CapitaoCaverna Hello guys. Have to confess that next chapter is comming along at a snail's pace. I don't really know when it's gonna be ready, but probably at New Years unless I have a sudden bout of inspiration.
Using the phone takes me twice as long to finish.
Still, I hope you guys like the chapter
Worst case scenario, she was pretty sure she could reverse engineer at least some of Morrow’s hardware if she could get her hands on another one of his androids.
While Kara had no confidence in replicating Red Vulcano’s AI, she could probably make less intelligent robots with a version of his hardware.
Also, a geokinetic modification to her armor and drones could improve their capabilities by a lot.
‘When was Red Vulcano born anyway?’ Kara wondered, she was pretty sure she could slightly modify his core programing to make him less of a homicidal robot supremacist, but doing that after he was activated felt too much like mind control… or even mind r**e for her liking.
She wouldn’t feel all that bad about destroying him if he didn’t give her a choice, but mind control was a step she wasn’t willing to take.
With Dexter angrily staring at her from under her bed, Kara sat down on the carpet and started messing with her latest experiment. Two small platforms, just big enough for one of her smaller pillows to fit on and connected by a myriad of cables.
Kara used her X-ray vision to stare at the components inside it, then pulled out the fried circuit board, fixed it, adjusted its configuration and used her heat vision to weld it back in place for another try.
Her front door bell rang causing Dexter to dart out of his hiding place and go check out who had arrived.
Looking through her apartment’s walls Kara saw it was just Billy making sure she was alright. The boy had been coming over so often the doorman just let him through now. Grabbing for her phone she buzzed the door open and shouted. “Come in Billy!”
Kara hated that her friends and family felt the need to keep an eye on her every day since Lobo attacked, but she understood their reasoning. She and Kori hadn’t exactly been perfectly stealthy when coming or going from the building. And most people didn’t know she had enough firepower to face an army hidden in the residence.
“Hello, Miss Kara. Thanks for ha… Argh!” Billy started to say from the entrance when a terrifying hiss and loud yowling interrupted him. Dexter had already started defending his home. He was such a good and loyal kitty. “Get it off, get it off! Shazam!”
A few seconds later Kara saw her cat walk back into the room, his tail held high. In a much better mood, he jumped on top of a chair and started licking his claws clean.
“That cat is a menace.” Billy grumbled as he peaked through the door and glared at Dexter.
“Don’t be silly, Dex is just protecting his home.” Kara dismissed the boy’s concerns and smiled at him. She liked Billy, he was a good kid. “Come in, make yourself comfortable. You’re gonna be here until my training with Kal, right?”
“Yeah… sorry about the ruckus, Miss Kara.” He scratched at his neck and sat down on the bed to watch her work. “So, what’re you doing?”
“Trying to make a commercially viable teleporter, but it’s not going very well.”
“Don’t we already have the Zeta-Tubes?”
“Do you know how much those things cost?” Kara snorted and put one of her small pillows on top of a platform. “Zeta-Tubes are incredibly expensive to make and maintain. They are made from very exotic materials and require constant upkeep. Not only do we not have enough materials to build them for civilian use, it would cost more than anyone could pay to use them.”
“So, you’re just making something new?” Billy asked, now becoming interested.
“Well, I’m trying. Krypton had its own teleporters, but Earth doesn’t have the technology or the materials to make them work.”
Kara glanced at Dexter with a guilty look, but she pressed the activation button anyway and winced. With a crack of displaced air, space crumbled in a circular hole around the pillow and it was sucked in as if by an irresistible force, then the hole healed and the pillow appeared resting on the second platform. “YES!”
“It worked?”
“Don’t know, but there wasn’t an explosion and the stuffing is still inside the pillow, so that’s progress.” Taking the pillow off the platform Kara looked it over and didn’t see anything wrong with it. She nodded, time for another test.
The most annoying thing about the teleporter was the constraints Kara had to work under. She could make a teleporter fairly easily, but it would either need to be made completely with Kryptonian tech or with Earth-tech that made each activation cost more than a quarter billion in resources. She wanted something accessible.
Something like, one or two thousand dollars per activation would already be ground breaking. She’d offer to substitute the current Zeta-Tube network too, but the technology was also much harder to block or intercept and had a galaxy wide range.
