Chapter 8: The Green Sun
The hyperspace jump of "The Lucky Lady" ended not with a bang, but with a soft sigh, as if the ship itself were breathing a sigh of relief. Before them, through the thick glass of the viewport, the planet Iph-T'Kin stretched out. It was not an orb of gray rock or red desert, but a vibrant blue and green jewel, wrapped in a delicate veil of white clouds. Its sun, a star of pure, bright yellow, bathed the ship's hull with a warmth that Kara Zor-El felt deep in her bones, a long-awaited echo of home.
As they descended through the atmosphere, the landscape revealed below them was of an almost insulting beauty. Emerald green valleys stretched between snow-capped mountain ranges that glittered like crystal. Sapphire blue rivers wound through the forests, and from orbit, they could see cities that did not seem built upon the earth, but rather to have grown from it, their elegant, curved structures mimicking the shapes of flowers and seashells.
They landed at the main spaceport, an open-air structure that looked more like a botanical garden than a terminal. Instead of concrete landing strips, the ships rested on beds of sound-absorbing moss, and the control towers were tall, silver-barked trees with bioluminescent lights twinkling among their leaves. The air, when the ramp finally descended, was not the metallic, recycled stench they had grown accustomed to. It smelled of exotic flowers, damp earth after rain, and a purity that was almost dizzying.
Ruthye Marye Knoll, who had spent her entire life on a rock farm and the last few weeks in the dirtiest corners of the galaxy, stood frozen on the ramp, her eyes wide with wonder.
"It's... it's like in the stories," she whispered, her voice filled with a childlike reverence that Kara hadn't heard from her since they met.
(Kara POV)
Kara felt the energy of the yellow sun flood her cells, a familiar torrent of power that was both comforting and a burden. The weakness, the pain, the exhaustion that had clung to her like a second skin since Pyrr vanished, replaced by a sense of limitless strength. She could hear the heartbeats of the city's inhabitants miles away. She could see the pollen floating in the air. She could feel the gravitational pull of the planet's moons. She was whole again. She was a goddess.
And she hated it.
The power separated her, isolated her. On Pyrr, in her weakness, she had been simply Kara. Here, she was Supergirl, a force of nature walking among fragile beings. She looked at the people of Iph-T'Kin moving through the spaceport. They were tall and slender, with pastel-toned skin and a serene grace in their movements. They smiled. Everyone smiled. A kind, calm, empty smile. And that, more than anything else, set her teeth on edge.
'It's not real,' she thought, her cynicism, sharpened by tragedy and travel, cutting through the superficial beauty. 'No one is this peaceful. No one is this happy. This is a mask. A lie.'
(Third Person)
They walked through the city. The streets weren't paved, but covered in a soft grass that muffled their footsteps. The buildings, pearly white structures, curved toward the sky, and from their walls grew vines bearing luminous fruit. Music, a soft, ethereal melody, seemed to float on the air, with no visible source. The inhabitants, the T'Kini, glided past them, bowing their heads in respectful greeting, their smiles never wavering.
"Maybe this is a good place," said Ruthye, her wonder beginning to erode her vengeful determination. "Maybe the people here are... just good."
"No one is just good, Ruthye," Kara replied quietly, her eyes scanning every face, every shadow. "There's always a price for peace."
They began their investigation. They approached a market stall where a T'Kini was selling fruits that changed color to the touch.
"Excuse me," Kara said, her tone polite but direct. "We're looking for a man. An outsider. He calls himself Krem of the Yellow Hills. He travels with a group of thugs. Have you seen them?"
The T'Kini blinked slowly, his smile faltering for a split second before snapping back into place. "Violence," he said, and the word sounded strange in his mouth, as if from a forgotten language. "We do not know such things here, traveler. Iph-T'Kin is a world of harmony. Perhaps you are in the wrong system."
The response was the same everywhere. At the inns, at the information centers, with the city guards. A polite denial. An empty smile. A wall of impenetrable serenity. Frustration began to build in Kara's chest. She knew they were close. She could feel it. Krem's trail, a stench of violence and greed, couldn't just disappear in a place so... clean.
