Chapter Nine

I held onto what was left of my bullet-holed skirt as I flew back to Roswell, racing a few scant feet above the terrain while staying supersonic. My trailing shock wave kicked up a huge rooster-tail of dust as I skimmed across the landscape of sagebrush and sand.

I wasn’t trying to escape - just the opposite, in fact. I wanted Kal to come after me.

The way I figured it was that he’d go totally insane with grief and anger when he saw the burned bodies in the control room, and he’d know without being told that their deaths had been caused by another Kryptonian. He’d be compelled to stop me, and when he found me, he wouldn’t be thinking straight.

Darkseid had told me to ensure that Kal was as emotionally distraught as possible when I first met him – for he knew Kal’s weaknesses better than anyone.

Darkseid had studied Kal for years, and he claimed that anger was the emotion Kal feared the most. Which was insanity in Darkseid’s mind – anger was the purest and most honest emotion of all. He’d learned that Kal always tried to deny or control anger, and in so doing, he would often second guess himself in the heat of battle.

Which made this the first of Kal’s potentially fatal flaws.

Even worse, Kal believed that all life was sacred. His second greatest fear was that he might allow, by his action or inaction, an innocent life to be lost. He didn’t even believe in killing the guilty or the truly dangerous, fool that he was.

Tied into that was his third paranoia: losing control of his powers. Fear, anger, desire… those emotions frightened him precisely because they it would be so very easy to kill someone if he gave in to them.

As a result of his fears, Kal lived an analytical and thoughtful life, trying to plan his every action out in advance. His was a life of holding back, of always seeking a non-violent way to solve problems, despite his being the man most capable of violence on the entire planet.

Yet beneath it all, Kal was a passionate man, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise with all his over-rationalizing everything. Passion that bubbled over when he met a woman who he couldn’t hurt, a woman who would encourage him to let it all go, who would seduce him into releasing his fears and his passions and most importantly, his power.

A wild flurry of tingles traced down my back as I dreamed of exploiting that last weakness. He was my husband by law if not by practice as our marriage had been recorded far earlier than any feeble relationship he’d formed on this dirtball planet. I was the one woman strong enough to release him from his bonds.

My anticipation was nearly too much to bear as I floated down near an adobe-framed restaurant on the west side of Roswell. Smiling as I dreamed of that bright promise, I was distracted as a tour bus screeched to a stop with airbrakes hissing. It skidded on the gravel to send a cloud of dust rising form the restaurant parking lot. Dozens of passengers tumbled out, others climbing out windows to climb to the top of the bus. They were yelling and screaming as they pointed excitedly toward a small mushroom cloud that was peaking over the western horizon, the late afternoon sun catching it. It was a thing of beauty, the spreading cap turning shades gold and orange in the late afternoon sun, with an occasional splash of red coming from inside.

As nice as it was for Kal to have decorated the landscape like this, I had to question why he used that old test range? Why not somewhere isolated, like the dark side of the Moon? Did he or his daughter like showing off for these mortals? Did they expect the mortals to bow down and worship before them?

Puzzled by those questions, I took a moment to scan the sky, hoping to find Kal heading my way. Instead, I saw several of the human’s primitive aircraft, one of them circling around that distant mushroom cloud, the others giving it a wide berth.

Where was Kal? I’d left him a clear enough trail.

Did he fear me?

I doubted that. He had three times my muscle, and he’d defeated a thousand enemies while protecting this primitive planet he’d adopted.

I wondered if my comment to the Colonel about being his wife gave him pause? He, of all people, would fear his weakness for superior women like myself.

Then I remembered one of the technicians in the control room saying that it was his daughter who’d tried to contain the weapon. She wasn’t truly a Krypt, and perhaps she was disoriented, even injured. Squinting further upward, all the way to the edge of space, I was rewarded by two bright specs at the limit of my vision. One was flying toward Metropolis, her blonde hair catching the sun. The other was circling down over the arid landscape between Roswell and the test range.

Kal was coming for me!

I squirmed excitedly as I studied him, admiring his incredible body. I’d never seen anyone with half his muscular definition. I prayed that all of him lived up to that oversized promise.

Frustratingly though, he seemed to be having trouble picking up my trail. I debated flying out there to meet him, but decided it was tactically a bad idea. As long as I was close to these humans, he’d hold himself back just that little bit. Still, as smart as it was, I hated the thought of just hiding here in the shadows, especially since he was taking his sweet time following my trail.

The sudden roar of a diesel engine gave me another option – the tour bus was pulling back onto the highway. I suddenly saw a way to draw him out while simultaneously leaving him helpless.

I flipped a mental coin and it came up heads. Without further debate, I darted from the shadows to run after the tour bus as it accelerated down the road, my long legs rapidly chasing it down. I dove under the roaring engine, my breasts flattening against my chest even as they caught and tore some of the raised reflectors from the asphalt, squeezing under the bus at 70 mph as I rose just forward of the engine. I now reached high over my head and gripped the frame strongly enough to bend the thick steel. I finished by thrusting my arms upward to toss fifteen tons of tour bus into the air.

Twisting my head to look for Kal as the bus slowed its rise, I saw him suddenly turn and head directly toward me. Tensing my legs to accelerate a bit faster, I caught up with the bus and gave it another toss as I kept my eyes on Kal’s approach, seeing a conical shockwave form around him, air turning to mist as he went supersonic.

The bus, now Superman bait, reached the apex of its two-mile climb, and then started to fall, slowly tumbling as it fell onto its side. Two passengers fell from the windows to windmill around behind the bus. I smiled. Kal would have to choose between attacking me and saving that busload of humans and the two people in free-fall. If he did the later, the advantage would be all mine.

As expected, he didn’t hesitate to go for the bus. He was moving so fast when he reached the it that his shockwave shattered the windows, sending glass raining down on the good people of Roswell. I amused myself wondering how he was going to catch the two falling people and keep the bus under control.

I launched myself at him, coming up from behind to slam into his back, quickly wrapping my arms and legs around his muscular body. Rao, he felt so big and hard – so wickedly masculine!

“What the hell are you…two others are falling… you can save them.”

Good old Kal, still thinking of the humans even as I was about to put his lights out. Pausing, I saw two possibilities before me. The first ws to take Kal out here by using the pressure points on his neck and deal with him on the ground, sacrificing the humans. The second was to play into his trust, confusing him as he tried to compare my actions here to those back in that control room.

Remembering Darkseid’s phrase about ‘those the gods wish to kill, they first make insane’, I released him and dove after the falling passengers. I caught one of them a thousand feet off the ground, the other at only five hundred… still plenty of time to slow down and set them down gently on the parking lot. They stared up at me goggle eyes as they collapsed, panting for breath, their hearts beating like that of a frightened bird.

Kal was still two thousand feet overhead, slowly bringing the bus down. Strangely, he was grinning down at me. The idiot… he was thought he’d encouraged me to save those people. He was probably already thinking how he’d appeal to the goodness that lived inside me and all that jazz.

Time to send him another conflicting message.

I leaped upward, my strong legs carrying me all the way to him in a single bound. I grabbed his powerful neck from the back again, and this time I worked my fingers into the corded muscles, the tendons of my hands straining and my fingertips aching painfully as I poured all my strength into the effort. He twisted and turned his head desperately, trying to free himself, finally lowering one hand to grab for me, finding my thigh, gripping me hard enough for it to hurt.

“No! We have to save… you just saved those two…”

That was when I managed to work my fingers through those muscles to find the beat of his carotid. I partially occluded it, and his eyes rolled up in his head and went limp in my arms. He could still hear what was going on, but he wasn’t conscious enough to move.

He managed to give off a strangled cry as the bus free-fell toward the ground again. I watched the bus falling away, waiting until he was convinced I was going to let it hit the ground, and then flashed downward to catch up with the bus full of screaming passengers. I got under it and sunk my fingers into the frame to get a good grip, and then took the full weight of the bus on my left hand while I held Kal’s cape in my other hand, letting him dangle helplessly beneath me. I made a big show out of descending very slowly to land back at that same parking lot, gently setting the front wheels down a few feet from the door of the restaurant.

It was awkward to lower the back with only one hand, and I wound up dropping it the last few feet to bounce on its springs, but the passengers were safe.

The spilled white-faced from the front and back emergency doors, most of them collapsing to either kiss the ground or vomit on it. I felt their eyes on me as I dragged Kal across the parking lot, and then propped him up on a bench in front of the restaurant. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, but his arms and legs were starting to jerk as his brain came back to life.

I turned to face the shaken passengers, and smiled warmly at them and the bystanders. Their eyes seemed to focus long on my chest, and then moved on Superman before returning to me, their shocked expressions reminding me how provincial and backward this planet really was. I’m not sure if it was nudity that offended them, or the fact that I was the one who’d saved them, not their hero.

Two women bravely came forward to kneel beside Kal, one patting his cheek, the other unwinding his cape from around his legs. “What in heaven’s name did you do to him?” the second woman asked angrily.

“He passed out while trying to save you. Good thing I was there.”

“Yes… a good thing,” the woman said warily, eyeballing me suspiciously.

I tried to keep a straight face as I walked into the crowd of humans, my nearly two-meter height towering over all but a few of the men. A few of them shook my hand, but most of them just gave me confused glances before joining the women who were trying to wake Kal up.

I felt a brief flash of anger. I’d saved these people, but they weren’t as interested in me as they were in their fallen hero. It was time to remind them who I was. I casually reached out and grabbed the chrome bumper of the emptied bus, my fingers digging through the steel as I hoisted it high over my head, a small shower of debris spilling over me. Acting as if the bus was weightless, I floated off the ground, rising just above the rooftop before I started to spin the bus around over their heads, going faster and faster like a discus thrower until I finally released it.

Forty-five feet of BlueBird spun wildly as it arced out over an empty field. I waited until it had crossed highway before I blasted it with every erg of my heat vision. The bus instantly exploded into a million flaming pieces. I aimed further flashes of heat vision at the larger pieces, and managed to vaporize everything but the engine block. It crashed down on a small out building, crushing it.

No one would confuse me now with an Amazon. While Amazons had most of my strength, it was common knowledge that they lacked heat vision. Instead, I wanted them to all know I was Kryptonian.

The next challenge was to convince them that I was truly Kal’s wife. A glance over my shoulder revealed that he was struggling shakily back to his feet, two men and a woman supporting him. He stared angrily up at me, his eyes flicking crookedly up and down my body before pausing to stare into my eyes. I floated down to land in front of him.

“Who… who in Rao’s name are you?” he demanded angrily. “Why’d you kill those people back there? And why threaten these lives only to save them?”

“To prove to you I can.”

He was angry and disoriented, but also something more. I had to cover my mouth to keep from smiling as he stared at my tits for a long second, and his oft fabled erection formed a huge shape beneath his tights. The woman who was supporting him saw it too, and she blushed bright red as she flicked his cape over his groin to preserve his modesty.

I pretended not to notice that as I retrieved my skirt, and then returned to stand in front of Kal and his little group of helpers. His modesty was most certainly not going to survive me.

“Leave us. Now,” I commanded the humans.

They looked up at Kal, and he nodded. They scurried away like the mice they were.

“The men I killed were combatants, my love. Unlike these who we just saved. As you can see, I have the same powers as you do.”

His eyes narrowed as I shook the dust from what was left of my skirt. I could hear the swishing of the blood in his veins now, his pressure rising, his skin temperature with it. I tasted the musky sweetness of male hormones in the air. A glance through his cape showed that his tights were to ready to burst. He definitely deserved the title Superman!

“Saving these precious innocents really turns you on, doesn’t it, my husband? Or are you just glad to see me?”

I stood proudly before him, watching him struggling not to stare at my boobs as I tied my skirt back around my waist.

“Glad to see you again? We’ve never met before.”

Smiling, I raised my voice just enough for the humans to hear. “Just because we’re separated doesn’t mean you can pretend you don’t know me, Kal. We have been married for a very long time.”

The tourists gasped and started whispering to each other.

“His wife? Didn’t even know the big guy was married?”

“ Of course, shithead, he’s got daughter doesn’t he?”

“Since when you gotta be married to…”

“So how come we ain’t seen her before?”

