Kara stared at the words hovering in the air. Give away the panties you are wearing to a friend.
Her mind, a chaotic mix of Alex's pragmatism and Kara's residual mortification, did a rapid, horrified calculation. Friends. She had a short list. Clark. Lois. Lena. Nia. Brainy? The idea of handing any of them a pair of her used underwear made a cold sweat break out at the nape of her neck.
"This is… slightly less legally fraught than the public exposure ones," she said slowly, turning on the tap and splashing cold water on her face.
"See? Progress!" Clementine cheered. "And it's the friendship edition! It's about deepening bonds through the sharing of… intimate tokens. Very symbolic!"
"It's gross, Clementine."
"It's effective. A thousand base points, Kara. That's your entire daily quota in one go. No skirt-flipping, no indecent exposure. Just a… private transaction between pals."
Kara leaned on the sink, watching the water droplets trace paths down her reflection's cheeks. The System was adapting. It had seen her succeed socially yesterday with Lena—a genuine connection that yielded points. Now it was trying to corrupt that very avenue, to twist friendship into a transaction with a physical, lurid price tag. The guilt from last night—using Lena's trust for points—flared anew, hotter and sharper.
She couldn't do it. Not to any of them. But the clock was ticking, and the threat of a "Partial Power Lockout" was vague enough to be terrifying. What if she needed the Solar Flare, whatever it was, and couldn't access it because she was too prudish to give away her underwear?
"Are there… any other options?" she asked, her voice small.
The interface flickered. [Query acknowledged. Scanning for alternative Synergy-generating activities within 24-hour window…]
A new line of text scrolled into view.
[Alternative: High-Intensity Social Maintenance.]
[Engage in prolonged, emotionally vulnerable interaction with a friend currently rated at 'Good Friend' status or above. Minimum duration: two hours. Interaction must involve reciprocal sharing of personal fears, aspirations, or regrets. Superficial conversation invalidates quest.]
[Point Reward: 800 points upon successful completion. +200 point 'Heart-to-Heart' bonus if the friend initiates a vulnerable disclosure of their own.]
[Failure to complete alternative: Default quests (Cape Malfunction, Commando Commando, Souvenir of Steel) will be reinstated as only available options for the day.]
Kara let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Eight hundred points. It wasn't the full thousand, but it was close. And the bonus… It was still manipulative. It was still using someone's emotions as a resource. But it felt a universe away from handing over her panties.
"This one," she said firmly. "I'll do this one."
"Booooring," Clementine drawled. "But fine. Your funeral. Two hours of deep, meaningful chatter. Yawn. Who's the lucky victim?"
Kara's mind raced through her relationships. Clark was at 'Best Friend' but he was also hyper-observant and still worried about her "strange behavior." A two-hour soul-baring session might lead to questions she couldn't answer. Lois was brilliant but intimidating; their relationship, while friendly, wasn't quite at the "shared deepest fears" level. Nia was sweet, but they were still building their friendship.
That left Lena.
The Friendship Meter, a feature she'd tried to ignore, superimposed itself briefly over her vision.
[Lena Luthor - Friendship Meter: 72/100 - Status: Good Friend.]
It had gone up five points after last night. The number made her feel sick. She looked at the "High-Intensity Social Maintenance" description again. Reciprocal sharing. She'd have to give something real to get something real. Could she do that without the specter of the System tainting every word?
She had to try.
"Lena," Kara said aloud.
"Ooh, revisiting the Luthor well! I like it. Consistent character development." Clementine's tone was approving, as if they were discussing a narrative arc in a TV show, not a person's life.
Ignoring her, Kara moved back into the bedroom. She dressed mechanically, pulling on soft grey jeans and a simple blue henley, clothes that felt like a compromise between Kara's cheerful style and Alex's desire for anonymity. As she fastened her watch, another notification pinged.
[Daily Point Cloning Activated.]
[Your current Point Bank: 2,150.]
[Cloning Process Initiated. Generating 2.15 points per day. New total in 24 hours: 2,152.15.]
