LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 40.1
“WHAT!?” Danni yelled. Only Kara pushing her chest plate back down against the bed kept the android from getting up.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t mean this world, don’t worry about it,” Kara dismissed her concerns, finally finishing her adjustments to the connection between the cores and starting to put the finishing touches on the… operation? Giving a quick thought about the possibility, she shook her head. “Well, I probably could take over this world too but, really, taking over the Earth would be such pain. Too much paperwork, too many pesky villains. Heck, this rock isn’t even united under a single world governing body yet. Can you imagine how finicky just having to localize all my laws would be?”
Living 16 years in Krypton had changed her view of Earth by quite a bit. Previously, Kara could more or less understand how Earth’s worst practices could happen. Now… now they just looked plain stupid, even baffling.
“Kara, the fact that you’d think anything you just said would cause me ‘not to worry’ would be amusing if it wasn’t so concerning,” Danni sighed, banging the back of her head against the bed and causing Kara to snicker in amusement.
There was a pause in the conversation as Kara reconnected a few wires, causing Danni’s back to bend and she momentarily burst into flames, but they weren’t dangerously hot and the gynoid quickly regained control of her power.
“There, that should do it. Can you try using your wind now?” Kara stepped away from the bed and asked.
For a second, Danni frowned as she tried to get a handle on her new power; she imagined it was like trying to lift only a single eyebrow for the first time, not exactly hard, but something she didn’t have experience with.
Above one of her hands, a current of wind started forming, twisting around the limb and forming a very slow twister. Immediately, she knew she could empower it to create winds strong enough to uproot trees.
While it was probably only a tenth as powerful as her flames she could already see a lot of uses for this new ability. Closing her fist, she canceled the wind and looked at Kara. “It’s a lot weaker than my fire, did you install it correctly?”
“Pretty sure I did, the core is just a lot weaker than Red Tornado’s, or yours for that matter,” Kara replied, starting to close up Danni’s belly. “I suspect Professor Morrow just didn’t have access to the same materials as before when he was building it. Plus, your programming just isn’t made to work with wind, but it’s good enough to adapt with time. In a week or two the core should double in strength as you adapt to it.”
Glancing at her phone, Kara saw that Detective Chimp had replied to her, he was too busy today to give lessons, working on a magical murder. She briefly asked if he needed help and, when he said no, sent a message to Kori informing her that the expert wasn’t available.
“You know, now that I think of it when people talk about alien invasions, it’s usually someone invading us, not the other way around,” Danni commented as she pulled down her shirt and got up from the bed, the cable at her back automatically disconnecting. “So, out of morbid curiosity, which poor schmucks were you thinking of conquering?”
“Well, I should probably have said ‘liberate’,” Kara explained, helping the gynoid up and doing one last diagnosis of her systems. “And, well, the Justice League is probably gonna be helping out, but Tamaran isn’t being controlled by a single villain, there’s actually an interplanetary army there. Worse, even if the League does free the planet, the entire system is filled with criminals of all kinds, not to mention the not small possibility of re-occupation; they’d still need an army of their own to defend themselves.”
“Tamaran?” Danni asked, already attempting to create a twister below her legs so she could fly… it wasn’t going very well.
“Kori’s home planet. It’s been conquered by the strongest power in the Vega System,” Kara explained. Avoiding Danni’s eyes, Kara couldn’t help but feel some guilt as she admitted. “You know, I always wanted to take over a planet... It kinda makes me feel bad, how much I expect I’m gonna enjoy the mess, I mean.”
“Yeah… sorry, I don’t really know what to say to that,” Danni snorted, losing control of the small twister and grabbing Kara’s extended arm to steady herself. Stopping her new powers, she fully dropped to the floor and thought about it. “No, fuck that, I can actually kind of relate. I always loved fighting with the JSA, using my powers to face supervillains always brought me such satisfaction. Still, the fact that I was having fun didn’t make what we did any less necessary, or any less good.”
“Right, thanks,” Kara said, checking the Fortress’s supplies to see if the Karabot production could continue without pause. “Ready to go back?”
“Not… really?” Danni said with a bitter smile. “I mean, brother is being nice and all, but fuck, I think I’m gonna go back to heroic work out of sheer boredom!”
“Wanna spar with some of the bots? We actually never tested how strong you are after the improvements I made and the robots do need combat data.”
“You don’t mind? They don’t look that strong,” Danni asked while glancing at the line of bots, but Kara could already see her eagerness despite her lack of biology.
“Oh no, I always loved destructive testing. Come on,” Kara motioned towards the more resistant part of the Fortress, a sharp glint on her eye.
.
.
Later, floating in the middle of her soon-to-be-old apartment in a sitting position, Kara scratched Dexter’s fur and stared at the information displayed in the hologram in front of her. On one side, all the equipment she had used as Forge up to this point, on the other, everything she had used as Supergirl.
She had briefly used her teleporting platform in both identities, but only the Light had really gotten a clear view of it, and said view had been very brief. She’d reserve that particular piece of tech for Forge going forward then.
