At first, Kara tried to say that Krypto was a dog from Krypton. Tanya didn't buy it. While, strictly speaking, Krypton also having dogs was possible, it was also so absurdly stupid that Tanya refused to believe it.
As it turned out, she was right to be skeptical. Krypto was a biodroid, created by the Kryptonian technology in Clark's stash up in the Arctic soon after Kara's arrival once she got infatuated with the idea of having a dog. She had been having trouble controlling her yellow sun granted strength at the time, so Clark wisely decided that an actual Earth dog was just begging for tragedy. The biodroid was still substantially more fragile than Kara herself, but it could take fifty times as much punishment as a real dog, so Krypto was able to withstand enough of Kara's strength to let her actually hug him instead of limply draping her hands around the drone.
In other words… "You should have told me you had a dog!" Tanya said, offended as she ground her knuckles into Kara's temples. Magically augmenting those knuckles with an irritation spell meant the girl could feel them, too. "I love dogs!"
Krypto barked happily as Pizza rode his back, the golem having made fast friends with his fellow artificial being. "I'm sorry!" Kara whined, "I didn't think it was a big deal…"
Tanya released the kryptonian, and from the small smile Kara got after she calmed down, she seemed to appreciate the exchange. Ignoring her, Tanya went to squish Krypto's face. "I know I've just met you, but I've missed you so much Krypto…" Tanya hugged the robot with all of her strength, augmented to be as much as she could while still being subtle about it. For his part, Krypto's tail wagged furiously and then he licked Tanya's face enthusiastically. Good boy.
Richard looked on with disinterest. "Why don't you get your own dog again?" he asked rhetorically. He had seen her with dogs before, he wasn't remotely surprised.
"I tried." Tanya replied, "Animals" except ones who have been magically influenced, like Selina's cats. They only noticed that the Amulet of Bast was controlling their minds because of the lack of hostile response to the demon magic, in fact. "-can spot me out as a demon, and they do not like that. For short periods I can fool them, but we had to return Weiss after he figured me out." It was a very sad day. Technically she can fool them perfectly… until she slips up. Which took her about a day and a half for Weiss the Samoyed. After a bit of testing, they could not find a single dog that didn't instantly treat her as a grave threat when they caught a whiff of her demonic magic. Heck, her breath set off some of them, even through the sulfur-neutralizing breath spray she uses.
Needless to say, this all occurred before Richard joined the family. "That's… huh." The boy seemed lost for words.
Kara's response was much more dramatic. "Dogs hate you?" She asked, clearly having difficulties comprehending such a thing. "How?"
"Same reason I have to be careful around anything blessed by the Catholic Church." Tanya deadpanned, "Mortal shell or not, I've been forsaken by the asshole upstairs." Or, at least, the one from her universe. Constantine's vague nickname aside, it's pretty much agreed that the one empowering the Vatican's holy magic is the head honcho among angels, and even if he wasn't Being X, she was on his shit list nonetheless. "So animals have an instinctive revulsion to my magic. A biodroid wouldn't have the same problem." She fortunately knew about this long before she started outputting the products of her magic to the world at large, so she has plenty of ways to make her toy golems not be kill-on-sight for every dog in the world, but that wasn't something she could do to herself long term. It was also one of many reasons why she didn't make a habit of releasing any product that required her personal attention to manufacture.
Tanya's playing around with Krypto's ears was interrupted by both of them getting scooped up into a hug from Kara. Quickly, Tanya reinforced her body magically, as Kara was not controlling her strength as much as she should. "There there…" Kara said, squishing the both of them together and to her chest between the steel clamps she called arms.
At least one direction was soft… After Kara released them, Tanya gave Krypto one last pet before looking around. Noticing an amused pair of old people, Tanya waved. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Kent!" She shouted, "We brought some donuts!"
Martha Kent clearly did not appreciate this. "You better not have eaten some already! You'll spoil your supper!" She shouted back, her tone somehow managing to remind Tanya of Alfred when she had been a bit too much of a brat and he was on his last nerve.
Tanya laughed. Ah, she was in danger…
-----------------------
Fortunately, Tanya's magic was tuned towards destruction, and as any doctor could tell you, precisely wielded destruction was all you really needed a lot of the time. So a quick hunger spell emptied her stomach of the donuts, allowing her to enjoy the Kent's delicious midwest-style supper without them knowing for sure that she had done anything. As much of a headache it was for commercialization, this universe's magic couldn't be beat for convenience.
Richard, naturally, got away with eating so much by dint of being an athletic teenage boy who paced himself a bit better when it came to eating donuts.