“ Damn cute and really fucking tall.”

“Looks like she can kick the big guy’s ass. Or is this just Kryptonian foreplay?”

“Fuck if I know what turns a Krypt on. But I know what turns me on!”

“Yeah… not much muscle on her bod compared to him…but damn, she’s got some serious hooters!”

“Gotta be a Kryp… nobody human could be that firm.”

“The Wife of Steel,” one of the women tittered.

Kal obviously heard them as well, and blushed visibly. “You are seriously deluded, young lady. Whoever you think you…”

“Cut the crap, Kal-El. You know that Kryptonian life-matches are made at birth. Our marriage documents were filed when I was born a month after you, the match determined from our DNA. All legal and proper. I’m an El now, at least by my marriage to you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kal said, shaking his head as he rubbed his sore neck. “You’re a third my age. You had to have been born on Argo City long after Krypton’s destruction.”

“Wrong,” I glared back at him. “I’ve been in stasis all that time - part of Star Colony.”

“Star Colony? That’s just a silly myth which…”

“Do I look like a myth?” I turned to face the gathering crowd. “Do I look imaginary to any of you? Did I just pretend to save your lives? Are you really dead? Or am I truly the one who saved your lives?”

Their looks grew even more confused. Idiots.

I turned back to face Kal. “We now have a new homeworld, Kal. It’s called New Krypton and it orbits a warm yellow sun. That’s where the marriage registry still operates.”

“I don’t believe a word of…”

“Look,” I said impatiently, “I’ll explain this only once. Star Colony was a moon-sized ship with thousands of Kryptonians from a carefully selected breeding population. All of us were in suspended hibernation. You were supposed to be on board, betrothed to me. But your father objected and you were left on Krypton to face its destruction. That’s all I know.”

“I am not prepared to accept any of that without evidence,” Kal said stubbornly.

I sighed. “We could go to New Krypton, Kal. But it would take years to travel that distance and back, even with wormholes.”

“It’s been sixty years since Krypton’s destruction. How do you explain that I haven’t come across any other Krypts, outside the Phantom Zone at least, in all that time?”

“As I said, New Krypton is very far away. It took us time to build a new world before we started to reach outward.”

“I’ve been in most corners of this galaxy. I would have encountered…”

“Who ever said we lived in this galaxy?”

Kal shook his head silently. “The distances are too great. Even for me.”

“We discovered the black hole in the center of our respective galaxies, and used the companion wormhole to travel between them.”

He just stared at me.

“And if you doubt any of this, then how would you explain my abilities? Who else could have defeated you so easily?”

“For all I know you’re just Maxima,” he replied angrily, “using your psionic power to change your appearance. She can be anything, anyone.”

I remembered Darkseid telling me about her. Maxima was the Queen of Almerac, a race with psionic powers that allowed them to change the reality around them. By tradition, Almerac women always sought out stronger mates to improve their bloodline. Maxima had given herself Kryptonian powers and had vowed to everyone that she would marry Kal. She’d seduced him, that much was clear, and some said he’d fathered a pair of twin daughters, in the process almost losing his heart to Maxima. But his love for Lois and for the Earth had eventually brought him home.

He saw my hesitation and smiled. “Ah, so it’s true. You are Maxima.”

“Kal, my husband, just stop and think for a moment. No one but a true Kryptonian possesses our heat vision. It can’t be faked as easily as one’s appearance. Did Maxima ever possess that power?”

He said nothing, confirming my theory.

“But you saw what I did to the bus.”

“This could all be a hallucination.” He straightened himself up. “And I’ve never passed out before.”

“I just used some simple pressure points. I’ve been trained to fight other Krypts.”

“Why would anyone be trained to do that?”

“Not everyone has your sunny disposition, Kal. There are some very bad people out there. Some of them are Krypts.”

He shook his head. “Even if I do accept that you’re Kryptonian, why did you come here? Surely not to kill these innocents?”

“I came to seek your help in rebuilding our race to its former glory. To bear your child, my husband, as was predestined upon our birth.”

His heart leaped in his chest, yet he managed to keep his face expressionless. “I already have a child.”

“I meant a pure-born. One worthy to be called a Kryptonian. Not one whose genes have been diluted by the dirty clay of the Amazons.”

His eyes narrowed and he growled, “That sounds like Darkseid’s kind of racism.”

“Is that so bad? He’s saved many worlds from destroying themselves, preventing ecological and economic disasters. Earth is on that brink now, overpopulation, global warming, depletion of arable land and energy stocks.”

“All fixable problems.”

“That are not getting fixed, Kal, despite your efforts. Darkseid has the power to ensure the healing of this world. He needs planets like Earth to strengthen his empire.”

“He’s going to solve all those problems? Including the overpopulation?” he asked warily.

“If Earth’s leaders see the light and join him, yes. They’ll become part of a vast galactic empire.”

“An empire of evil,” Kal growled. “And you are talking about genocide on a planetary scope.”

“Darkseid offers prosperity to those who join with him, Kal. Also access to the most advanced technology, including medical technology that can strengthen these humans you love so much.”

“As long as you don’t mind culling the less fit or unhealthy along the way,” Kal said sourly. “I’ve seen Darkseid’s work on too many worlds – the way he tweaks his subjects to make them his willing slaves. After a few generations, his futzed slaves look almost like Tolkien’s Orcs. And they live just as filthily too.”

I just shrugged as I listened to Kal rant, amused by his innocent ideals. “Some of his workers are modified that way, I’ll give you that, but none of the leaders. More importantly, he doesn’t let the genetically unfit suffer. His gifts will ensure that humans become disease resistant - smarter too. No more pandemics.”

“And that’s your job? Culling the weak?”

“I can help prevent unnecessary suffering during the transition.”

“As I said before, its simple genocide,” he spit back.

“It’s very selective, Kal. Better to call it culling.”

“What about those men back in that control room? Did you cull them?”

“I had to send a message that you would understand. Besides, they were combatants and they felt no pain.”

“For Rao’s sake, woman, there were far better ways to approach me!” Kal shouted, fists clenching. I could see him tensing, preparing to take me down.

I just smiled sweetly. “But none that would make you this angry and distracted, my husband.”

“I’m not your…” Kal growled and threw himself forward at super speed.

I moved faster than he could, diving low beneath him, rotating around him as he stretched his body out to reach for the point in space I no longer occupied, all in the space of a few milliseconds. He crashed face first on the ground, his arms enclosing only air.

Clearly, he wasn’t used to fighting other Krypts.

But I was.

I circled him faster than his eyes could track, and landed on his back, wrapping my arms and legs around him again, my breasts flattening against the steel contours of his straining back. Thrusting my chest body forward as I hammered my fist on the back of his head, I smashed his face through the asphalt parking lot.

He reached behind and grabbed my arm. We began to wrestle, his body feeling like sintered steel as he tore my hold loose. He was much stronger than me, his body exploding like springsteel to spin around in my embrace, finally wrapping his cape around my head to blind me.

Startled, I had to let go and pull the cape free, and that gave him an opening to break the rest of my hold. He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back against the adobe wall, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from my back. His face reddened from the strain as I pitted my strength against his. Then all my flight power.

It wasn’t enough. His powerful arms began to force me back further, shattering the fragile wall. I desperately put my strongest muscles to work, wrapping my legs around his waist to squeeze him with all my strength.

He groaned in agony, his eyes bulging from their sockets as my legs tightened. Yet instead of trying to push him away as he expected, I abruptly did the opposite, wrapping my arms around his head to pull him toward me, burying his face in the depths of my cleavage.

He froze in that intimate space for a brief moment before resuming his struggle. I wrapped my arms even tighter around his head, holding him to me with all my strength. Darkseid had taught me to use my femininity when fighting Kal, confusing him by combining sexual desire with mortal combat, believing it would keep him from pressing his advantage.

I hoped it was going to do more than confuse him – I wanted to open the door for his baser instincts to pursue a different kind of victory over me.

Unfortunately, Kal didn’t follow the plan. He reached up blindly to grab my tits, twisting them so hard that I was the one who gasped in pain this time. Sensing that he was hurting me, he relaxed his grip slightly. That was my opening, and I used it to do the last thing he expected, even if it was the very thing his subconscious yearned for. I pulled his face from my cleavage and leaned down to kiss him passionately on the lips.

He froze as our lips met, but I continued being the aggressor, tracing my tongue around the inside of his lips to transfer more of the toxin. The genteched drug reached the pleasure centers of his brain in seconds. Amused, I watched his eyes soften to look dreamily up at me, his remarkable erection return as I lowered him to the ground. I kissed him deeply this time, releasing even more toxin.

It was like someone had just thrown a switch in the pleasure center of his mind. His sexual response went into overdrive, and he began returning my kisses hungrily, passionately. I reached down to work wrap my long fingers around his shaft, pulling his tights open as I took him out. Thrillingly, there was more of him than I could encircle with one hand!

I held him as tightly as I could while the drug progressed deeper in to his brain, the dreaminess in his eyes gradually turning feral as his eyes started jerking from side to side. The toxin was starting to unlock his animalistic desires, the next phase of is progression through his brain. He suddenly growled like the wild animal he’d become and attacked me, his manhood spearing into my abs to slam be into what was left of the sidewalk, concrete shattering beneath me.

I spread my legs wide and shifted myself upward to correct his terrible aim. I wasn’t concerned with niceties now, and there would be no tenderness in our lovemaking, and certainly no foreplay needed – I was wet enough already. He slammed me down on my back and threw all his raging strength into a single powerful thrust that crudely impaled me, driving himself into me to the hilt with such force that he drove me through the pavement, half burying me. He went crazy on me, unleashing a frantic burst of superfucking.

He was way beyond my control now, his body filling mine to completely. I was but a pawn in his hands, an invulnerable concubine for him to dominate, to pour his primitive desires into, and to release the ancient animalistic passion of our race.

I further realized that the toxin had broken down some kind of barrier in his mind, and he was pouring his years of anger into me, trying to kill me like he’d wished he’d killed so many others. Kill me with that intimate weapon that he’d had to so carefully restrain for most of his life.

He was now anything but the merciful god that most of this planet thought he was.

He definitely wasn’t being merciful to me. The rocks and a broken section of concrete shattered behind my back as he slammed me into the very earth itself, seemingly intent not only on killing me, but burying me as well.

I tried to fight back, but his body was a fantastic sculpture of steely muscle. I was suddenly terrified that I might have gone too far, that he might truly be able to kill me this way. I fought back the only way I could – I tensed my inner muscles, trying to slow him down, my vaginal muscles gripping him with Rao knows how many tons of force.

But instead of slowing, he simply poured even more of his strength into me.

I felt a flash of heat and saw a brilliant glow blaze into life low on his body, and was shocked to see his cock emerging on each stroke glowing like a blacksmith’s steel, all from the tightness of my inner embrace. That truly shocked me.

I didn’t have time to wonder at that as his thrusts plowed me through concrete, rock and earth, finally smashing my head into the foundation of the restaurant to bring half the building down on us. I just closed my eyes and wrapped my legs around his ass tighter, trying to hold him inside me, trying to slow him down, trying also to keep control of my own passion.

Instead, my mouth grew dry as I panted and cried out from the million tiny pleasures that he was slowly building inside me, my power gathering into a tsunami of pleasure. A very strange sensation of erotic helplessness washed over me as Kal suddenly shouted hoarsely and threw himself into me so hard that he brought down the rest of the building. Hot cook ovens, chairs, tables, shattered plates and silverware cascaded over, just as the rush of my orgasm exploded inside me. His hot rush of semen arrived with the force of a locomotive, ripping the last of my sensibilities away, my eyes blazing with fire as I looked into his.

I don’t know what happened after that. All I know is that when I came to, Kal was still inside me, slowly softening.

I felt incredibly satiated, also so very powerful, especially with all that heat still inside me, my body tingling wonderfully from every corner.

The humans drew my attention back to them as they shouted angrily from up above. I turned my head to look up, noticing that the twenty-foot diameter hole was ringed with staring eyes. I smiled in sublime pleasure… we’d finally consummated our marriage.