It was a tiny, almost mocking increase. A reminder of the grinding, incremental economy she was trapped in. The 2,150 points she had were a pitiful buffer. The Synergy Store, with its tantalizing, impossible items like Omnilingualism for 85,000 points or a Domain Expansion for over a hundred thousand, might as well have been listing prices in galactic credits. She was a pauper in this new economy.
She needed a plan. A way to earn points and live with herself. The social path was the only viable one, but it was a tightrope. Last night with Lena had been genuine, and it had worked. Today's task was to replicate that, deliberately, for a longer duration. The hypocrisy of it choked her.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Lena.
Lena: Morning. Did you survive the night or did your existential crisis keep you up? Coffee offer still stands. My office, 10 AM?
A flicker of something warm cut through the cold anxiety. Lena had remembered. She was reaching out. Kara typed back, her fingers clumsy.
Kara: Crisis ongoing, but coffee sounds like a good distraction. 10 is perfect. See you then.
She hit send, then immediately looked at the System interface.
[Social Interaction Logged: Text exchange with Lena Luthor. Tone: Friendly, reciprocal. +2 Synergy Points.]
Two points. For a text. The banality of it was dizzying.
*
The ride down in the elevator felt interminable. The soft music did nothing to calm the whirlwind in her head. She was preparing for a performance, but the script had to be real. She had to actually be vulnerable with Lena Luthor. The thought was terrifying. More terrifying than any of the System's lewd quests, because this risked something she was starting to realize she desperately needed: a real connection in this alien life.
National City was bathed in the clear, sharp light of mid-morning. Kara walked, not flew, to L-Corp. The exercise in normalcy was calming. She watched people—a man arguing on his phone, a woman laughing with a friend, a kid staring up at the skyscrapers. Their lives were simple. Their problems were human-sized. She envied them with a ferocity that surprised her.
The sleek, modern lobby of L-Corp was all cool marble and muted tones. The receptionist, Jess, gave her a bright, professional smile. "Ms. Danvers! Go right up. Ms. Luthor is expecting you."
The private elevator whisked her skyward. As the doors opened directly into Lena's office, Kara was struck, as always, by the view. The city sprawled beneath a vast window wall, a testament to human ambition. Lena stood by a side table, pouring coffee from a polished silver carafe into two delicate porcelain cups. She was dressed in another impeccably tailored ensemble—a charcoal grey pantsuit with a subtle pinstripe, the jacket open over a cream-colored shell. She looked every inch the powerful CEO, but her posture was relaxed, a slight smile playing on her lips as she turned.
"Right on time," Lena said, handing her a cup. "I took the liberty. Black, right?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Kara accepted the cup, the heat seeping into her palms. "This place never gets less impressive."
"It's a gilded cage on most days," Lena replied, moving to sit on one of the large, low sofas arranged in a conversation area, gesturing for Kara to join her. "But the view is a decent consolation prize. So. Talk to me. What's the nature of the ongoing crisis?"
Kara sat, holding the coffee cup like a lifeline. The directness was pure Lena. No small talk, straight to the heart of the matter. It was refreshing and terrifying.
"I don't really know where to start," Kara admitted, which was the truth. "It's just… a feeling of being… out of sync. With everything."
Lena took a slow sip, her green eyes studying Kara over the rim of her cup. "We all feel that way sometimes. The world moves fast. We're expected to keep up, to have all the answers, to be perpetually 'on.' It's exhausting."
"It's more than that," Kara said, the words coming easier than she'd expected. She was channeling Alex's displacement, Kara's own canonical anxieties, and blending them into a credible whole. "It's like… I look in the mirror and the person staring back is supposed to be me, but the… the instincts are wrong. The way I react to things, the things I want to say… it's like there's a delay. Or a different script."
She risked a glance at the interface, a subtle flick of her eyes upwards only she could see. A tiny, spinning loading icon appeared next to the "High-Intensity Social Maintenance" quest. It was tracking.