She thought she had managed to get everything working affordably, but every time she activated one of the platforms to send something, it ended up creating a mess.
The concept was simple: you take two fixed platforms, you gather enough power and pierce through the space between those two points, the person steps through the portal and viola.
The problem is that she couldn’t create a bridge through space-time gently, not yet. The connection would traverse the object through space like a bullet and the exit was far more violent than the entrance.
Not only would whatever was sent come out in a violent and noisy bang of displaced air, the space around the exit would also expand causing the teleported object to explode as it stayed in its expanded form even as the space around it snapped back to normal..
Her answer was to change the direction of the space tunnel, instead of sending something, she’d pull it. Which seemed to have worked. At least the pillow had not contracted or imploded.
“Huh, this is new.” Billy commented. “Usually, when I see mad science, I’m trying to stop it from happening, not just watching with interest.”
“I prefer the term, ‘super science’. Thank you very much.” She threw the pillow at his face in mock anger before looking around for a new test subject.
One of her drones would probably work, right? They were inexpensive to make anyway.
“I don’t know, it seems like mad science to me.” Billy mocked as he looked around the messy room. “A super scientist would probably have a tidy room.”
Kara snorted, “Aren’t we feeling cheeky today?”
Making sure the first teleport hadn’t messed up anything inside the bases, Kara pressed the button again. A second later, her drone teleported from one platform to the other without apparent damage. Eagerly, she ordered it to fly only to release a frustrated breath when it didn’t move.
Using her vision, she confirmed it’s insides were fried. Taking the entire thing off the socket and making sure it couldn’t turn on again, Kara put the entire device away and sighed. “Not today I guess.”
“What went wrong?”
“Don’t know, gonna need better equipment than I have here to find out.” She confessed and scratched at her tired eyes, she really had to get some sleep. “So, what’s this I hear about dangerous villains at the Sidekicks’ place?”
“Ah, it was great!” Billy almost jumped on the bed, his eyes shining with excitement.
“A villain attack was ‘great’?”
“Well, no, but it wasn’t a human enemy, and it wasn’t really trying to hurt anybody, so Red Tornado and I agreed to let the Team take care of it and They. Were. Awesome!” Billy seemed to regain his energy, motioning with his hands like mad. “Miss Koriand’r took charge of the situation instantly, and Robin disappeared so fast when I wasn’t paying attention. Do you think he’d teach me how to make my laugh come out from everywhere like he does?”
“Lame! Tell me more about Kori and Kon, did they get hurt?”
“No, Connor worked really well with her. The enemy was this cool robot that could use wind like Red Tornado and...” Billy sat up on the bed and started reenacting the scene while Kara imagined what it must have been like to be there. “But the robot was too strong and made a huge tornado! If Robin hadn’t been waiting to sneak attack it I don’t think Aqualad would have made it with his electricity. Then the Robot self-destructed.”
“So, there was nothing left?” Kara asked, from what Billy said the fight had gone much better than in canon. It was a pity they hadn’t managed to save anything then.
“Well, Kid Flash did manage to steal its head as a souvenir before it exploded.”
“Oh, really?” Kara’s eyes focused on the boy with a much bigger interest. So they had managed to save something. Could she track Morrow using the head? Did some of its wind control abilities remain?
“See! That’s totally a Mad Scientist look right there!” Billy jumped up on the bed a second time and pointed right at Kara’s face making her lose the definitely NOT evil smile she had.
“Get down from my bed Billy!” She scolded, causing him to float a few centimeters above her bed before setting down on the floor. “And, are you gonna stay transformed the entire time now?”
Billy only gave a quick glance towards Dexter, peacefully sleeping on top of the chair and gulped. “Yep.”
Eventually, Billy escorted her towards the Zeta-Tube and Kara teleported to the Fortress. She had actually taken a quick nap and arrived a few minutes late for her daily session with Kal.
Both Kal and Kon waited for her with the same disapproving look on their faces, almost making Kara laugh out loud when she saw it.
“Sorry. Captain Marvel was telling me about your fight today and I lost track of time.” She lied almost on instinct, then grimaced when she noticed she was trying to avoid talking about her problems again.