Slipping from beneath Kal, I let him sleep at the bottom of the pit as I floated upward; surprised to find that many more vehicles had stopped along the side of the road, including one with antennas on top. I felt so intensely warm and tingly and wonderful as I collapsed onto a bench that was still standing next to the collapsed restaurant. Opening my legs as I let the white heat from Kal’s exuberance radiate into the cool air, I was amused to see the inside of my legs glowing red hot as well. I’d never imagined that Kryptonian sex could be so energetic. Or that it could feel so damn good to lose control and be taken by a man that way. Good, but disturbing at the same time.

Everyone held back except for a man and a woman who approached with cameras and microphones. Everyone else was down in the crater trying to haul Kal out. Either that or hiding behind their cars. Clearly, the local news people had been drawn to the fight like flies to a kill.

I would use them to spread my message.

The newswoman paused when the heat grew too intense for her to come any closer. I left my legs arrogantly open as I stared up into her eyes, trying to figure out what I wanted to say to the millions who must be watching me now.

I heard a voice speaking from the tiny earpiece she wore. “I don’t give a damn if she’s x-rated. We’re going live, Carol.”

The woman nodded. “I’m Carol Danvers of KCTV 7,” she said, trying to sound confident, the microphone in her hand shaking. “It’s… it’s been said you are Superman’s wife. Can you tell us your name?”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I saw the worried look in her eyes. She wasn’t sure if I’d just defeated her hero, or if I was truly his wife, the two of us engaging in marital relations.

“My name is Lora-El. I am indeed Kal-El’s wife.”

“Can you tell us why you are here?”

I smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? I needed my husband. I’m trying to get pregnant.”

“That’s… that’s how you make love? With such violence. Leaving your husband unconscious…”

“Kryptonian women are far more powerful sexually than our men,” I lied, enjoying the look in her eyes. “He’ll recover. He always does.”

“But to do it… here in public… threatening those people on the bus. This is your idea of foreplay?”

“I apologize if we frightened anyone. But with our powers, we sometimes get carried away.”

“Yet Superman has always been a beacon of restraint and propriety. Don’t you think this will damage his reputation?”

“Like I care. I’ve missed him so much. You are also young and attractive, Carol – surely you understand the power of passion.”

The woman nodded, swallowing my lie. She and compatriots would tell the world that our sexual encounter was an act of love, of pent up passion, not the contest of power, dominance and violence that it had truly been.

My pride soared as I controlled not only the mighty Kal-El, but also these gullible humans as well. The world would know that I was the one who’d saved the people in the bus. I was the one talking to their news people, and my naked photographs, the first for a Kryptonian, would thrill billions.

The news woman interrupted my silent celebration. “So what’s next, Lora? Will we see you and Kal under more… normal circumstances?”

I smiled for the camera. “Depends on what you call normal.” Rising a foot off the ground as the camera followed me, I tied the well-worn bit of skirt back on again. “The citizens of New Krypton are coming to Earth to help you in your journey to a brighter future. I hope you and your viewers will join us on that journey, Carol.”

“What kind of journey are you talking about, Lora?”

“The one to Earth’s prosperity, of course. A journey that will ensure every citizen of Earth is healthy, prosperous and educated. The end of disease, of war, of poverty, even the solution to global warming and pollution, are now possible.”

“That sounds like a vision of Utopia.”

“It is,” I said to the camera. “And I’m here to help you begin that journey. Starting by removing the drain on your resources that comes from your growing population of the elderly and the infirm. And by so doing, make your population healthier.”

The look on the news reporter’s face grew confused. It was time to make my next point – one that would drive Kal-El completely crazy the next time we met. I rose higher into the air, knowing the cameras would follow me as I flew toward a nursing home for the elderly and the infirm.

I would start freeing them from the first of their burdens right here.

Chapter Ten

Polished wood, the scent of lemon, a vase of artificial flowers, warm sunlight. I woke to those sights and sensations, rising from deep inside a passionate dream, only to feel completely disoriented.

Even worse, the back of my head was sore as hell.

I slowly pulled my hands from where I was clasping them between my legs, and I found my fingers were wet and fragrant with my muskiness.

Smiling as I wiped them across the warm rise of my breast, I inhaled the rising scent of passion spent, even as I wished I detected some scents that weren’t merely my own.

Closing my eyes, I tried to hang onto the vestiges of my vivid dream. In that dream, I’d been making love to that doctor I’d met in Starbucks. Matt. In my dream, he’d thrilled me by revealing that he was a Kryptonian too, and his manhood had filled me in the way I’d always imagined a Kryptonian man might, his fantastic strength and vitality focused solely on pleasing me. Pleasing me again and again, his endurance endless.

Curling up like a cat as I smiled at the fading dream glow, I felt strangely satiated and relaxed. Clearly I’d pleasured myself during my dream – most likely a few times.

As nice as that was, it was very worrying that I didn’t know how I’d gotten back to Bruce’s bed. Back to my one and only safe place in all the world.

Clearly, I’d blacked out again. I glanced through the walls to zoom in on a newspaper rack five miles away. It was Thursday. The last time I’d woken up it was Tuesday. Wednesday had gone missing.

Damn it.

I rolled on my back to stare up at the dark wood of the vaulted ceiling as I searched my memories, hoping to pick up some memories of that missing day. I drew a total blank. The last thing I remembered was flying over New Mexico, heading toward Los Angeles.

Sighing, I knew from past experiences that I wasn’t going to remember anything from the blank period. I’d had these blackouts back on Darkseid’s moon, and he’d said they were due to memory spasms caused by my revival - that they were nothing to worry about.

I worried nonetheless as I floated off the crumpled bed and stained sheets, pausing to study myself in the mirror. As expected – my body had morphed during my dream. I was leaner and more muscular than usual this morning, especially my legs, and my face was slightly broader, my breasts higher and rounder.

Whatever it was that Darkseid had done to regenerate my organs, my body often changed shape slightly during my dreams. In this case, given that I had dreamed about making love to a Kryptonian man, I’d put on some muscle.

Strangely, I had no idea why my subconscious mind had wished that - I’m strong enough as it is. Or the Brazilian wax job - that wasn’t my style.

Sighing, I just wish I could consciously control this strange morphing power instead of waking up these different ways. Some of my morning looks weren’t as pleasing as this one; it all depended on my dreams. I swear I’d looked like a cat one time after dreaming about being one. That was scary.

Fortunately, these weird body shapes faded fast. More than likely I’d be back to the normal me by the time I showered and cleaned up.

Resting my arms on top of my head, I studied this morning body in the mirror, decided I didn’t really like this hard, lean look. Not that I was looking bad or anything – after all, I was an Argonian-born Kryptonian, and we didn’t have flaws.

Even when we didn’t look like ourselves.

I signed again, wishing Bruce were here. I loved the way he used to touch me as I stood in front of this very mirror, his rough, strong hands worshipping my curves, making me feel so warm, so tingly, so wanted. And sometimes, when he was in a wicked mood, he’d pleasure me as we both watched in the mirror.

I’d loved being Supergirl back then, invulnerable and strong, but I’d sometimes needed the gentleness of a man’s touch to remind me that I was human too.

Of course, I’d been eighteen then while Bruce was pushing forty. Kal had never known about us, and thank Rao for that. He’d never have approved the disparity in our ages if nothing else.

And if not that, then he’d surely have worried that I would get carried away – given my muscles, losing myself in my passion wasn’t healthy for my lover.

Unless my lover was Kryptonian. But despite my frequent dreams to the contrary, that wasn’t an option for me. The Krypts I’d seen at Darkseid’s base were all female, and they claimed they’d never come across a male either. One of the Krypts had told me about a virus on the Star Colony ship that attacked only men.

Was Kal the only male of our race? And if so, had New Krypton collected an adequate store of frozen semen before it become a female world?

Whatever the truth of that was, it was unlikely that Kal even knew about New Krypton. Yet here I was, living on the same planet as the one potent male, and I couldn’t mate with him. Kal didn’t think about me that way, and he was also married, not to mention the fact that we were first cousins.

I pushed that thought away, knowing as I didn’t that I’d have to deal with this someday. The El genetic line had to continue somehow.

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers gently across my nipples, teasing them into hardness, feeling myself growing warm. Turning my thoughts to Jarod, I smiled, remembering his gentle nature. His passion to help the Hindu-Kush had touched me. We hadn’t made love back in Pakistan, but I was looking forward to that moment soon. Unfortunately, the two weeks until his return were going to go by far too slowly.

That made me think of Matt. Maybe he’d call today. I liked the selfless way he devoted himself to healing others. And he was so tall, so fit and so damn cute. It was going to be hard to find suitable men my height, and I knew his body would look great lying next to mine.

Sighing in frustration as I pushed that sexy image away, I turned and floated toward the living room, deciding I wasn’t going to get dressed until my familiar look returned – I didn’t like looking this hard and my clothes wouldn’t fit right anyway.

I turned on Bruce’s TV, and the huge screen blinked to life, the background blood red. DEATH AND PASSION IN ROSWELL was pasted along the banner on the bottom. I gasped as I saw footage of a fabulously endowed but naked woman sitting on a bench, her lower body blurred out but not enough to keep me from seeing that she was glowing white-hot inside, her legs glowing a dull read.

The camera changed to show Kal lying at the bottom of a pit – unconscious!

The announcer stunned me by describing how they’d engaged in sexual intercourse, in public no less, the violent super-sex leaving him exhausted and unconscious.

Shocking as that was, they referred to her as Lora-El, and claimed she was his wife!

Damn it, Kal, what the hell kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now? On TV even. You already have a wife, a human one, even if you don’t treat her worth a shit.

I felt a cramp growing in the pit of my stomach as the woman described how she was going to bring prosperity to Earth. Her words sent a chill down my back as she spoke with a Kryptonian accent. I recognized the speech – it had come directly from Darkseid. She was clearly one of his Angels – one I hadn’t met.

I knew I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. If I’d escaped the destruction of his moon, so had the Angels. But this woman sounded like she was still actively working for Darkseid.

My cramp turned into a bottomless pit of fear. Was Darkseid still alive?

That fear was amplified a thousand times over when they played the footage of her flying over a nursing home, and burning it to the ground with her heat vision!

The horrified newscaster said there we no survivors among the one-hundred and thirty-four residents and staff.

I had no doubt that this woman thought she was still working for Darkseid. Whenever he took over a world, he cleansed it of its sick, infirm and old, keeping just the strong and the healthy.

I bobbed around in mid-air, angry and disturbed and horrified as I watched them re-run the brief interview with the woman. I was stunned to realize that I’d been wrong about her accent – it wasn’t Kryptonian, but rather, Argonian!

Since that was impossible, I was supposedly the last survivor of that city-state, she had to be from StarColony. Perhaps some Argonians had been aboard that ship.

One thing was clear in the middle of all this confusion – if she thought she was working for Darkseid, then she’d come to Earth to put Kal out of action.

I shuddered as another thought crossed my mind, another fear surfacing. Was she really after me? Were the Angels tracking me?

Clearly, if Darkseid was alive, he’d want me back to complete my training.

I hugged myself as I floated cross-legged in mid-air, unable to tear my eyes from the continuing newscast. Kal had recovered, and his daughter had showed up to protect him, but too late to capture that murderous, x-rated Kryptonian. She’d fallen into the flames of the burning nursing home, presumably to ensure the job was done. No one had seen her leave.

I thought of Kal, realizing he would not only be sickened by the woman’s homicide, but also horribly embarrassed by their public love-making, not the least because she claimed to be his wife. Which made her his responsibility.

I was sick with worry for him as I walked into the kitchen to find something to drink. The refrigerator was empty, which was just as well. I’d probably throw up anything I ate, especially after watching that special report. My stomach was tied in a knot.

Pausing to lean over the sink as I stared out the kitchen window, a wave of hot anger came over me. Cursing, I slammed my fist on the countertop hard enough to crack it.

Damn it, there was no way that bitch was going to get away with defiling Kal that way. His personal life might be a shambles, but until today, no one knew that. The world had continued to hold him in the highest regard. They’d put him on a very high pedestal.

I had to find him. Today. I knew that Angels always traveled in pairs. Where was the other one?