Lena was quiet for a moment, setting her cup down on the glass table. "Imposter syndrome," she said, not unkindly. "A classic symptom of high achievement and high expectations. You've accomplished incredible things, Kara. You've built a life here, a career, friendships. It's natural to sometimes feel like you're faking it until you make it. God knows I do. Every single day."
There. A vulnerable disclosure. Reciprocal. The quest tracker pulsed softly.
"You?" Kara asked, leaning forward slightly. "You always seem so… assured. Like you have every move calculated ten steps ahead."
Lena's smile was thin, humorless. "It's a survival tactic. When your last name is Luthor, any sign of uncertainty is seen as weakness. Any mistake is magnified into a character flaw or evidence of innate malevolence. So you learn to project absolute control. Even when you're…," she paused, choosing her words, "…when you're lying awake at three AM wondering if every good thing you've ever done is just a desperate attempt to scrub a bloodstain off a family name that will never, ever be clean."
The raw pain in her voice was unmistakable. It wasn't performative; it was a crack in the armor, shown to very few. Kara felt a genuine pang of empathy, cutting through her own calculated agenda. This was real. Lena was giving her something precious.
[Friend Disclosure: 'Insecurity & Family Legacy' logged. +15 Synergy Points. 'Heart-to-Heart' bonus conditions met! +200 Synergy Points.]
The notification was a cold splash of reality. She'd just earned 215 points for Lena's pain. The guilt was immediate and nauseating. She pushed it down, focusing on the woman in front of her.
"That's… a terrible weight to carry," Kara said softly. "And it's not fair. You're not your brother. You're not your mother. You're Lena. And the good things you do are good. They matter. The science, the charities, the way you've tried to use Luthor resources to help… that's all you."
Lena looked down at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. A faint tremor ran through them before she stilled it. "It's hard to believe that sometimes. When the world is so quick to assume the worst. You're one of the few people who's ever looked at me and just seen… me. Not a Luthor. Not a potential villain. Just a person."
The statement hung in the air, heavy with significance. Kara's throat tightened. Because it was true. The original Kara had seen that. And now, Alex, despite the horrific circumstances, saw it too. Lena's intelligence, her dry wit, her fierce loyalty, her deep-seated loneliness—they were compelling. Real.
"I see you," Kara said, and meant it.
Lena looked up, her eyes slightly brighter. She gave a small, shaky nod, then seemed to collect herself, straightening her shoulders. "Enough about my existential dread. Your turn. What's the script that feels wrong? What do you want to say that you're not saying?"
The question blindsided her. It was too close to the truth. I want to say I'm not who you think I am. I want to say I'm trapped in a game that's turning me into someone I hate. I want to say I'm scared.
She couldn't say any of that. So she reached for another truth, one that belonged to both Kara and Alex.
"I'm scared of failing," Kara confessed, the words tumbling out. "Not just at work, or as a… as a friend. But fundamentally. Of not being strong enough when it counts. Of letting people down because I was too afraid to make the hard choice, or too confused to know what the right choice even is. There's this… expectation of greatness. And some days I just feel… small."
She wasn't talking about reporting or superheroics in the abstract. She was talking about the System. About the choice between degradation and connection, between power and integrity. The confession was more real than she'd intended.
Lena listened, her expression softening from CEO intensity to something warmer, more protective. "Kara, feeling small doesn't make you weak. It makes you human. The people who never doubt themselves, who are never afraid… they're the dangerous ones. They're the ones who make catastrophic mistakes because they can't conceive of being wrong." She leaned forward, her voice dropping. "Your strength isn't in never feeling fear. It's in feeling it, acknowledging it, and moving forward anyway. That's what I've always admired about you."
The praise was a balm and a brand. Kara had to look away, blinking rapidly. The quest timer in her periphery showed they'd been talking for over an hour. The points were accumulating in small, steady increments—+3, +5—for sustained emotional engagement.
"I don't know about that," Kara murmured.