"I'm glad you decided to take us up on that offer for a night's stay." Clark said, breaking the silence now that everyone had a few bites of dinner. "I'm sure it'll make Bruce feel better, you know how he is." Naturally, when you work in a place with a teleportation device, the only thing stopping him from discreetly teleporting home for dinner was the fact that he had a wife back in Metropolis who had expensive tastes in food. Lois was working late, anyway.
Richard groaned. "He's so overprotective…"
"It really says something about how eager you are to throw your life away that even he thinks you go too far." Tanya shot back.
Kara scoffed. "If he's anything like Clark, he's just a hypocrite."
"No fighting at the table." Martha Kent proclaimed firmly.
"Best not talk behind people's backs, neither." Jonathan added.
There were some murmured apologies from the non-old people, and the meal resumed.
"So what is there to do around here?" Richard asked, "Besides trying to sneak food to the dog." Tanya quickly put her hands back onto the table. "Does he even eat?"
Kara waved vaguely. "Krypto's a biodroid, so yeah, he eats. I programmed an app into my phone that lets me sync with his systems, so I'll get a notification if he gets a deficiency or something."
Wait, she has a sufficient understanding of Kryptonian software to do that? "How hard was that?" Tanya asked casually, although she was sure Clark and Kara's super-senses could see right through her.
"Oh, it was a nightmare." Kara immediately replied, "Kryptonian software doesn't even do binary, it took me three years of those educational programs that Clark's never touched-"
"I did go through them." Clark protested.
"You went through the user tutorials so you could let the AI do all the heavy lifting." Kara corrected, "I went through the Science Guild induction courses, they're completely different beasts."
Tanya's eyes widened. She knew Clark had a cache of Kryptonian technology in his Arctic fortress, but he had the equivalent of online college courses stashed up there? She gave the meathead a betrayed look. Clark looked away.
"Anyway," Kara continued, "I did most of that while I was still around here, I still have that remote terminal to the Fortress' database up in my room, but nowadays I just use my phone." She waved her top of the line Waynetech phone, given to her as a 'welcome to the League' gift from Bruce. "Once I got the SDL/binary protocol converter working, I installed a secure transmitter from the Fortress to the Watchtower, with a backup in that remote terminal I talked about, and from there I can access any Kryptonian tech on the planet."
Tanya took a moment to process that explanation. "So Krypto's systems communicate with your remote terminal, which then sends the data to your app." She concluded. It also sounded like she opened up a security vulnerability in the Fortress of Solitude's systems. Maybe she should contract Barbie to audit the defenses…
"You got it!" Kara said, rubbing Tanya's head and messing up her hair. Pizza squeaked aggressively in response. Krypto whacked Pizza into the next room with a single swipe of his tail, the golem squeaking pathetically as it flew away.
Annoyed, Tanya created a comb out of magic and smoothed out the damage. Clark chuckled, clearly finding her aggravation funny. "How many of those robots do you have, by the way?" Tanya asked, while they were on the topic of Clark's cache.
Clark's chuckle suddenly became very nervous. "Ah, well, I didn't used to have many, but… The Justice Lord Superman set the Fortress to full production, and I didn't notice for a few days, so…" He trailed off, mumbling what was probably the actual number.
"Kara?" Tanya asked, turning to the girl.
"14,289." Kara said, reading the number off her phone. "SuperJerk brought an asteroid to the Fortress for processing, so it was able to make them fast."
"I had them make a warehouse for them to shut down in." Clark admitted, "I've tried to use those robots as body doubles a few times, but they don't really work that well."
Kara hummed. "It's the AI, they can rescue people in obvious danger just fine, but they're kind of… cold. They also have to err on the side of caution, and so they'll ignore stuff that Clark wouldn't because they have trouble with nuance and that's better than having them bust a group of kids planning a pretend heist." That was a worryingly specific example.
"I might have some ideas on how to make good use of them." Tanya said, "Off the top of my head, they could be useful in acting as supplementary security for Justice League facilities, like the Planetary Shield Generator or the Watchtower's critical systems." While Hestia' blessings prevented the Thanagarians from accessing the Binary Fusion Generator and other critical systems, it would have been nice to have some heftier dynamic security to protect them than mundane guards, plus the physical barriers and two layers of wards, one from her and another from Constantine.
Actually, now that she thought about it… Just near the start of the year, there was an attempt by a few elite criminals with bombs inside them to do something sabotage-related in the Watchtower, but they did not survive their failure, as they learned about the bombs too late. It was some impressive spycraft, given that even the ghosts of John Monroe, Bette Souci, and Mica Love were unable to be summoned; the bombs contained ten milligrams of ectoranium, a substance that, while not destroying souls, inflicted enough damage when used to murder that it takes time for a coherent ghost to form. How long? Could be two years, could be a hundred years. No way to tell, really. None of them should have qualities to buck the trends and manifest early, anyway.