Walking to their side Kara sat down on her knees, her back perfectly straight and her arms resting on top of her legs. At their side, one of the Fortress’ screens was reproducing the sound from an out of tune TV.
“Now, today we’re gonna start on Torquasm Vo. As I already told you, this art has a lot to do with meditation so that’s what we’re gonna be starting with.” Kal said, looking at the both of them seated at his flanks. “Now, I want you to close your eyes and focus on the sound of the white noise, don’t try to ignore everything else but just… let it drift away while you focus.”
Trading one last glance with Kon, Kara saw that Kal had already closed his own eyes and was slowing his own breathing. She followed his example, closing her eyes and trying to concentrate on the TV.
She breathed in, drawing the cold Arctic air into her lungs and breathed out, letting out some of her worries every time. Her mind became clearer and clearer.
She was safe, she was with family and under the strong defenses of the Kryptonian Fortress, right now she didn’t need to worry about improving her armor or hunting down the Light. She didn’t need to ask herself what happened with all the pieces of Lobo hit by her teleport grenade and if they’d all regenerate into a new one, she only needed to relax and focus.
Before even ten minutes had passed Kara’s head fell forward, her body tilting to the side until she was touching Kal’s shoulders as she fell asleep.
CapitaoCaverna
If you enjoy my work take a look at my other fics: Dungeon Delving is Damn HARD (SFW) / Reincarnated into a H World (VERY NSFW) / Welcome to the System (SFW). Reincarnated into a H World just got an update yesterday!
Also, think about giving me a tip if you have some spare change by supporting me on patreon, ko-fi with the buttons bellow the chapter, or just a one time donation directly to PayPal. All my content is free.
A shout to Xhaustedhero, AkumaSmaG, Iori Daemona Angel, AlliterativeArts (Eric Faust), Icewing, Comics, DERMONIAN, Davvy chappie, Banh Bao, Ian Michael, WanderingDaemon, Scott, Tony Martinez, Travis cox and Chaos for supporting my work!
Last, but certainly not least, thanks to Eric Faust for helping me improve this chapter.
CapitaoCaverna Hello guys. Have to confess that next chapter is comming along at a snail's pace. I don't really know when it's gonna be ready, but probably at New Years unless I have a sudden bout of inspiration.
Using the phone takes me twice as long to finish.
Still, I hope you guys like the chapter
Worst case scenario, she was pretty sure she could reverse engineer at least some of Morrow’s hardware if she could get her hands on another one of his androids.
While Kara had no confidence in replicating Red Vulcano’s AI, she could probably make less intelligent robots with a version of his hardware.
Also, a geokinetic modification to her armor and drones could improve their capabilities by a lot.
‘When was Red Vulcano born anyway?’ Kara wondered, she was pretty sure she could slightly modify his core programing to make him less of a homicidal robot supremacist, but doing that after he was activated felt too much like mind control… or even mind r**e for her liking.
She wouldn’t feel all that bad about destroying him if he didn’t give her a choice, but mind control was a step she wasn’t willing to take.
With Dexter angrily staring at her from under her bed, Kara sat down on the carpet and started messing with her latest experiment. Two small platforms, just big enough for one of her smaller pillows to fit on and connected by a myriad of cables.
Kara used her X-ray vision to stare at the components inside it, then pulled out the fried circuit board, fixed it, adjusted its configuration and used her heat vision to weld it back in place for another try.
Her front door bell rang causing Dexter to dart out of his hiding place and go check out who had arrived.
Looking through her apartment’s walls Kara saw it was just Billy making sure she was alright. The boy had been coming over so often the doorman just let him through now. Grabbing for her phone she buzzed the door open and shouted. “Come in Billy!”
Kara hated that her friends and family felt the need to keep an eye on her every day since Lobo attacked, but she understood their reasoning. She and Kori hadn’t exactly been perfectly stealthy when coming or going from the building. And most people didn’t know she had enough firepower to face an army hidden in the residence.
“Hello, Miss Kara. Thanks for ha… Argh!” Billy started to say from the entrance when a terrifying hiss and loud yowling interrupted him. Dexter had already started defending his home. He was such a good and loyal kitty. “Get it off, get it off! Shazam!”