Closing my eyes as the terrible memories of own horrors at Darkseid’s hand washed over me, I clenched my fists until my muscles turned to steel, trying to control the anger that grew inside me like a thing alive. I gritted my teeth, but it still washed over me like rank sewage, poisoning the pleasant mood I’d woken up with.

I’d never felt this kind of insane rage before I died, but now this anger seemed to get the best of me at times. Just one more evidence of Darkseid’s mindfucking me!

There was something so familiar about the smirking arrogance on that woman’s face in Roswell. Something familiar that I couldn’t put my finger on, but which drove me insane with anger.

How could anyone be that insensitive, that arrogant, to bring an icon like Superman down into the filthy ditches with everyone else? To wash away his essential goodness? To reveal our family’s dirty secret - that he shared the same weaknesses as everyone else. To kill humans like they were diseased animals?

I took a long drink of water and then breathed deeply, going to that safe place in my mind – my earliest and fondest memories of Kal. I remembered the way he’d taught me to be gentle, to never kill – he said no one deserved to die at our hands. I’d so loved saving people, hell, even cats from trees, back when I was fifteen. I had been so in love with life then. In love with anything related to being Supergirl.

I opened my eyes and then my hand, seeing that I’d crushed the heavy leaded glass to powder. My hand was still shaking as my pleasant memories fought against the anger, the conflict still raging in my my subconscious.

I had to find Kal before I did anything rash.

Before he did either.

The question was where and how. Not at his house in Crystal Hills, that much was for sure - Lois had kicked him out. Besides, this was going to be a cousin-to-cousin talk. No humans allowed.

Smiling as I tried to stay in that safe place in my mind, I remembered all those special times when Kal and I had talked about things that only Kryptonians could share. I remembered the long training, preparing me to be introduced to the world as Supergirl – it had been so much fun to explore my strength, the flying, the x-ray vision. Even that lethal heat vision. All wonderful but dangerous powers for a fifteen-year-old girl to possess.

Kal had built a huge underground fortress to make it safe and private for me to train. A place where I could make my mistakes without hurting anyone.

Subsequent to that, that old fortress had become a refuge for him, allowing him to occasionally escape the burdens of this world.

A place beyond the knowledge and reach of the rest of the people of this world.

His Fortress of Solitude.

That’s where I’d find him!

Chapter Eleven

I didn’t bother to dress as I ran up the steps and leaped off the roof, flying north and east at high Mach, heading for Spitsbergen Island. That lonely chunk of land, located a mere 600 miles from the North Pole, belonged to no country, although technically it was a protectorate of Norway. Spitsbergen was the perfect place for a man who belonged to the world to make as his home base.

A sub-orbital trajectory took me there in twenty minutes, my superheated re-entry barely visible given that it was just my invulnerable bod – nothing to burn or smoke. Descending over the central mountains, I found that hidden tunnel at the center of the island, located in the back of a natural cave.

Sliding down the slanted tube of ice that formed its front door, my warm skin polished it further as I descended nearly two thousand feet under the ice, and then another thousand feet through the rocky core of the island to finally exit inside a gigantic rock chamber. A pale green light filled the space from the bioluminescent organisms which grew along the walls.

A giant block of Vrendan steel sat on a gigantic pedestal in the middle of the chamber. Vrendan was an alien metal alloy that was far harder than diamond and impossible to melt or drill through with any technology on Earth. It was also ten times heavier than lead. The Vrendan alloy had been laboriously machined by Kal to form a precision key that weighed thousands of tons.

The actual walls of the fortress were twenty feet thick and also made of Vrendan alloy – walls so strong it would take even a Kryptonian hours to smash through them. And if any Krypt dared try, Kal would be alerted and could arrive long before they got inside.

To guard against a Krypt using the key, a separate scanning system was capable of detecting a person’s DNA when the key was activated, and if an imposter tried to enter, it would explosively fill the chamber with green-K powder. That would weaken any Kryptonian to human levels, and kill them if they inhaled it. No one was going to make it back up that ice shaft to the surface unless they could fly. All of which made this a killing chamber for any Kryptonian who wasn’t prepared for the green-K powder.

I crouched under the huge key, slipping my hands into the well-worn handholds which had been made for larger hands, and began to straighten my legs, putting my strongest muscles to work. They key was damn heavy, and I remembered how it had taken every ounce of my strength when I was fifteen. It had still been a real strain in my later teens.

I walked stiff-legged across the Vrendan floor to insert the key into the deep slot in the door, praying that Kal hadn’t purged my DNA signature from his authorized entry file. I held my breath, preparing to race the green-K dust back up the tunnel if I heard the dispensers fire.

Instead, the door gave off a deep THUNK that shook the floor like a small earthquake, and the outline of a huge door magically appeared around me. Withdrawing the key, I set it gently back on its pedestal and flew back over to press on the door. The massive plug swung slowly inward on its stiff hinges, opening a gap large enough to slip through. I entered and pushed it closed behind me, feeling the fortress shake again as the locking dogs re-engaged.

I felt like a Lilliputian in a giant’s lair as I flew through the football stadium sized rooms, heading toward the living quarters at the center of the globe-shaped fortress. Being that I was naked, my first task was to find some of my old clothes.

I found more than that. My old room seemed untouched, almost like a museum display - that creeped me out a bit.

Unfortunately, most of the clothing in my closet wouldn’t fit me now given my height, and my stretchy old red and blue costumes were gone, presumably in the possession of Kal’s daughter. I found a gold-studded bikini and a fur vest instead. They were both expandable. A large pair of gold earrings finished my eclectic look, given that I as close to the North Pole.

I’d worn this outfit once in public when I was eighteen, during a rescue when I’d towed a damaged ocean liner to shore. The photogs had gone crazy, putting my picture on the front of every newspaper on the planet, especially given all the skin I was showing. That had brought Kal’s wrath down on me. He was a stickler for wearing our Kryptonian uniforms in public. I think he just wanted to keep as much of me covered as he could.

Smiling at my reflection in the mirror now, I decided this was the perfect look to greet Kal with, and thankfully, I was back to my normal self. No weird morphing stuff.

Not that it mattered – he wouldn’t recognize me. But he would remember the last time I wore this outfit, and given the way it fit me now, I’d communicate at a glance that I wasn’t some little girl lost that he had to nurture any more.

I was grown up now. I was here to help, not be a burden on him.

Kal didn’t waste much time in arriving after his telltales signaled that the Fortress had been violated. His sensors had also undoubtedly communicated my signature, which would definitely throw him for a loop unless he’d talked with Lois. I hoped he hadn’t. I wanted to see the look on his face when I surprised him.

Walking out into the main hall, I stood just inside the massive door as I heard the key scrape inside, then the THUNK as it unlocked.

The door swung open and there he was, my cousin, his red cape floating on the breeze.

I lowered my head slightly and tried to look respectful, demure, sexy, provocative, mature and completely gorgeous, all at the same time. Kal always got confused when I sent too many conflicting signals his way at the same time.

“Hi, cousin. Did you miss me?”

I barely got the words out of my mouth when he launched himself at me, tackling me to send us both flying across the huge entrance hall. By the time I knew what was happening, he’d pinned me to floor so hard that my hands were cracking the stone floor, his powerful legs wrapping around mine as he twisted me beneath him.

“Who in Rao’s name are you? First this woman who claims to be my wife, and then you… mocking the memory of someone who died for the cause of freedom.”

His eyes flashed dangerously, a look of pure hatred filling his face. I’d never seen him looking like this before. “Killing those people in New Mexico… the other woman was one of Darkseid’s agents too. Just like you!”

“It’s really me, Kal. Your cousin. Kara.”

“Did you have anything to do with the killing in…”

He wasn’t listening. “Kal. You know me. You know I couldn’t…”

“I buried you, god damn it. I saw the injuries. No one has the technology to…”

I pleaded to him with my eyes. “Yes, Kal. Look, call Lois, we talked yesterday. Please.”

He jerked me from the floor, his arms and legs still encircling me, keeping me from moving as he flew us through several of the rooms to finally toss me into a heavily armored chamber filled with red light. I staggered and fell on the padded floor, my body suddenly feeling so heavy. He slammed the cell doors closed and locked them.

“Rao help me, if this is another of Darkseid’s games, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” He turned and stalked away, leaving me gasping for breath.

I quickly realized where I was. Three thousand feet underground and inside a shell of lead, flooded with the exact spectrum of Krypton’s sun, this was the one place on Earth where I would have no powers.

Standing, I paced around the perimeter of the room, finding that my muscles had to work just to keep me on my feet. I felt weak and frail, my body heavy and awkward. Was this what it was like to be merely human?

If so, I didn’t like the feeling at all.

I was still working to adjust to my weakness when Kal walked back into the outer room. He held a printout in his hand, his eyes looking at me in wonder. I saw his hand shaking.

“I talked with Lois, and she’s convinced it’s you. The computers also analyzed your DNA, and they are convinced too. If not for what happened in New Mexico today, I would be as well.”

“The Roswell thing,” I nodded. “I saw it on the news. Why would you think I had anything to do with that? That woman looked completely different.”

Kal just stood and stared at me. “You do look like an older version of my cousin, I’ll grant you that. But I can’t see a flaw anywhere, especially not your abs. No medical technology could repair a body so badly damaged.”

“Wrong Kal. There is.”

“Where? What planet? What race?”

“That… that has to remain my secret for a while.”

I couldn’t tell him it was Darkseid. He’d never believe that bastard hadn’t inserted some kind of time bomb in me, for I was obviously the only person who could really get to Kal. Darkseid had been trying to brainwash me into becoming one of his Angels, to use me to kill Kal. Fortunately, that all ended when he’d been attacked.

Kal shook his head. “Then I can’t let you out of there.”

“Since when have you become such a cynic, Kal? Or so afraid?”

“Since this morning. Nobody comes to this planet and kills people like that. Nobody does that… to me. Nobody who wants to live.”

The vehemence of his voice and his words shocked me. Kal had always preached that taking a life was a crime - even that of the worst criminal. You were supposed to lock them up, keep them from committing more crimes. Make them pay each day of the rest of their lives with their lack of freedom.

“So how can I prove I’m really who I say I am? Lois is convinced.”

“Lois wasn’t in Roswell today. And I’m not a big believer in coincidences.”

“How about if I tell you some things nobody else would know.”

His right eyebrow lifted.

“Like what?”

“Like the time I saved you from that Varandan who’d taken control of your mind. Black magic you called it. He was intending to weaken you and drain your blood to make a potion that would convey immortality on anyone who drank it.”

Kal just stared at me.

“Or the time that Kalaran woman seduced you with her pheromones and got you to marry her. If Lois finds out about that, she’ll be even more pissed.”

I saw the change in his eyes.

“Or Maxima, who was so intent to have a child with you that she’d give up her entire kingdom and all her privilege. How you were intimidated because she was stronger than you and was always trying to seduce you. But you lived with her for a month, nearly forsaking your wife, me, even the Earth.”

“Kara…?”

“Or the way the Anti-Monitor nearly killed you before I shoved you away and took him on myself. One of us was destined to die that day, one to live. I chose life, Kal. For you.”

“Oh Rao, it is really is you, Kara.”

I saw tears in his eyes as he struggled to unlock my cell. He hugged me so tightly that he nearly broke my ribs, given the red sun rays.

If he hadn’t carried me out of that chamber so I could regain my powers, I think he would have.

Chapter 12

Kal and I were sitting in the living quarters of the Fortress a half hour later, and we were drying our eyes after both laughing and crying. We were so deliriously happy to see each other.

Kal just delivered the Cliff Notes version of his last twenty-one years, and I’d done the same, although mine was far shorter.

His description of the changes on Earth was bitter sweet at best. While the threat of nuclear Armageddon had largely passed, terrorism now threatened the very fabric of society and civility. Politics had gotten uglier, and statesmanship was a lost art. Global warming was a big worry. The list went on and on.

Once I was satisfied I had a working knowledge of 21^st century Earth, I steered the discussion back to more personal issues. Kal had changed out of his uniform, donning instead a pair of jeans and a green UNICEF t-shirt.

“I swear you haven’t aged a day, Kal.”