The energy shields were another thing, but those were common enough between superheroes. She’d only have to change the colors and some of the properties of their manifestation from one identity to the other and there probably wouldn’t be much problem.
Slowly, she continued to make a list of things to and to not use in each identity. Her Forge persona got to use the more advanced pieces of tech, while Supergirl would only use them as support, relying on her Kryptonian powers most of the time.
The drones were problematic. The Light had gotten access to some of them in CADMUS, but Kara was already using her own version of the Fog -changed and remade with Kryptonian tech to such a degree that they were unrecognizable- for her Supergirl persona.
Really, nano-robots weren’t exactly a very novel idea, and her newest version was versatile enough to be the perfect support ability while lacking the specialized design needed for her more powerful devices.
Still, she had used her drones to generate shields in Brazil, and there were probably a lot of recordings of that. Ugh, she’d also given some of the drones to the Titans now that she thought about it.
Rao damn it, that was just the kind of connection a mastermind villain could follow.
She hated that The Light had access to some of her tech, even if only a small, mostly insignificant part… Wait, since the Titans were already using the drones, why not spread them more?
Send a box of drones to the Justice League, and a few to other select independent heroes. The drones weren’t completely free to make because of the small amounts of particular metals they used, but she could send three or four cubic feet to every hero around and, since The Light already had a few, it wouldn’t be that damaging if some ended up in villain hands.
Talia already thought that Forge had some connection to Batman, maybe they’d think she had supplied the drones as a way to buy non-interference, or even that someone in the League had created the drones and Forge was the one to acquire them instead.
Returning her attention to the display, Kara made a lot of modifications, stripping the drones of anything too dangerous, making their stealth a little worse and changing their flight ability. The levitation would still be incredibly useful, but not that far above existing Earth tech. After that, she sent an order to start solar-forging a couple boxes of the things.
She’d ask the League and Detective Chimp to help distribute them to the more trustworthy heroes later. That way, the Titans could continue using the drones without being truly connected to her Forge identity and the CADMUS incident.
She didn’t think she could keep the ruse up indefinitely, not from everybody, but who knows? And villains, despite forming secret societies, weren’t really known for freely sharing information. Even if she wasn’t able to fool Luthor for long, it didn’t mean that everyone had his resources, his intellect or his sado-masochistic obsession with all things Kryptonian.
A meow from her lap caused her to glance down, seeing Dexter lazily lifting a paw; his claws extended to gently hook on her finger and try to pull it closer. It seems like she has stopped patting him while tapping on her holographic computer and the cat demanded his pet Kryptonian's attention. Lowering her hand, Kara promptly obeyed her benevolent feline overlord.
Briefly, she considered if she should build her own neural control like her father’s to allow for hands free interfacing. Unfortunately, such devices, while incredibly useful, were also incredibly dangerous. They required very fine calibration and, as a direct route to her nervous system, represented a huge security risk.
Such risk wasn’t as glaring here on Earth, but there were still a lot of tech geniuses around. Heck, even someone mediocre just had to land a glancing cyber attack and her brain would be fried. Kara just didn’t have sufficient knowledge to program a proper defense.
Plus, Kara wasn’t sure she had enough skill to properly adjust the thing’s programming for her own use.
Perhaps she could build a lesser version instead, it wouldn’t really be able to follow her thoughts perfectly and having a delay that would make it useless in a fight, but it would be good enough for relaxed work. But even that would still present a moderate risk.
Using only one hand, Kara continued working until she felt satisfied with the results. It was still only five in the afternoon when she’d wrapped up, so she considered what to do next.
Kori was still out with Wonder Woman and Dexter had lost interest in her lap a few minutes ago, sitting on the window and watching the birds flying around with narrowed eyes, his tail swinging from side to side.
Dropping to the floor, Kara walked towards the window and stared out. She had her emergency teleport in her prosthetic, she had access to even better tech, and, with it currently standing atop her teleportation platform, her power armor was only a single command away.
It was time she went out again.
With a command, her outfit burst into a cloud of robots and reformed into her Supergirl uniform, a white mask forming in front of her face, a computer display on the inner part of it giving her access to her computers with only a glance.
Glancing aside, Kara looked at her reflection in the mirror. A strong woman stared back at her, obvious muscles showing on her arms and legs and a confident stance, the symbol of hope on her chest.
Lobo was still out there, The Light, The Monster Society, Psions and who the heck knows what else, but she couldn’t continue holing up in fear. Leaving the house only when there was someone else with her or on short trips to the Zeta-Tube only went so far.
Taking a deep breath, Kara stepped out into the balcony, letting the fresh, outside air hit her. She probably should have left on foot, but they were leaving this location in a few days anyway, and she did have holographic projectors hiding her from the nearby buildings.
Putting one foot on top of the balustrade, Kara caught herself shaking, closing her hands into fists; she gritted her teeth and pushed away, flying up into the air until she rose above the clouds. Time to be heroic… well, her kind of heroic.