The only real connection they had was that whoever hired them and implanted the bombs had the skills to orchestrate a breakout from Belle Reve, and do so in a way that the government was able to cover it up, the Justice League only being informed of it after inquiring.
"I'll think about it." Clark deflected. Still, the meal was soon over and the older Kents retreated into their watching of the television. As a girl of the current generation, Kara was disinterested in the ad-laden shows so instead invited the two guests outside, as the sun had yet to set due to the summer season.
"So what do you do for fun out here?" Richard asked, clearly uninterested in an actual answer.
"When I was still stuck here, I mostly just studied mechanics." Kara patted the Kent's tractor. "You would not believe what sorry shape this thing was in when I first came to this planet."
"What's the story about that, anyway?" Tanya decided to ask, "I know you came here around about eight years ago, but beyond that…"
"Closer to nine." Kara said after a moment of thought. "Okay, so you know the story about Krypton dying in some kind of disaster, right?" She asked rhetorically. Publishing that tale from a series of interviews was how Lois got her first Pulitzer. At Richard and Tanya's nod, as well as Krypto's superfluous repetition of what they were doing, Kara continued. "Well, backstory: Krypton had a bit of an conquering imperialism phase about a half million years ago, and three hundred thousand years ago there was a religious revolution that essentially disowned every genetically modified Kryptonian offshoot and locked everyone onto Krypton." That does explain a few things… "Humans are one of those offshoots, by the way, no idea what happened but I blame the gods." She added as an afterthought. "So, the disaster's cause, which was the dying of our planet's core, was basically covered up by the priest guild until some rogue scientist, Jor'El, noticed some odd readings from his seismographs and ignored strict orders to disregard them. He found proof of Krypton's destruction about a month before it actually happened, tried to rally the populace, etcetera, gathered as much of a tech cache as he could, built a spaceship, sent off his infant son, you know the rest."
"Where do you come in?" Richard asked, seeming vaguely interested now.
"Jor'El was my uncle." Kara explained, "One of the few people who believed him was my own father, who built his own spaceship. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of building a spaceship when you've never done such a thing before is that you tend to screw up. So when Uncle Jor'El was consulted, he was able to fix it in time… by throwing out half of the material and remaking it as a one-person vessel, only somewhat bigger than the one he made for his son."
"So he picked you to send." Tanya said, idly petting the resting Krypto. "How noble, entrusting things to the next generation."
"Yep." Kara confirmed, "Unfortunately, my FTL drive wasn't as good as Clarks, so I got here over twenty years after he did, with my stasis pod keeping me the same age. So instead of playing babysitter…" She gestured back to the house, where Clark was enjoying watching television with his parents. "I got to be babysat instead."
"I know exactly how you're feeling." Tanya said sympathetically.
"Bullshit." Richard said, "You loved it."
"You think I liked learning piano?" Tanya asked rhetorically. "Sure, now that I've gotten past the hard part, it's nice to have another skill, but I hated learning piano. But I had to, because that's part of what being a child is about: I had to give up at least some control over my life, which is what Kara was complaining about."
"Thanks anyway, Tanya." Kara said, taking out a frisbee made out of some sturdy alloy and throwing it beyond the horizon. Krypto zoomed off after it. "But yeah, it's pretty boring here. There's chores, of course, but when you're a Kryptonian, it's not a big deal. All that gets done before lunch." Heavy labor was easy when you had superhuman physical parameters, news at eleven. "Fishing in the creek's okay, I guess." She added after thinking about it. "Wanna do that?"
Tanya would like to say that Walnut Creek was as boring as Kara implied… but actually going to a real river, finding a good spot and wasting about three hours fishing while catching absolutely nothing was genuinely a nice, relaxed way to spend an evening. She's never really done anything quite like it before, except in videogames that insisted on providing fishing minigames.
They drank soda while talking about everything and nothing, Richard bonding with Kara about overprotective mentors while Tanya popped their respective bubbles of delusion when they got too overdramatic.
It was fun.
-----------------------
It was reasonably interesting, seeing a small farm going through the morning chores; the fresh eggs were quite good and while she kept her magic restrained in the presence of the cows and chickens, she was able to use her catalysts to conceal her demonic essence and contribute a bit of help with some improvised spells anyway.
"So you'll need to be extra vigorous with the weeding, but that spell should stop most pests, both rodents and insects, in their tracks." Tanya said as she explained what she did. "That particular bit of agricultural magic was actually designed for corn, well, maize, so there shouldn't be any complications on that end. Got it off of some codices from a Mayan temple to Hun Hunahpu."