“And I can’t believe your fortieth birthday is coming up, Kara. You could pass for twentysomething.”

“Well, my not aging when I was dead is a given, but the fact that you’re still a young man at sixty is the best news of all.”

“Good genes run in the family, Kara.”

“Now that’s the understatement of the century.”

Given how happy Kal looked, I regretted having to bring Lois’ worries into the discussion, but I’d promised her that I’d talk to him. She was family too.

“I understand you and Lois are having a tough time right now,” I volunteered.

Kal’s smile faded as quickly as it had blossomed. “That’s… I guess that’s my business.”

“I’m family, Kal. So is Lois. So its our business.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it right now, Kara. Let’s just enjoy being back together again.”

“OK, keep your silly secrets,” I sighed. “There don’t seem to be very many of them left in 2005 as it is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It means that nothing seems to be private anymore. Everything and anything is right out there on the Net, waiting to be found. People are even writing these blogs, like the personal diaries of old, yet encouraging others to read them. Weird.”

“Borders have broken down, Kara. The world’s one community now.”

“And personal privacy went to hell with it.”

“You always were so very secretive, Kara.”

“For good reason, Kal. Have you done a search on the Net for Supergirl or Kara Zor-El?”

He shook his head.

“Well, you should. It seems as if people are still fascinated with me and I’ve been dead for decades. In fact, they’re still writing stories about me and drawing pictures and even tweaking photos of me. Some weird art form that didn’t even exist before – photoenhancement?”

“You made a big impression when you were here, Kara. And now my daughter is out there, keeping your memory alive.” I could see he was relieved I wasn’t going to insist on talking about he and Lois.

“The new Supergirl. I guess I should be flattered, even if she doesn’t wear my old uniform very often.”

“You’ll love her when you guys meet. She’s everything I ever wanted in a daughter. You’ll be as proud of her as I am, heading up the UN Antiterrorist commission and all.”

“I’m really looking forward to it, cousin. Who knows, maybe I can still teach her a thing or two.”

“It’s going to be a hell of a media splash when people find out you’re back. Maybe you and Asha should appear together in identical uniforms. Some event at the UN perhaps.”

I shook my head. “I’m not so eager to go there right away, Kal. I need to digest what the world is like first. I mean, this Net thing wasn’t even around when I left twenty plus years ago, and I just learned how to Google myself over at Bruce’s place.”

“And?”

“First impressions? Well, it seems like an awful lot of guys are interested in me sexually. I found tons of picts where they’d taken off my clothes and added… well, let’s just say an astounding level of anatomical detail.”

I handed him a tweaked picture from the Vogue cover I’d done when I was seventeen. The photoshoot had been one of the rare appearances I’d made as Supergirl but without wearing my red and blue uniform.

I remembered how mad Kal had been at the time. His rule was that I was supposed to either be the timid little Linda Lee or the mighty Supergirl, cape and all. There was no room for anything in between.

Kal blushed as he glanced at the revealing photomanip, being the big Boy Scout that he still was.

“They didn’t tweak my face or hair in the pict, but there’s no way I wore a see-through top when that shot was done. Especially not one unbuttoned to my waist.”

Kal handed the picture back. “If I remember right, you wore a red sweater with a little ‘S’ monogrammed into it. It was part of an advertising campaign for your friend Louis’ clothing line.”

“Correct. I’m amazed at how much trouble people went to just to remove that bit of my clothing. Hell, I don’t look any different than other woman beneath my clothes.”

“Other than your being bulletproof and with the strength of thousands of men,” Kal offered. “People expected that of me, given my physique and being a man and all, but the fact that a pretty teenage girl could be just as invulnerable and strong as Superman tweaked a lot of men out.”

“Gee. I’d never have guessed,” I smiled as I punched him in the arm. “I can’t tell you how many bullets bouncing from boobs pictures I saw yesterday.” The fact that I was fully capable of performing such a bizarre feat was beside the point.

“Humans entertain a wide variety of fantasies. Which is why it was good to keep you under wraps the way we did. To not let femininity, sexuality and physical power get confused.”

I just looked at Kal for a long moment. “Ah… yeah, like it confused you?”

“What?”

“Confused. You.”

Kal just looked at me with that blank look of his.

I sighed and tossed that picture on the pile. He could be so dense sometimes. “That pict really wasn’t all that bad,” I shrugged. “At least the artist left a few clothes on me and didn’t have me doing any unnatural acts with Kryptonite. It was also better than those sketch artists who drew me as being really skinny.”

“You were. Back then.”

“I thought I looked like a model.”

“So what’s good about looking androgynous?”

“A swimsuit model, dummy, not a fashion model. They have enough curves to look sexy.”

Kal looked at me with that blank face of his again, almost as if he didn’t understand the concept. Despite his affairs with Diana and then Cassie, he still had this big blind spot when it came to me.

“So… I understand that after I died, you told Lois about your thing with Diana.”

Kal nodded slightly, a pained look on his face. “I thought she’d understand… you know, that there were certain problems that came with having a relationship with a Kryptonian. I figured she’d appreciate the honesty.”

“Which proves that you’re as clueless about women as most other men. You guys just don’t get the fact that a confession never makes up for years of dishonesty.”

“I didn’t see it that way, Kara. And my relationship with Diana was going on for a long time before I met Lois.”

“But it didn’t end when you traded vows. Nor did you tell her about it.”

“I didn’t know how to explain it. Or stop it.”

“Which is probably why Lois Lane, one of the strongest personalities on the planet and a woman totally in love with you, could lose faith both in herself and in you.”

OK, now I’d said it.

Kal was silent for a long moment, his face dark. I tried to decide if he was angry or remorseful, but saw only confusion.

“I didn’t do it for myself, Kara. At least, that wasn’t how it started. I was only thirteen.”

“And Diana was your form of protection. I understand that, although there were far better ways to deal with it. Like getting off the planet when you had to… you know, get off.”

More color rose across Kal’s neck.

“Lois was just so in love with me, Kara, thinking I was the perfect man. And I thought she was so amazing, what with her persistence and her passion for the truth. The problem was that she didn’t think I had any faults - no mistakes and no ugliness, not even any lapses in judgment in my past. I couldn’t tell her the truth.”

“Bad decision, Kal, playing god that way. She’s a strong lady, and you didn’t have to pretend to be a saint. Lord knows you aren’t perfect.”

“I don’t know how she would deal with that… besides, if I’d told her, then I’d have had to stop seeing Diana. And there was a part of me that Diana could reach that no other woman could.”

“Ah, so now the truth comes out,” I chortled. “The selfishness. You didn’t think Lois would recognize that when you finally told her?”

“I told her I have… special needs.”

“Yeah. I’m sure she’s read Niven’s Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, just like everyone else on the planet.” I giggled. “Hey, if he ever writes a story about me, it’ll have a different title: Woman of Steel, Man of Rubber.

Kal’s eyes opened larger as he looked at me. “I… I hadn’t thought about that.”

Of course, he hadn’t. I was supposed to be a virgin forever.

“I’ve watched how you and Lois make love, Kal. Right after you were married.” I wasn’t sure how to phrase it, so I just said, “From what I could see, it took a lot of concentration for the Man of Steel to enter such delicate territory.”

“Since when did you become a voyeur?” I heard Kal’s pulse beat faster. He was getting angry.

“I wasn’t trying to, but I used to check up on my cousin from time to time back then. Sometimes my timing sucked.”

He glared at me, telling me it was time to change the subject.

“So, how is the Kal-El of 2005 different than the man I knew in 1984?”

He sighed and offered lamely: “Same in some ways, different in others.”

“Well, I can see that your precision of words hasn’t changed a bit,” I smirked.

“The world has grown more complex, Kara. In a nutshell, the concepts of universal freedom and human virtue have been lost.”

I’d read enough on-line in the last day to know he was overstating it. “Not lost, Kal, just weakened. It’s safer to say people are confused by what world leadership means. Or if the world even wants a leader. At least that’s how I see it.”

“Yeah… well maybe I’m the one who’s confused then. When we had two opposing superpowers, it was easy to see where things stood.”

This didn’t sound like the Kal I remembered. He’d rarely doubted himself. “You’re the superpower now, Kal.”

He shook his head. “Can’t be one man. Not unless he’s Emperor.”

“Leadership is about inspiration, Kal, not iron-fisted control.”

“Then he’d be god. Some people would like that. If I was.”

That discussion really bothered me. “Why don’t we bring things closer to home before we start worrying about the wallpaper on Mount Olympus.”

“Which means?”

“That I need to talk about you and Lois.” I wasn’t going to bring up Cassie yet. Better to have him do that.

He leaned back in his chair, eyes closing for a brief moment as he composed his thoughts carefully. “There’s only ever been one problem between us, Kara. Otherwise I love her more than life itself. You know that.”

“You mean, the sex problem?”

Kal slowly nodded. “Lois couldn’t accept that I needed a different kind of relationship with Diana. I even tried to break it off, for Lois’ sake, but Diana insisted.”

“Insisted, huh? And here I thought all the Amazons were lesbians.”

“Given they don’t need men, and the Amazons excel at anything physical, they’ve become self-sufficient.”

“I take that as a yes. Except when it came to you.”

“They see me as a god, not a man.”

That again. Now I was really worried, especially the way he’d said ‘god’ so casually. Like he even believed it. “So, how did it all start… the Amazons coming to you as if you were a god?”

Kal shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable, but also wanting to get this off his chest. “It started a long time ago, when I was thirteen. I was having… dreams. At night… you know, on my own. When I was young. Diana anticipated the danger from my rather energetic… dreams.”

Good old Kal. Never saying anything right out. Still, he painted a pretty ugly picture. Part of it was humorous - a young teenager with an endowment like a porn star blasting holes in his ceiling back in Smallville. Other parts were really ugly - I tried to imagine millions of his little tailwaggers, moving at supersonic speed as they dove into the body of any female they met to annihilate whatever ova she had, boring through her body everywhere from head to toe. Starting with the closest two females: Martha Kent and Lana Lang. The picture made me want to gag. Peritonitis and death would be inevitable from all those tiny holes.

“So she… took care of you?” I didn’t know what else to call it. The mere thought of an older woman seducing a thirteen-year-old boy was disturbing. For all I knew, Diana could be centuries old. “So how come I never knew about this?”

“I was ashamed of my weakness.”

“You haven’t been weak a day in your life, Kal. You just needed some biological containment.”

“That’s one word for it. Her body was the only safe place for me to… release.”

“Well, you could have talked to me about it,” I said daringly, more to judge his reaction than anything else. “Diana wasn’t the only invulnerable female around.”

His heart froze in mid-beat and his eyes opened wide as he stared at me. He cleared his throat, and his words finally coming out in a rush. “No way. We’re cousins, Kara. Besides, you weren’t here. Not at first. And when you did come, you were only fifteen. Diana and I had things worked out long before then. Back even before I’d met Lana, and way before I met Lois.”

Kal looked at me as if he was going to cry. He clearly wasn’t used to justifying or even talking about his weaknesses.

“That always did bother you, didn’t it? My age compared to yours.” I couldn’t help but wonder if Cassie was his way of acting out the urges he’d felt twenty years ago? The urges he’d never admit, even to himself.

“Diana was a woman, not a girl. She approached me. She was protecting the people I loved.”

“Yeah, and she was also probably in heaven, what with you as her young superhunk. But it had to be a little weird for you to be making it with a woman old enough to be your great-grandmother.”

“Amazons don’t have an age in the conventional sense, and Diana didn’t look old. She doesn’t look all that older than you do now.”

“And she’ll look that way when you’re two hundred.” I smiled as a strange thought crossed my mind. “And she could… you know, handle all of you?”

Kal blushed, opening and closing his mouth twice before he finally nodded, a rare hint of pride showing in his face. “Amazons are very impressive women.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one and only Superman.“ I winked at him. Certainly he knew how much of a player he was in the fantasies of a billion women. When it came to the ultimate man, only a single name came to mind, whether in Tanzania or Germany, China or the US. “But I was thinking more of the final moment. I’m surprised you didn’t blow her head off.”