A few seconds later Kara saw her cat walk back into the room, his tail held high. In a much better mood, he jumped on top of a chair and started licking his claws clean.
“That cat is a menace.” Billy grumbled as he peaked through the door and glared at Dexter.
“Don’t be silly, Dex is just protecting his home.” Kara dismissed the boy’s concerns and smiled at him. She liked Billy, he was a good kid. “Come in, make yourself comfortable. You’re gonna be here until my training with Kal, right?”
“Yeah… sorry about the ruckus, Miss Kara.” He scratched at his neck and sat down on the bed to watch her work. “So, what’re you doing?”
“Trying to make a commercially viable teleporter, but it’s not going very well.”
“Don’t we already have the Zeta-Tubes?”
“Do you know how much those things cost?” Kara snorted and put one of her small pillows on top of a platform. “Zeta-Tubes are incredibly expensive to make and maintain. They are made from very exotic materials and require constant upkeep. Not only do we not have enough materials to build them for civilian use, it would cost more than anyone could pay to use them.”
“So, you’re just making something new?” Billy asked, now becoming interested.
“Well, I’m trying. Krypton had its own teleporters, but Earth doesn’t have the technology or the materials to make them work.”
Kara glanced at Dexter with a guilty look, but she pressed the activation button anyway and winced. With a crack of displaced air, space crumbled in a circular hole around the pillow and it was sucked in as if by an irresistible force, then the hole healed and the pillow appeared resting on the second platform. “YES!”
“It worked?”
“Don’t know, but there wasn’t an explosion and the stuffing is still inside the pillow, so that’s progress.” Taking the pillow off the platform Kara looked it over and didn’t see anything wrong with it. She nodded, time for another test.
The most annoying thing about the teleporter was the constraints Kara had to work under. She could make a teleporter fairly easily, but it would either need to be made completely with Kryptonian tech or with Earth-tech that made each activation cost more than a quarter billion in resources. She wanted something accessible.
Something like, one or two thousand dollars per activation would already be ground breaking. She’d offer to substitute the current Zeta-Tube network too, but the technology was also much harder to block or intercept and had a galaxy wide range.
She thought she had managed to get everything working affordably, but every time she activated one of the platforms to send something, it ended up creating a mess.
The concept was simple: you take two fixed platforms, you gather enough power and pierce through the space between those two points, the person steps through the portal and viola.
The problem is that she couldn’t create a bridge through space-time gently, not yet. The connection would traverse the object through space like a bullet and the exit was far more violent than the entrance.
Not only would whatever was sent come out in a violent and noisy bang of displaced air, the space around the exit would also expand causing the teleported object to explode as it stayed in its expanded form even as the space around it snapped back to normal..
Her answer was to change the direction of the space tunnel, instead of sending something, she’d pull it. Which seemed to have worked. At least the pillow had not contracted or imploded.
“Huh, this is new.” Billy commented. “Usually, when I see mad science, I’m trying to stop it from happening, not just watching with interest.”
“I prefer the term, ‘super science’. Thank you very much.” She threw the pillow at his face in mock anger before looking around for a new test subject.
One of her drones would probably work, right? They were inexpensive to make anyway.
“I don’t know, it seems like mad science to me.” Billy mocked as he looked around the messy room. “A super scientist would probably have a tidy room.”
Kara snorted, “Aren’t we feeling cheeky today?”
Making sure the first teleport hadn’t messed up anything inside the bases, Kara pressed the button again. A second later, her drone teleported from one platform to the other without apparent damage. Eagerly, she ordered it to fly only to release a frustrated breath when it didn’t move.
Using her vision, she confirmed it’s insides were fried. Taking the entire thing off the socket and making sure it couldn’t turn on again, Kara put the entire device away and sighed. “Not today I guess.”
“What went wrong?”
“Don’t know, gonna need better equipment than I have here to find out.” She confessed and scratched at her tired eyes, she really had to get some sleep. “So, what’s this I hear about dangerous villains at the Sidekicks’ place?”
“Ah, it was great!” Billy almost jumped on the bed, his eyes shining with excitement.
“A villain attack was ‘great’?”
