kara was just about to fly away when the little girl grabbed her coat.
Kara glanced at her drones and didn’t see anyone in immediate danger, so she looked at the little blonde girl. The kid had dried tears on her face, but there was also a huge smile there and it brought a warm feeling into Kara’s chest.
Only three minutes later, the evacuation platform teleported at her side. It was using several of her projector to remain invisible in order to prevent anyone from identifying it, but it also carried thousands of her devices.
The platform released her equipment, allowing them to fly up in the air before teleporting back without anyone noticing. All around her, thousands of her drones had rearranged themselves into shield generators.
Finally, she really started working. Forgetting about her own body, Kara accelerated her thoughts as much as she could and started using her information to direct her drones.
Shield drones plunged into the waters or under cars before activating their shielding and lifting out of the treacherous waters. Others glued themselves to eroded buildings and blocked the water from doing any more damage, stabilizing the buildings and preventing their collapses.
Kara sent a dozen drones into a bridge and had them protect its support pillars so it wouldn’t collapse, then used the remaining time to rescue people and animals caught in the flash flood.
Seeing her effectiveness, Green Lantern nodded at her and flew up, entering the dark rain cloud above and starting to use his ring to actually disperse the kilometer long cloud, gathering the water inside it into a giant green water can.
Kara did a double take, then shrugged and continued working, if it helped him maintain the construct, who was she to judge its form.
It would probably cause some ecological backlash, but better than if the precipitation continued feeding the waters.
Kara’s drones started blaring a warning and she turned her attention left, where a large part of the landscape just started… sliding down, taking people and poorly constructed buildings with it.
Kal finished fixing the dam and flashed back to the city, flying as fast as a bullet and cutting a hardened path into the hill with his heat vision. The trench helped guide the mudslide away from the center of the city, while Kal rescued the people trapped underneath the mud.
Kara saw him working and immediately directed some of her drones to help, quickly lifting the people above the mudslide on her devices while also creating a shield wall to block its advance. In less than a minute, they had rescued almost two hundred people but the mud was starting to overflow Kara’s devices.
Taking a deep breath, Superman blew a wave of ice over the mud, then did it again, freezing the entire thing in place so that Kara could retrieve her shields without fear of collapse. The insta-iceberg would eventually have to be dealt with, but was no longer an emergency.
Together, all three of them worked relentlessly for what felt like a century. With Superman and Green Lantern helping, the population was soon mostly safe from the flood, but they still worked hard to prevent more property damage.
Hit with a killer headache, Kara rested her forehead against Kal’s chest, the both of them floating above the city and watching as the waters fully drained. According to her drones, there had only been two fatalities: an old couple caught on the streets before even Green Lantern had arrived.
Despite the destruction, Kara’s drones already informed her they had saved the city, the citizens in it and spared them more than two hundred and fifty million dollars in damages.
At their side, Green Lantern finished releasing the water he had gathered into the river, downstream, making sure to do it slowly so it wouldn’t overflow.
To wrap things up on her end, Kara ordered her shields to start lowering back, releasing cars, animals and people back on the city. The streets were still covered in mud and debris, the buildings still heavily damaged, but the people didn’t seem to care, hugging each other or their pets and cheering as the heroes looked up from above.
“So, was this what I was supposed to learn? That places like this have been skimping on their civil engineering; playing the odds that they’d get bailed out when, not if, things went sideways with their infrastructure? Or how to help out in a flood?”
“Well, that second one’s always important, but no… Kara, look at them.” Kal nodded down at the people, some already starting to clean things. “Look at how many we saved today.”
“Ninety-three, at least by my software’s estimation, the others would have survived.” Kara massaged her temples and deactivated most drones, ordering them to gather into a single mass so she could carry them away.
“Kara, you’ve been focusing too hard on the villains. I wanted you to see this, to understand this.” Kal motioned at the people, then looked into her eyes, his face filled with pride. “Villains don’t really matter, well, they matter in that they too are humans, but hitting them isn’t important, defeating them isn’t really the goal. The goal is to protect people.”