Kal just stared at me, obviously trying to figure out how to end this awkward conversation. But he knew me well enough from before to know I was going to pry until I knew everything. And I wasn’t a kid any more.

“All I’m willing to say, Kara, is that despite her claim that it was just her duty, Diana discovered… well, she discovered that she liked it when I lost control. That was her favorite thing.”

“Amazon’s like to dominate males,” I shrugged. “So they had to dominate the ultimate man, at least in one way. No surprise there. Still, that makes Diana a lot tougher than I’d thought she was.”

“She wasn’t at first. I think it hurt her back then. But she got a lot stronger and a lot tougher over time. Apparently Amazons absorb the physical powers of the strongest warrior they fight.”

“Gee, I didn’t think sex was warfare?”

“With an Amazon, it kind of is. A contest in any case.”

That was more than I needed to know about Kal’s sex life. “Well, I think you deserve a little credit too, Kal. Judging by Lois’ handshake, she could probably outwrestle about ten Arnold Schwarzeneggers, all at the same time. Yet she looks like a supermodel.”

“Our bodies give off something. An aura.”

“So I’m learning. But I thought we were talking about Diana?”

“What else do you want to know?” Kal sighed.

“As I understand it, her powers are nearly equal to yours now. She even has many Kryptonian traits.”

“I suppose if it came to a fight to the finish,” he nodded, “I’m frankly not sure which of us would win.”

That scared me. I didn’t trust Amazons. “Well, hopefully I could take her, Kal. I’ve learned a lot during my travails.”

Kal’s eyes opened wider as I saw the wheels turning in his head. He’d obviously like to watch that, male pig that he was.

“So how often, Kal? You know, when did you guys get together?”

“If I wasn’t off-planet, then once a week or so.”

“Wow. Lois is one understanding lady.”

“She doesn’t know that, even today. She thinks I only saw Diana on rare occasions.”

“So your heart-felt confession wasn’t complete. You didn’t come clean.”

I looked down at the sketches Kal had done of Diana, obviously in recent years. He was a decent artist - another trait of his that I’d never known about. And he was clearly fascinated with his subject.

Diana had clearly gotten a lot more muscular than I remembered. But she didn’t look a day older than before. Younger if anything. I thought of Lois. There were obviously more than the obvious benefits to being his lover.

Still, it was weird to think of Wonder Woman as being as strong and invulnerable as I am. I’d been raised to believe we Krypts were the most powerful beings in the universe.

“Has Lois seen these sketches, Kal?”

He blanched as he shook his head. “She tries not to think about any of this. I don’t want to rub it in.”

“Given the obvious feeling you put in these drawings, I understand.” I took a deep breath and then introduced what I’d really come to talk about. “Lois can handle the Diana thing, Kal. But not your more recent affair.”

Kal’s eyes narrowed. “So you two have been talking, huh? About Cassie?”

“Lois is talking about divorce, Kal. And for Christ’s sake, Cassie is just a kid! Not much older than your daughter.”

“She’s an Amazon. As I said, they don’t age normally.”

“Bullshit, Kal. Cassie was born human and then granted Amazonian powers. Her birth date is in the late 80’s to be exact.”

“The Amazons don’t care about things like that.”

“But we live among humans, Kal. You always taught me to honor their culture as my own.” I paused for a moment, biting my tongue to keep from going further down that path. “So… Cassie’s sexual identity is thoroughly human? Not Amazonian in… persuasion?”

“Definitely.”

“My, my… a naturally heterosexual Amazon. That’s a new one.”

“She was fourteen when she gained her Amazon powers. Her sexual identity had already been established.”

“Yeah, I bet. She probably had a picture of you in her school locker since she was ten.” A surge of anger washed over me. “I didn’t think you had that kind of thing for children.”

“She was old enough when we got together.”

“You call sixteen old enough? And given that Lois was in her fifties at the time, how do you think she felt about you dipping your wick in some teenager?”

“I didn’t break any laws.”

“No, just common decency and your marital vows,” I growled back at him. I was getting upset now.

“Some things just have to happen, Kara. And Lois knew about my needs going into the relationship.”

“But she didn’t know about Cassie. She assumed you and she could manage somehow. After you stopped seeing Diana.”

“That’s obviously impossible. If it wasn’t Cassie, it would have been one of the other Amazons.”

“That’s such bullshit, Kal. You were damn considerate that way when I was here before. You were totally afraid of anything sexual happening between us.”

“You’re my cousin.”

“Like that matters when we’re talking about saving the race. Or the humans around us. No, you had some other hang-ups back then, Kal.”

“Cassie needed me, Kara. Given her strength, no other man was going to be much help.”

“This is supposed to be news to me how?”

“I’m sorry… after you died, I was a little crazy for a bit.”

“So you decided to become Cassie’s good Samaritan?” I quipped, my voice dripping in sarcasm. “Charitable sex. Therapeutic I’m sure, at least in your mind. That made it OK?”

Kal looked down at his feet. Obviously nobody had challenged him this way before.

I couldn’t help but feel satisfied as I saw the crestfallen look on his face. Despite myself, I was enjoying this. Kal had been way out of line with Cassie and somebody had to kick his ass.

“Lois says you fucked the poor girl’s brains out on her sixteenth birthday. In her bedroom during a birthday party for her friends. Don’t you think you were flying a bit close to the flame there?”

“That’s not how it was. Everyone had gone home.”

“Oh, I feel better already.”

“Lois has already busted my balls over this, Kara. Why do you…?”

“Because you’ve changed, Kal. I mean, you were always there to save the day, just like you are now. To leap tall buildings in a single bound. Bend steel with your bare hands. Stop a racing locomotive. To give hope to the hopeless. But that doesn’t give you the right to fuck the bejesus out of a young Amazon the first day she wasn’t jail-bait?”

“It wasn’t like that. She’s stronger than she looks, and she had a very expansive libido. She didn’t want to wait for her birthday, but made her. Besides, Diana seemed more than happy about it all.”

“Then the Amazons are even weirder than I thought.”

“And Cassie was so happy… I’d never seen anyone so deliciously happy.”

“Or course she was, you asshole. She was infatuated with you. You’d been her idol since she was old enough to open her eyes. Now she was a woman… and Superman’s lover, for Rao’s sake.”

I wanted to say more, but instead bit my tongue to hold the acid back. Instead, I scanned through the next few drawings, his sketches all featuring Cassie. She had the confident but dreamy look of a girl who was discovering what it meant to be a woman. The emphasis still on girl.

I finally tossed the pile of damning drawings on the table and looked back up at Kal. “As I said, Lois is talking about leaving you, Kal. She knows your relationship with Cassie was a lot more intense than it ever was with Diana.”

“It wasn’t something I’d planned. But I’ve never known a woman who truly wanted me and also was super.”

“So tell me this is this the Kryptonian equivalent of a mid-life crisis, Kal.”

“Where is it said that a man can’t share his heart?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Only in just about everything ever written about human relationships.”

“We’re a bit more than human, Kara. You and me. The Amazons too.”

“Ah, I was wondering when we were going to get to that. So, you figured, hey, everyone thinks I’m a god and Cassie’s a young goddess, so the rules don’t apply to me. Lois will just have to learn to deal with it all. Right?”

“I… I admit. I lost my perspective for a while. But some of that has to be true. We protect this entire world. What do we get in return?”

“Every other super I’ve met has asked that question, Kal. But never you. You grew up as a human, and you’ve always felt you were here to help, but not because you were superior or because it was your mission or anything. Instead, you became an icon of virtue because you could. Because people needed hope. They needed something to believe in.”

“You wouldn’t understand the pressures I was under, Kara. You were always so… correct.”

That shocked me, as I’d always felt the opposite. Kal was the icon of compassion, of selflessness, a man so full of goodness that he came across as more than human. In contrast, I’d always been the conflicted teenager who wasn’t sure if she wanted to be human or Kryptonian, and who wound up being both.

I wasn’t going to talk about that. “So, if she’s a goddess, how strong is she, Kal? And how about Amazons in general.”

“Before or after being with me?”

“It makes that big a difference?”

He nodded. “Diana had the strength of a hundred men at first. Cassie even less.”

“And… after?” This worried me.

“As I said, Diana can easily match me in most ways, although she can only stay in hard vacuum for limited periods of time. And her heat vision is only a fraction of mine.”

It surprised me that she even had heat vision. “What about Cassie.”

“Cassie isn’t nearly as strong as you, and her Kryptonian adaptation isn’t as great as Diana’s. Maybe she has the strength of a thousand men. Probably less.”

“A real weakling,” I laughed.

“Speaking of that, you’re stronger than you used to be, Kara. I had to work very hard to subdue you over at the entrance.”

“I used to be a lot of things. Mostly younger. And you just caught me by surprise. You might not win the next round.”

He smiled softly, his eyes so warm. “I’m still having trouble believing you’re really back, Kara. I buried you. Your injuries were… terrible.”

“You have to remind me of that?”

“Sorry… I’m still trying to catch up here.”

“Don’t worry. It took me a while to get my head on straight too, Kal.”

“You didn’t tell me how… whoever, did it. Revived you.”

“Rejuvenation tanks. Stem cells. Growth hormones. Plus some DNA that even I don’t understand. Stuff that makes me a bit of a chameleon. I think that’s how my body ultimately was able to regenerate.”

I could see the wheels turning in Kal’s head. I wasn’t going to let him go there.

“So how did things go so sour with Cassie, Kal? Lois says she’s really mad you now. I think she’s enjoying that.”

Kal sighed, dreading telling the rest of the story. “I… I made a mistake. I took an old uniform and asked her to wear it.”

I just stared at him, my thoughts racing. Uniform? Then it came to me. The missing one in my room. “Ah, let me guess… one of the ones I used to wear?”

He shook his head. “No. One of the experimental ones. I don’t think you ever wore it.”

I tried not to smirk. Kal was such an idiot sometimes. “So you… you asked her to dress up as me. And… she did?”

Kal nodded. “It had a… a really big impact on me.”

“As in…?” I asked warily.

Kal was really blushing now. “Cassie said I went wild whenever she wore that uniform. She hated that.”

It all made sense now, but the conclusion shocked me. Kal got crazy hot when he made it with someone dressed like me? I took a deep breath. “So she figured out you were imagining that she was me.” I tried to take this in stride, but my emotions were reeling. “Makes sense in a way, I guess. She looked a lot like me at that age, blonde and blue-eyed. She’s got my muscles too.”

I looked down at the last sketch Kal had done of Cassie, showing her in a uniform that an old friend had designed for me. Louis LeFleur was a young fashion designer in Paris and one of the few men who knew that Linda Lee was really Supergirl.

The skirt was little more than a bandage around her hips, and the bare midriff was way ahead of the fashion trends of the 80’s. Cassie looked sexy in it, but anything but happy. I tried to imagine the two of them making love, Cassie in Louis’ uniform, Kal pretending she was me, but that just made my head hurt.

“So you really thought she wouldn’t take offense if you imagined you were making love to your dead cousin.” I was having trouble keeping the anger out of my voice.

“I was… you know, trying to work some things out in my head. After you died.”

“More like working them out inside Cassie’s body.” I picked up the other sketchbook and flipped through some more pages, finding a number of drawings he’d done of me. The first one was a drawing of how I’d looked at fifteen. I was very aware of the x-rated view between my legs.

“So you wanted me right from the start, Kal. Even when I was too young.”

Kal reached forward to retrieve his drawings, really blushing now, but I quickly floated out of his reach. I wanted to see the rest of them.

The next few depicted me as being slightly older. But my skirt was still ridiculously short.

“You had a thing about my legs, didn’t you? Or some kind of skirt fantasy?” The skirts he drew were little more than handkerchiefs tied around my waist.

I finally found one with both Cassie and I in it. I held it out for Kal to see. “Let me guess… this is your ultimate sexual fantasy? A couple of cute blondes? Up in the clouds.”

Kal turned positively green.

I studied the drawing further, and decided his portrayal of me was rather flattering, the handkerchief skirt aside. As usual, he focused more attention on my legs than anything else. “So I’m supposed to be what… maybe seventeen or so in this drawing? And Cassie is a year or two younger?”

“It was just a private sketch, Kara. Nobody was supposed to see it.”