“Well, no, but it wasn’t a human enemy, and it wasn’t really trying to hurt anybody, so Red Tornado and I agreed to let the Team take care of it and They. Were. Awesome!” Billy seemed to regain his energy, motioning with his hands like mad. “Miss Koriand’r took charge of the situation instantly, and Robin disappeared so fast when I wasn’t paying attention. Do you think he’d teach me how to make my laugh come out from everywhere like he does?”
“Lame! Tell me more about Kori and Kon, did they get hurt?”
“No, Connor worked really well with her. The enemy was this cool robot that could use wind like Red Tornado and...” Billy sat up on the bed and started reenacting the scene while Kara imagined what it must have been like to be there. “But the robot was too strong and made a huge tornado! If Robin hadn’t been waiting to sneak attack it I don’t think Aqualad would have made it with his electricity. Then the Robot self-destructed.”
“So, there was nothing left?” Kara asked, from what Billy said the fight had gone much better than in canon. It was a pity they hadn’t managed to save anything then.
“Well, Kid Flash did manage to steal its head as a souvenir before it exploded.”
“Oh, really?” Kara’s eyes focused on the boy with a much bigger interest. So they had managed to save something. Could she track Morrow using the head? Did some of its wind control abilities remain?
“See! That’s totally a Mad Scientist look right there!” Billy jumped up on the bed a second time and pointed right at Kara’s face making her lose the definitely NOT evil smile she had.
“Get down from my bed Billy!” She scolded, causing him to float a few centimeters above her bed before setting down on the floor. “And, are you gonna stay transformed the entire time now?”
Billy only gave a quick glance towards Dexter, peacefully sleeping on top of the chair and gulped. “Yep.”
Eventually, Billy escorted her towards the Zeta-Tube and Kara teleported to the Fortress. She had actually taken a quick nap and arrived a few minutes late for her daily session with Kal.
Both Kal and Kon waited for her with the same disapproving look on their faces, almost making Kara laugh out loud when she saw it.
“Sorry. Captain Marvel was telling me about your fight today and I lost track of time.” She lied almost on instinct, then grimaced when she noticed she was trying to avoid talking about her problems again.
Walking to their side Kara sat down on her knees, her back perfectly straight and her arms resting on top of her legs. At their side, one of the Fortress’ screens was reproducing the sound from an out of tune TV.
“Now, today we’re gonna start on Torquasm Vo. As I already told you, this art has a lot to do with meditation so that’s what we’re gonna be starting with.” Kal said, looking at the both of them seated at his flanks. “Now, I want you to close your eyes and focus on the sound of the white noise, don’t try to ignore everything else but just… let it drift away while you focus.”
Trading one last glance with Kon, Kara saw that Kal had already closed his own eyes and was slowing his own breathing. She followed his example, closing her eyes and trying to concentrate on the TV.
She breathed in, drawing the cold Arctic air into her lungs and breathed out, letting out some of her worries every time. Her mind became clearer and clearer.
She was safe, she was with family and under the strong defenses of the Kryptonian Fortress, right now she didn’t need to worry about improving her armor or hunting down the Light. She didn’t need to ask herself what happened with all the pieces of Lobo hit by her teleport grenade and if they’d all regenerate into a new one, she only needed to relax and focus.
Before even ten minutes had passed Kara’s head fell forward, her body tilting to the side until she was touching Kal’s shoulders as she fell asleep.
CapitaoCaverna
If you enjoy my work take a look at my other fics: Dungeon Delving is Damn HARD (SFW) / Reincarnated into a H World (VERY NSFW) / Welcome to the System (SFW). Reincarnated into a H World just got an update yesterday!
Also, think about giving me a tip if you have some spare change by supporting me on patreon, ko-fi with the buttons bellow the chapter, or just a one time donation directly to PayPal. All my content is free.
A shout to Xhaustedhero, AkumaSmaG, Iori Daemona Angel, AlliterativeArts (Eric Faust), Icewing, Comics, DERMONIAN, Davvy chappie, Banh Bao, Ian Michael, WanderingDaemon, Scott, Tony Martinez, Travis cox and Chaos for supporting my work!
Last, but certainly not least, thanks to Eric Faust for helping me improve this chapter.