They decided to take a break in a small plaza where a crystal-clear fountain sang a soothing melody. Kara sat on the edge of the fountain, her super-hearing tuned to any whisper, any conversation that broke the peaceful facade.
It was then that an old T'Kini merchant, his clothes a little more worn than the others, his eyes holding a glimmer of ancient sadness the others lacked, approached them. He carried a tray of small crystal flowers.
"A flower for the young warrior," he said, his voice a raspy whisper. He offered one to Ruthye. "And another for her guardian." He offered one to Kara.
"We're not looking for flowers," Kara said, her tone sharp. "We're looking for a murderer."
The old man sighed, and for a moment, his smile vanished. "Some blights," he said quietly, "sometimes hide in the most beautiful gardens, where no one thinks to look for them."
Kara tensed. "What do you know?"
"I've heard rumors," the old man said, looking around nervously. "Stories whispered when the peacemakers aren't listening. Of violent men. Outsiders. They are said to have defiled one of our most sacred places. An ancient temple in the heart of the Forbidden Jungle, to the west. No one goes there. It is a place of silence. A perfect place for shadows to hide."
The clue felt too easy, too convenient. A cliché from an adventure story. But it was the only one they had.
"Why are you telling us?" Kara asked, her blue eyes trying to read the old man's intent.
"Because I saw your eyes when you arrived," he replied. "You do not have the empty smile of those who have forgotten how to feel. You have the eyes of someone who has seen the end of a world. And I know that sometimes, it takes someone who remembers pain to cleanse the rot that others prefer to ignore."
The old man bowed and walked away, disappearing into the serene crowd, leaving Kara and Ruthye with two crystal flowers and a new, dangerous hope.
…..
The path to the Forbidden Jungle was a barely visible trail, a scar of earth leading into the green, beating heart of Iph-T'Kin. They left the serene city behind, and with every step, the planet's wilderness began to show its true, overwhelming majesty. Trees whose leaves formed intricate mosaics of silver and jade soared toward the sky, their canopies so dense that the yellow sunlight filtered through in golden beams that danced on the forest floor. Crystal flowers tinkled softly in the breeze, creating an ethereal melody, and the air was thick and sweet with the perfume of a thousand exotic blossoms.
Ruthye, who had spent her entire life on a world of rock and dust, walked with wide eyes, her hand often on the hilt of her sword not out of fear, but sheer awe. Every new creature, every luminous plant, was a revelation.
"On my home," she said quietly, so as not to break the stillness, "the only color was brown. And the only sound, the wind."
Kara, walking beside her, nodded, though her senses were on a very different kind of alert. The yellow sun's energy made her feel powerful, alive, but it also made her painfully aware of everything around her. She could hear the heartbeat of a small, deer-like animal a mile away, the rustle of falling leaves, the flow of sap inside the trees. It was a torrent of information she had learned to filter, but here, in this unfamiliar place, she let it all in, searching for anything out of place.
"Did Krypton have jungles like this?" Ruthye asked, her childish curiosity overcoming her usual solemnity.
Kara stopped for a moment, the memory hitting her with a familiar pang of pain. "Not like this," she finally replied, her voice a melancholy murmur. "Ours were... orderly. Every tree, every flower, had been genetically engineered for perfection. They were beautiful, but they weren't wild. They were gardens, not jungles. There were no... surprises."
They continued walking in silence, the word "surprises" hanging between them. As they ventured deeper, the jungle's beauty began to take on a darker, more primeval hue. The bustle of life had faded, replaced by an unnatural, expectant silence. The crystal flowers no longer tinkled; they hung motionless. The vines, once inert, seemed to watch them pass with a latent intelligence.
(Kara POV)
'Something's not right,' Kara thought, her boots barely making a sound on the leaf litter. 'This silence... it's not peace. It's waiting.'