“And naturally, Cassie is wearing pants,” I continued, ignoring his protest. “But you’ve put me in a skirt that covers nothing, just waiting for me to open my legs for you. Maybe you were thinking of letting Cassie watch as we show her how real Kryptonians do it?”

Kal looked like he was getting sick.

“Except I was dead when you drew this. Is this how you kept my memory alive?”

A new voice interrupted, low and feminine and charged with anger. “No, that was just his excuse for fucking a teenage girl.”

I spun around to see Lois standing in the doorway, an insolent and angry look in her face, her thumbs hooked in the pockets of her jeans. She wore a white sleeveless top adorned with sequins. I had no idea how she’d gotten into the Fortress.

“I want a divorce, Kal.”

Chapter Thirteen

Lois’ bombshell about wanting a divorce was still hanging in the air when she walked over to wrap her arms around my neck and kissed me. Not some polite ‘how are you’ kiss, but a warm, lingering, passionate one.

My senses reeled as her tongue found mine, her embrace tightening nearly to Kryptonian levels. I wanted to pull away - I’m not exactly into kissing other women - but I sensed this was all for Kal’s benefit.

Intrigued by Lois’ game, and still angry enough with Kal to want to play it, I closed my eyes and returned Lois’ kiss with interest, doing my best to act like I was getting off on it.

By the time our passionate kiss ended, Lois was breathing fast, her face flushed, her nipples punctuating her top - clearly aroused.

“God, it’s so nice to see you again, Supergirl,” Lois winked at me, as if to say it was just her little game. “It’s been so long since we were together.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that – other than Jarod, nobody had called me that since I’d died – and I most certainly hadn’t ever been intimate with Lois before this.

Kal didn’t know that, which was the point. He stared at us, looking really uncomfortable, his eyes flicking from mine to Lois’ like he didn’t understand what he’d just seen, and then he turned on his heel and vanished in the blink of an eye. the rush of wind nearly lifted me off my feet.

Lois doubled over hysterically as she collapsed onto the couch. “So… Kara, boy did we… man, did you see the look on his face?”

I flopped down beside her, reaching out to hold her hand. “So, are you happy now, Lois? My cousin is totally freaking out.”

“Not nearly happy enough. He has no idea how much trouble he’s in.” She turned to look at me, curling one leg beneath her. “So, what did he tell you about he and Cassie?”

“You sure you want to know?”

Lois nodded. “I’m a reporter. I’ve heard it all on the streets of Metropolis.”

“This isn’t just some news story, Lois. It’s the story of your life.”

“Haven’t had much of a life lately.”

I exhaled slowly. She was in a mood. “OK. How to start… let’s see, ah, I’d say the thing that bothered me most was that he feels his affair with Cassie was appropriate. He talked about his so-called ‘special needs’.”

“That damned self-centered bastard,” Lois hissed as she glared in the direction Kal had fled. “The thing with Diana, maybe that was barely on this side of the line, given how it started. But Cassie? That was pure fucking indulgence on his part. Some kind of mid-life freak out.”

“Maybe. But he did get embarrassed and blushed like a Boy Scout when I confronted him with it. Interestingly, his self-image hasn’t changed – he still thinks of himself as a decent, kind and compassionate man, and he is most of the time, but the god complex is setting in. It’s distorting his reasoning, bit by bit. He needs to get off Earth for a while to get his perspective back.”

“Hah! I’d be happy to send him straight to hell. He can get his perspective back in the Devil’s fire.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face. Feral, fiercely feminine and indignant, all at the same time. Good old Lois. “Well, knowing Kal, he’d probably enjoy the challenge – beating the devil in his own backyard. Forcing him to turn over a new leaf or something.”

“His being dead for a bit is good enough,” Lois growled.

“Trust me, being dead is not fun.”

Lois paused to stare at me, her eyes growing large. “Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry about that,” she said, gripping my hand back. “I wasn’t thinking about you.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“No problem. My experiences are a little outside the usual norm.” I smiled at her. “Being revived from the dead is a bit Frankensteinien in some people’s books.”

“I’m just so glad you’re here. I need somebody to talk to who really knows Kal and me. How our lives are outside the norms.”

“Speaking of outside norms, I can’t believe how strong you are now, Lois.”

She shrugged. “One of the nicer side effects of sleeping with Superman, I guess. Some of that super stuff rubs off.”

I rose to stand in front of her, still holding her hand. “Show me.”

Lois griped my hand and pulled against my arm with shocking strength, her biceps growing far more defined than seemed possible given her slender build. She had but a tiny fraction of my strength, maybe the strength of thirty men, but that was still seriously superhuman in anyone’s book.

“Wow. You can wear your daughter’s uniform if she ever gets tired of it, Lois.” I winked at her.

She laughed. “Yeah. Right. Right up until someone takes a shot at me. I’m not exactly bulletproof.”

“Then wear a bulletproof uniform like Batman.”

“Nope, I’m not cut out for the superheroine thing,” she frowned, shaking her head. “Hell, I can’t even keep my husband at home.” Lois’ smiled and sniffed as she flicked a tiny tear from her eye.

“Hey, I thought you were the one who kicked him out?”

Her smile returned. “You know, you’re damn right, girl. I did exactly that. I kicked Superman’s ass.”

I looked around the Fortress, not sure what to say to that. Lois was acting weird tonight. “So, you’ve got a back door into this joint, huh?”

“Kind of. I use a transporter that Kal brought back from some other world. Very experimental. Doesn’t work on flesh as tough as Kal’s.”

“Like the transporters in Star Trek?”

She nodded.

I was impressed, at least until I remembered the ways transporters could malfunction. “So he’s got security on it, I hope? Not like him to leave a back door into the Fortress open.”

“It’s tuned for my body. He says that violators will just get stuck in the pattern buffer until he authorizes their reintegration.”

I nodded, both fascinated and horrified. I didn’t want my body vaporized and transmitted from one memory bank to another, only to be reassembled later. Assuming someone even pushed the Reintegration button or whatever it was called. I felt a chill run down my spine as I considered what might happen if the microprocessor in the transporter hung. Then I thought of something Jarod had said about his notebook computer software. “Well, I hope to hell the damn thing isn’t running Windows XP.” He’d told me about that horror.

“Hey, we could send him to Redmond,” Lois quipped. “Get him a coding job there… just as good as Hell.”

I had no idea what Redmond was. “Tell you what… let’s wait on sending him to any kind of hell, Lois. He’ll make all the difference in the coming battle against Darkseid. A battle he doesn’t even realized he has to fight.”

“And you know Darkseid’s intentions?” Lois asked, looking surprised.

“Some of them.”

“So tell me, and I know you aren’t saying much to Kal about this right now, but just between us girls, are you fighting on the side of freedom, or are you just another of his agents?”

I grimaced – I’d forgotten about Lois’ famously blunt questions. I was really glad that Kal wasn’t around to hear it. “Ah… let’s just say I’m still working out the best way to protect Earth by fighting the war somewhere else. The last thing we want is to allow more than a handful of his forces down on Earth. Look at what happened when that Kryptonian woman who landed in Roswell. The one who claims to be his first wife.”

“What a crock that is,” Lois laughed. “Married at birth. But I was talking about you.”

I was surprised she didn’t say more about that, but I gathered she wasn’t ready. “Darkseid was the one who revived me. He was holding me prisoner. I escaped.”

“I expected no less from you, Kara.”

I wasn’t going to share my private fears with her - mainly that capitulating to Darkseid might be the only way to save billions of lives. “The real question, Lois, is how we keep the light of freedom burning.” I grimaced as I said the words, realizing how lame they sounded.

“Hmmm… sounds very… American.”

“Or what Americans used to be,” I added.

“Rat hole,” Lois smirked. “Politics and the future of the world. If we’re going to decide that, we need Kal here.”

“Then we definitely won’t talk about that.”

“Right. Kal can sleep outside in the snow.”

“What we really have to do is to get him to take the fight elsewhere.”

“How do you make him?”

Shrugging, I said, “I guess I have to find a way to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Turning, I headed back toward my old bedroom, taking the fur vest and then my top off. “Give me a moment while I change into something a little more appropriate, Lois. This was my ‘meeting Kal after 20 years’ outfit.”

I was barely through the bedroom door when I felt Lois’ warmth against my back. She rested her warm hands on my shoulders and gently pulled my hair to the side, then wrapped her arms around my waist. I gasped as I felt her lips kissing that wickedly sensitive spot between my shoulder blades.

“Ah, Lois…” I started to say, gently slipping her hands from my waist. I pulled away, turning to smile over my shoulder at her. “I’m really not wound that way, Lois.”

Her eyes were liquid blue with passion. “You are so perfectly lovely,” she murmured in a husky voice. “So powerful yet so beautiful.” She paused to kiss my shoulder. “And so very, very Kryptonian.”

My first instinct was to move further away, but something held me back. Partly it was Lois’ sadness, and part was my cousin’s betrayal and my shame for him. I felt her loneliness. My loneliness too. Enough to stay right there, in her arms. She was a woman who knew everything about Kryptonians.

Her soft lips traced across my shoulder, touching the side of my neck, sending a wave of delicate tingles racing through my body.

“You are so soft, so feminine and… and yet you’re just as strong as Kal, aren’t you?”

“Maybe stronger…” My words softened to a whisper as her hands lifted to gently cup my breasts. I felt myself softening in her arms as her fingers circled my nipples - I was such a sucker for having my breasts caressed, they are so incredibly sensitive – I just can’t help but melt.

“I’ve never… been with another woman, Lois. I’m not sure if I….”

“Me either,” she murmured. “It’s always been Kal. But you are so… amazing.”

I closed my eyes as her hands held me tighter, her fingers expertly teasing my nipples to hardness. Like all women, she knew exactly how to awaken her own body.

And thus, mine.

 I felt strangely helpless in her arms as I turned to face her, closing my eyes as her warm kisses traced inward from my shoulder, finding that delicious place along the base of neck. She paused there, her lips barely brushing my skin, her fingers tracing the curves of my back ever so lightly, filling me with more excited shivers.

I’d never been touched so delicately or so lovingly.

I felt myself floating, knowing I should stop her – yet knowing I could not. It had been so long since anyone had touched me this way. So long since I’d felt tenderness. So long since I’d been safe enough to let anyone get this close.

 My feet grew lighter than air as her soft touches traveled lower, and I floated lighter in her arms, her lips closing round my hard nipple to make me gasp in pleasure, then teasing me with her soft bite, holding me tightly as the tip of her tongue teased me.

“Like steel…” she murmured. “Yet so… delicate.”

In that one broken sentence, Lois had captured my very essence.

I just floated there like a Christmas angel as her fingers gently caressed the rise of my backside, tracing across that delicate flesh, her kisses exploring the fragrant warmth between my breasts at the same time, finding more of those special spots. Her kisses traced lower, pausing at my navel, her tongue circling it to fill me with a billion tiny tingles. Her fingertips and her lips together played me like a song, creating the most wondrous music inside my body, encouraging me to float on thin air. I rose high enough to gently rest my legs on her shoulders, encouraging her to kiss me far more intimately and deeper.

She did, her warm breath and the delicate trace of her tongue making me gasp in pleasure, her hands tracing upward at the same time, finding the small of my back, delicately outlining my spine as she tracing higher, finding even more places of wonder. Her tongue traced deeper, more lusciously, tasting my growing wetness, her warm breath filling me.

I was now her willing instrument as she played me like a maestro, her tongue teasing that tiny hood, lifting it, revealing my passion, then coaxing it out to play. I floated backward, almost upside down, my legs still on her shoulders, my blonde hair spilling across the bed as I invited her to join me. She climbed on the mattress to kneel between my legs, her tongue probing ever inward. She had no fear, despite the powerful muscles that surrounded her face, for she was a woman who knew what it meant to be with a Kryptonian, trading force for overwhelming gentleness. Just as Kal had done to her a thousand times.