"Sounds like a good deal to me." Jonathan Kent commented, humming appreciatively as he looked over the cornfield. "So, where are you headed to next?"
Glancing over to the car, Richard was already trying to convince Martha Kent to not send them off with two days worth of food, so Tanya turned back to the other Kent parent. "Well, we have two routes to get to where we want to go. I-70 ends at the Rockies, and we'll have the option to take I-15 north to Salt Lake City where we can go back to I-80 and go straight to Jump City." Tanya waved it off as boring. "Or we could go south on I-15, go to Las Vegas, then go north on I-11 to I-80 and from there to Jump City." She gave him a deadpan stare. "Which do you think we're going to go?"
"Aren't you a little young to enjoy Vegas?" Jonathan asked.
"You'd be surprised what you can do when you're as rich as us." Tanya boasted, "Also I'm a magical shapeshifter with a fake ID."
"Point." John Kent said, "I won't tell Martha." He promised, "Or Clark. Just… don't go betting anything you're not willing to lose. Don't drink, either."
"I've given myself a gambling budget, don't worry. I won't touch a cent outside of that." Tanya promised, which made John relax. What she did not say was that she gave herself a ten million dollar gambling budget. It was the same amount Bruce used when he was more-or-less pressured into going to a big casino city as part of his public persona. He occasionally went higher when he wanted to seem extra foolish with his money.
They ended up going back to the Interstate with some casserole and a few lemon bars for the road. Kara also volunteered to keep the pair of children out of trouble while they visited the "most godless city in the whole country" according to Martha Kent. Tanya distinctly didn't joke that it was one of the place's most appealing traits. Why the Kents agreed to this was beyond her, but she imagined that 'Kara going to Vegas on her own now that she got the idea' as a possibility probably weighed pretty heavily.
-----------------------
It took pretty much a whole day to reach Vegas, Kara relaxing in the backseat as Tanya passed her a spare gameboy and played the newest iteration of a popular fighting game with her using it; wireless local multiplayer was installed last generation, so keeping spares around was just a normal rich kid status flex.
Unlike in most cities, rich hotels in Las Vegas were a lot better at tailoring their experience to their customers, so the staff toned down the asskissing quickly after noticing how uncomfortable Richard and Kara were with it. "Wow, I've never been anywhere like this before." Kara commented as she relaxed on the couch. This particular suite had a truly massive television, which was showing the news discussing the latest artificial crisis from the legislature. They haven't had a government shut down since '96, threatening one now isn't going to do anything…
"You get used to it." Tanya said, "I've never been to a lazy farmstead until yesterday, either. At least, not as a welcomed guest." She couldn't say for certain whether or not one of the many field bivouacking she did with the 203rd took place at any farmsteads, but they would have been abandoned if they did. That's the kind of small detail that was long burned away from her memory. Wait… "Well, I suppose there was that vineyard…" Which of her subordinates had family that owned one, again? Was it Koenig? Neumann? Weiss? Bah. "Did I ever actually visit, or just fly over it?"
As he usually did when she mentioned something from her past lives, Richard stopped what he was doing to pay close attention. His utility belt was spread out on the table in front of him, as he had been in the middle of equipment checks. "Did you have any wine?" He decided to ask.
Tanya scowled. "No, none of my men would ever give me a thing to drink." She recalled one particularly notable incident where Visha went out of her way to make some punch for her, and the men misunderstood… Well. Not important. "Alas, I'm afraid I can't remember the taste of alcohol anymore. It's for the best: if I ever got drunk I might end up doing something unwise with my magic."
Kara, who had over the last day been apprised of Tanya's possession of two different sets of past life memories, even if Tanya didn't go into too much detail, seemed equally curious. "I tried getting drunk when I turned 21, but…" She shrugged. "It's just kinda nasty. Doesn't do anything to Kryptonians, either." Tanya knew for a fact that wasn't true, it just took some special brews. She wasn't surprised that Clark neglected to mention those.
Silence settled among them as the television continued to treat a self-inflicted problem as some kind of impending disaster, and as the hour switched to the next program, the sun nearly fully set, an unusual program was next. It started with a playing card, a joker to be precise.
Followed by the appearance of the actual Joker. "Ah ah ah, don't touch that remote:" He started with, "I know it's heartbreaking to have your favorite shows pre-empted, but look at what you're getting instead: Me! And a whole truckload of mindless violence and property damage, everything that makes TV great! Stay tuned, you won't believe your eyes…"
As the Joker laughed, Richard quickly re-assembled his utility belt. "Debut?" He asked.
Tanya summoned the footlocker of vigilante equipment. "Debut." She confirmed, further taking out the type 66 computation orb.
It's a few days early, but it's time for Nightwing to declare his existence to the world.