"I do," Lena said firmly. Then, her tone lightening, "Now, are you going to drink that coffee or just use it as a hand-warmer?"
Kara laughed, a genuine, relieved sound. She took a sip. The conversation drifted then, becoming easier. They talked about CatCo gossip, about a frustrating board meeting Lena had endured, about the strange new food truck outside CatCo that Kara promised to try. It was normal. It was friendship. And all the while, the System quietly tallied its points.
[High-Intensity Social Maintenance: Duration 1 hour, 47 minutes… 1 hour, 58 minutes…]
[Quest Completion Imminent…]
At almost exactly the two-hour mark, as Lena was describing a particularly obtuse patent lawyer she'd had to deal with, a final notification chimed softly.
[Quest: High-Intensity Social Maintenance - COMPLETE.]
[Total Points Awarded: 800 (Base) + 200 (Bonus) = 1,000 Synergy Points.]
[Daily Debriefing Quota: MET.]
[Partial Power Lockout: AVERTED.]
[Current Point Bank: 3,150.]
A wave of profound exhaustion washed over Kara, followed by a shaky sense of victory. She'd done it. She'd earned the points without crossing her own moral event horizon. She'd even, in the process, shared a real moment with Lena. The guilt was still there, a low-grade infection, but it was tempered by the genuine connection.
"You look like you just ran a marathon," Lena observed, her head tilted.
"Emotional labor," Kara said with a weak smile. "It's exhausting."
"Tell me about it." Lena checked her watch, a faint regret crossing her features. "I have a conference call with Tokyo in ten minutes that I cannot postpone. But this was… good. Really good."
"It was," Kara agreed, standing up. "Thank you, Lena. For… everything."
"Anytime." Lena stood as well, walking her to the elevator. As Kara stepped inside, Lena placed a hand on the door, holding it open for a second. "Remember what I said, Kara. You're not alone in feeling out of sync. And you're stronger than you think."
The doors slid shut. Alone in the descending elevator, Kara slumped against the wall. She'd survived the day's demand. But the relief was short-lived. Clementine's voice piped up, cheerful and utterly jarring.
"Congrats! Daily quota achieved! See? Heart-to-hearts can be lucrative! Now, about those leftover points and your long-term strategy…"
A new interface screen popped up, colorful and styled like a bizarre mobile game store.
[Welcome to the Synergy Store!]
[Your Balance: 3,150 Points.]
[Featured Items:]
[Squirrel Girl Panties (Transformation Item) - 5,000 Points. Trigger a 3-hour cosmetic transformation!]
[Female Gojo Transformation Kit - 7,500 Points. Become the strongest sorcerer (aesthetically) for a night!]
[Omnilingualism (Permanent Ability Unlock) - 85,000 Points. Prerequisite: 50% Synergy.]
Kara stared at the prices. 85,000. She had 3,150. The gap was a chasm. Even the cheap, silly transformation items were out of reach.
"How do I even get to 50% Synergy?" she asked, her voice dull.
"By walking the Path!" Clementine said, as if it were obvious. "Every point earned increases your Synergy rating. Every meaningful connection, every… creatively completed quest… it all adds up! You're at, let's see…" A percentage bar appeared.
[Overall Synergy: 4%.]
Four percent. After all of that. After the strain, the guilt, the emotional wringer. Four percent.
The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened onto the bustling marble expanse. Kara walked out, the sounds of the city swallowing her whole. She had won the daily battle, but the war stretched before her, a desolate landscape of incremental percentages and impossible prices. And tomorrow, Clementine would have a new list of "opportunities." The social path had worked today, but how many two-hour heart-to-hearts could she feasibly have? How many times could she mine her friends' vulnerabilities before the guilt consumed her or they sensed the calculation behind her eyes?
She stepped out into the sunlight, feeling more isolated than ever. A hero, an impostor, a prisoner of a goofy, relentless system. And her only viable path forward was a tightrope strung over a moral abyss, and she was only four percent of the way across.