Despite that strange thought, I was loving the most delicate touch I’d ever felt, every muscle in my body relaxing as I let her take me wherever she wished. She piled every rising desire on top of the previous one, multiplying my passion in the strangest of ways, an itchy, hot needfulness driving me crazy. Holding back when I really wanted to let it all go, wanting so much to just be fucked, I instead lost myself in Lois’ stealthy journey toward that wondrous peak of passion. A new route to ecstasy that I’d never climbed before.

I was gasping for air as she paused at the very summit, my body so ready that the tiniest touch would have push me over the edge. Yet instead of that touch, she moved just outside my reach, leaving me floating alone over the bed, my climax only that single touch away.

She was so wise, knowing the danger.

Her hand found mine, our fingers entwining as she guided mine inward, placing my hand over my sex. She blew softly between my fingers, and her warm breath enveloping my needfulness.

“The last note of this song is yours, my dear. As it must always be.”

Eyes closed, I felt her warmth moving away, sensing that she’d slipped over the side of the bed to kneel on the floor, finding safety there, her eyes the only thing touching me now.

I obediently bent my middle finger, tracing it gently upward through my wetness, opening myself, then finding my center, circling it to start the magic, unwinding all the power that Lois had created inside me. I cried out, arching my back as I exhaled, bending myself all the way backward as that wondrous pain of total release burst inside me, my hips bucked wildly as I unleashed the goddess, my body turning as hard as steel as I cried out louder, letting it all wash over me now, my body turning to light… my world exploding into a billion bright shards of wondrous starlight.

I stretched luxuriously as I awoke, I don’t know how much later, my body feeling so relaxed and so wonderful - the tension of the last days finally dissipated. Smiling as I basked in post-coital glow, I thought of Lois, and smiled. She was so gentle, so sensitive, and so sweet.

Then I thought of Kal, and the glow faded slightly. I could never explain this to him - I’d lose the moral high ground I’d been enjoying relative to his illicit affair with Cassie. I prayed that Kal was far away, thanking Rao that the Fortress was impenetrable by x-ray vision.

I couldn’t bear his knowing.

Sighing, I curled up cat-like, trying to preserve the wondrous glow. Rolling over as I started to rise, I found that Lois had covered me with a sheet. I emerged from beneath it, only to find Lois standing beside the bed. “That was so nice, Lois. I’m impressed that you knew how to protect yourself so well… at that moment…” I stopped as her smiled collapsed as her eyes flicked up and down my body, and was replaced by a shocked look.

“What in the hell happened to you, Kara?” she whispered fervently.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve… oh, God, you’re… this is unbelievable.”

“Damn it,” I groaned as I flopped onto my back, realizing with a sinking feeling that the morphing thing had happened again. I screwed up my courage and lifted the ends of my hair to look at them - the strands were reddish and curly, not blonde and straight. Cursing, I glanced up at Lois, one eye closed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the rest of myself. “Is it… bad?”

“You can change your shape?” Lois gasped, astonished. “You can become someone else?”

“Never done the last thing. But yeah, it seems that shape changing is a side effect of my revival.” I shrugged, trying to downplay it. “Some kind of alien DNA. It makes me a bit of a chameleon.”

“You should have told me. Should have prepared me.”

“I never know when it’s going to happen. Or how. This is all new to me, too.” I floated upward to sit on the bed, my eyes still on Lois’. “So, do I look really ugly or scaly or something?” I remembered waking up after one particularly bad nightmare, finding I looked like one of the lizard men from the dream, scales and all.

“No, not ugly. Definitely not that. Just… it’s very weird.”

I took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. “OK. Let’s check out the damage.” I floated from the bed and did a slow somersault in mid-air to land directly in front of the wall mirror, eyes still closed. I tossed the hair from my and stood there, not at all sure I wanted to open them.

“It’s OK, Kara. Just a bit surprising.”

I exhaled, and bit my lip as I suddenly snapped my eyes open. My hair was curly red, a multitude of shades really, and my cheeks were a bit hollow to accent my high cheekbones, my mouth less generous than normal, and eyes were a gorgeous shade of greenish blue.

I was wearing a black, sleeveless dress with a single strap close to my neck, the red ‘S’ of my proud heritage located over my right breast.

Lois had dressed me in another of Louis’ originals.

“What the…”

I saw the mouth in the reflection move with my words, and realized in a heartbeat why Lois had been staring at me so weirdly.

All those details immediately became extraneous as I studied to face before me.

“My God, Lois. I’m… you!”

Lois walked up to stand beside me, creating a double reflection. She chuckled. “So… is this… oh, God, is this how you thank your lovers, Kara? By becoming them?”

I just stared at my reflection, shocked that I’d unwittingly become her clone. “No… actually, I don’t know. You’re my first lover… since I came back, I mean.”

“Then I guess I should be honored by the compliment,” Lois smiled, regaining some of her composure. “But if this is how you’re going to wake up after sex, then its going to be very interesting if you’re with a guy.”

My stomach lurched as I considered that. “Rao, I sure hope not…” I couldn’t help but stare at myself. “You really are beautiful, Lois.”

She laughed. “I’ve never looked half as good as you do now. There’s no mistaking that Kryptonian glow of yours. Or those eyes.”

I turned around to look into the same eyes I’d been staring into. “I disagree… we are truly twins. Except for the outfit.”

“Yeah. The ‘S’ doesn’t wear so well on me.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.”

Lois suddenly giggled. “Oh, Lord, could we ever have some fun with this. Kal would never guess…” She winked at me. “Well, at least until he realized he didn’t have to hold anything back.”

“NO WAY,” I gasped. “Don’t even think that way.”

“You’d blow his mind, Kara.”

“Your marriage is already in enough trouble, Lois, without me seducing your husband. And Kal is really weird about that kind of thing with me. Besides, these borrowed shapes don’t last long.”

Lois smirked. “I was going somewhere else. I have this image of Kal waking up, naked and spooned up against… himself. That would really weird him out.”

My stomach turned again. What would I do with his 280 pounds of muscle? Not to mention his primary sexual characteristics. My head began to spin.

Lois prattled on as I quietly freaked out. “Well, the good news, Kara, is that I’ve got all my old strength back. Thanks to you.”

I looked at her funny. “Old strength?”

“The longer I’m away from Kal, the weaker I get. Some kind aura his body gives off. Yours too.”

Shit. Was that all I was to her? Her fountain of youth? To be used when she was a quart low?

She saw the look in my eyes, and her smile faded. “Oh no, that wasn’t why I came to you, Kara. You are truly lovely. Irresistible, in fact.” She winked as her smile blossoming again. “Especially the way you look now.“

“I’m feeling weird enough as it is without you teasing me.”

I cursed under my breath as the last vestiges of my passion faded and I started thinking clearly again. What the hell was I doing? Was I so desperate that I’d sleep with my cousin’s wife? With the mother of the girl who’d taken my place as Supergirl. A girl I hadn’t even met yet. Damn it, I really had to get together with Matt or Jarod. I so loved a man’s rough hands, the bristle of their beard, the demanding passion of their wild erections, their crazy needfulness, undeniable, along with their athletic antics in bed. I really needed a man’s loving to wash away the funny sensations that filled me.

When I was myself again, that is.

The chameleon thing really worried me now – I imagined waking up looking like some guy. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Was this changeling thing limited to emulating female forms? Unlikely. Was it triggered by orgasms? No, I vividly remembered the times I’d woken up after distinctly non-sexual nightmares looking half cat and half human, not to mention that scaly lizard thing.

Damn it. Wasn’t my life complicated enough already? Hadn’t I been through enough?

I forced those selfish thoughts away. This wasn’t all about me. The past was just a footnote, even yesterday was just history. Today was simple reality. The future was what I could shape. The future of a world. My new-old world.

Which brought me back to the coming storm. “So, Lois, we were talking before about getting Kal to engage in fighting off-planet.”

Lois shrugged as she started to dress. She didn’t look as awkward or embarrassed as I felt, but then she was still in her own skin. “I don’t know how we do that, Kara. He’s Superman. Nobody forces him to…”

“There’s a super in front of my name too, Lois,” I said bluntly, “despite the fact that your daughter wears my old uniform. I’m not exactly a girl anymore.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. But he’s got way more muscle than you.”

“Since when does size matter?”

Lois’ eyes narrowed. Friends had teased her on this point before, given she was married to Superman. Everyone assumed he had the biggest endowment on Earth.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “OK. Really bad analogy. For both of us.”

“Yeah,” Lois sighed. “A shared affliction, I guess.”

I wasn’t going to comment on that, as it wasn’t really true for me.

“So we have a thing for super men, Kara, albeit with a little femme nookie on the side.”

Never again, I promised myself. I wasn’t some nymphet she could seduce whenever she wanted.

“See that weight over there?” I pointed out the bedroom door and through the wide opening into the exercise area. A block of steel the size of a small house sat just inside the door to the football stadium sized room. “Have you seen Kal work out with that block?”

Lois nodded. “He can barely budge it. He wanted something that challenged even his strength. Had to build muscle - as if he didn’t have enough already. It’s lead filled and is tens of thousands of tons heavy.”

I had no idea if I could lift that much, but it was time to remind Lois who I was, despite looking like her clone. “Would you like to see me lift it, Lois?”

She stared at me in shock for a moment, and then a tiny smile started to bent the corners of her mouth, her eyes crinkling. “You’re messing with my head, Kara. If Kal can’t, how can you possibly…”

I shrugged. “I’ve been through some… experiences, Lois. The ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ kind.”

“Except it did kill you.”

“Always the stickler for details, aren’t you.” I smiled confidently as I walked out the door and across the common area to stand next to the gigantic block of steel. I felt like a Lilliputian.

Reaching down, I wrapped my fingers around the huge handholds that had been carved a foot deep in the side of the block. Spacing my feet widely apart, wrists turned outward as I gripped the huge handles in front of me, I was about to try to hoist it off the floor when I felt Lois standing behind me. She gently wrapped her hands around my upper arms, and I felt her fragrant breath on my ear as she whispered, “Show me again how much of a woman you really are, Kara. Show me your steel.”

Amused by her passion for strength, for my muscles even, both understandable considering she’d been with Kal so long, but not exactly my style. I tossed my hair to the side and began to tense my arms, slowly pouring my Kryptonian strength into the task. I was amused to feel my biceps growing so large and hard inside her hands as she held me so tightly, the strong tendons of my arms rising like steel cables.

While I looked like a model most of the time, there was no doubt I was Superman’s cousin when I put my muscles to work.

Still, the block didn’t budge, but that was no surprise. Kal had twice my raw strength and Lois said he could barely budge it. But I had an advantage – I could fly circles around him. It was my secret weapon whenever I ran out of muscle.

Rising up onto my toes, my calves burning from the strain, I formed the mental image that controlled my flight, imagining I was going to float around the room with this block. The strain on my arms was suddenly incredible, ligaments and tendons stretching as they channeled thousands of tons of muscular power through my tiny wrists, but somehow, it was enough. Barely. The block gave off a horrible groan and both it and the floor rose several inches higher as it started to rise.

I closed my eyes and gave it all I had, sweat pouring off me as I strained with every ounce of strength and flight power I had. It felt as if my arms were going to rip out of their sockets.

“Look… look at the block, Kara.”

I gritted my teeth and groaned, unable to even look down.

“My God, its flying.”

That’s when I felt it too… felt the block lift, astounded that I really was doing something Kal couldn’t!

Opening one eye, my sweat half blinding me, I turned my head just enough to see my reflection staring back at me from the wall mirror, her/my body a maze of hard, sharp-edged muscle and steel tendons.

I was so proud of myself as I floated higher, levitating the gigantic block until my arms started to shake from the strain.

It was all I could do to hold on until I could set it down gently, the massive weight sending a wave rippling across the two-meter thick steel floor as it flexed wildly.

“Jesus Christ, Kara,” Lois gushed as she grabbed the corner of a smaller block to keep her balance, “that was totally amazing… especially seeing myself lifting something Kal can barely budge.”

“You and I have the same amount of muscle.”

“God, I’d so love to blow him away another way right now.”

“What do you mean…?” I panted, completely out of breath.

Lois laughed. “You know it’s Kal’s Earth birthday today. What would he think if he discovered that Lois Lane, the wife who could never meet his special needs, had suddenly become Superwoman? A woman who could now meet his every need.”