Kara looked down at the happy people below, she remembered the smiles and laughs from the kids in Africa. Finally, she looked at her cousin and thought about Kori.
“Kara, I don’t win a fight when I hit the villain hard enough. I win it when I keep him from hurting anyone.” Caressing her hair, she floated away from her, his cape waving in the wind.
“You’re saying yesterday was a huge loss then? I didn’t save Red Arrow.”
“No, I’m saying Red Arrow won, he saved Dr. Roquette. And he probably helped save a lot of other people with his actions.” Looking up, Kal released an exhausted sigh. “Yes, the price he paid was too steep, but he won, even if he didn’t defeat or kill his enemies. Please, don’t start focusing solely on revenge or on defeating and killing your enemies and lose focus of what you really care about.”
Kara kept quiet as they flew back, thinking about her actions. In truth, the reason she had started planning against The Light was because she wanted to protect Kal, she wanted to finally fulfill the goal her parents had left her and protect him from them.
Unfortunately, Kal was kind of right. She had been focusing far too much on eliminating The Light and forgetting that their defeat had never been the goal, not really.
Damn, even if she did defeat them all, even if she managed to kill Klarion, kill Vandal and Luthor, then what? It was not like Kal would stop having to face enemies. And she had already seen that there was far more in this world than just The Light.
Yes, neutralizing The Light was still important, and some of them still needed to die, particularly Klarion, but they shouldn’t be her sole priority, or even her first one.
“Thanks Kal, I think I’m gonna be taking a break for a few days, try to put my thoughts in order and rest…”
“And finally talk with someone?” Kal interrupted, squinting at her.
“Yeah, yeah, Kori’s already bothering me about that. I’ll speak with Black Canary tomorrow.” She waved his concern away with a snort. “Still, I just thought you’d be stopping robberies, fighting supervillains and talking people off ledges, not… all this, I think I needed this.”
“Oh, I still do a lot of that, don’t worry about it. You know, I even met Jimmy trying to do that.” They dropped back under the clouds, floating just a little above the city of metropolis.
“Jimmy was trying to kill himself?” Kara lifted an eyebrow.
“Well, no. But I was a very new hero, and I had just arrived in the big city. What was I supposed to think when I saw a boy standing on top of a building?” He turned away from her with some embarrassment. “Turns out he was new too, and only wanted to see the sunset. He was my first friend here.”
Suddenly, Kal frowned and looked down, his eyes shining red as he released a wave of heat towards a corner of the city. “Speaking of robberies.”
Looking down, Kara saw a young man crying out; the gun in his hand heating up enough that it actually hurt him. A second later, the couple he had been threatening managed to subdue him and call the police.
“So, when are you gonna tell the Titans about Red Arrow? Also, what’re you gonna do with the prisoners?” Kara finally asked. “Talia al Ghul and that mud monster I froze on the fortress?”
“Haaaa, we decided to talk with them in private. Batman, Flash and Aquaman are gonna be telling their apprentices in person before talking with the team as a whole.” Kal shook his head with sadness. “And, well, Talia actually doesn’t have any active warrants after her, and we don’t even know that monster’s name, much less if it has committed crimes.”
“You’re letting them go free?”
“Batman wants to talk with Talia, and he may be able to do something, but…” Kal shrugged, clearly annoyed too.
“Well, I just got a lot of scientists from CADMUS, and they will probably need a new job. I can pitch a chance at fixing himself to the mud guy.” Kara wondered aloud, Clayface really hadn’t done anything as a supervillain, and she didn’t know if he had any story as a member of the League of Assassins. “Do you mind if I keep Talia for another day or two? I want to check something before handing her to Batman. And cover my tracks too, if I can.”
“Can’t say I’m very comfortable with that but, if it’s only for a few days...”
“Thanks for not forcing the issue, Kal. I just want to check some things first.” Kara stared down at the busy city, then back up into the sky, enjoying the orange color of the sunset.
“Alright, that’s about it for today. Want to have dinner with me?” Kal asked, somewhat unable to hide his eagerness at having dinner with his new cousin.
“Sure, let me just warn Kori, but I think she was gonna stay with the Titans anyway.”