Her super-hearing, which before had picked up the life of the jungle, now only registered the sound of her own breathing and Ruthye's, and the beating of their two hearts. It was as if the entire jungle were holding its breath. The old man's clue. Too easy. Too convenient. Her instinct, sharpened by countless battles and a life of mistrust, screamed at her that this was a trap. But what other choice did they have? It was the only thread they could pull.
'Maybe I'm just being paranoid,' she tried to reason. 'Maybe holy places are just... quiet.' But she didn't believe it. She clenched her fists, her muscles tensing beneath her skin, ready to unleash a power that could move mountains. If it was a trap, whoever had set it was about to make a very, very grave mistake.
(Third Person)
Finally, they reached a clearing. In the center, stood the ruins of an ancient temple, a structure of black stone covered in moss and vines that seemed to be slowly strangling it. Eroded glyphs, from a language that not even the archives of Kara's Fortress could translate, covered the fallen walls. In the center of the ruined temple, there was a solitary altar, strangely clean, as if it had been used recently.
The place was completely empty. The silence was so deep it hurt the ears.
"There's no one here," Ruthye said, her voice sounding strangely small in the vast, silent clearing.
Kara didn't answer. Her blue eyes scanned every shadow, every crack in the stone. Her hearing reached out, searching for any sound, any heartbeat...
And then she heard it. A single heartbeat. Too slow. Too calm. It wasn't coming from the ruins. It was coming from the shadows of the trees, just behind them.
She spun around, placing herself between Ruthye and the threat, but she was already too late.
Krem of the Yellow Hills stepped out from between the trees, not with the haste of an ambusher, but with the calm of a hunter who knows his prey is already in the cage. He wore his leather armor and a smug smile on his bearded face.
"I've been waiting for you, Kryptonian," he said, his voice an oily murmur. "I knew your little pet would lead you here. Orphans are so predictable in their quest for justice."
In his hand, he held not a weapon, but a small orb of a dark, pulsating metal, like a sick heart. It didn't emit light, but seemed to absorb it, creating a small point of blackness in his palm.
"What is that?" Kara asked, her voice a low growl, her eyes beginning to glow with a faint red shimmer.
"A gift," Krem replied. "From the Sorcerer King of Iph-T'Kin. A little trinket he bought from an impossibility broker long ago. He paid me to get rid of you, to keep his little paradise free from the inconvenience of justice. And this... this is the perfect tool."
Before Kara could move at super-speed, before she could unleash the power of a sun to incinerate him, Krem activated the artifact.
There was no explosion of light. No blast of sound. Instead, reality itself twisted. The world turned into an oil painting, the colors of the jungle mixing into nauseating streaks. Sound distorted into a sharp, piercing whine that attacked the mind, not the ears. Kara and Ruthye felt a force pulling at them, not physically, but conceptually. It was as if the very fabric of spacetime had become a net, dragging them down, toward a place that wasn't on any map, a place the universe itself preferred to forget.
The last thing Kara saw before the darkness enveloped them was Krem's triumphant smile and the sickly glow of a green sun rising to receive them.
…..
The transition was not a journey. It was a dissection. There was no sensation of movement through space, no hum of a ship or flash of a portal. It was a much more intimate and violent experience. They felt the universe unravel around them, the laws of physics becoming malleable suggestions. For an instant that felt like an eternity, they were nothing but information, conceptual data dragged through an impossible channel by the will of a malign artifact.
And then, as abruptly as they had been torn from reality, they were reassembled.
They fell.
The landing was a brutal impact on unforgiving ground. It wasn't earth or grass. It was an expanse of sharp, crystalline rocks of a dark purple, almost black, that crunched under their weight like dry bones. The fall knocked the breath out of Ruthye, the metallic taste of fear in her mouth, but she was physically unharmed. For Kara, it was much worse.
The moment her body materialized in this new world, she felt an immediate, debilitating pain. It wasn't the impact of the fall. It was an invasion. A nauseating sensation that began in the core of her cells and spread outward like a plague. An invisible poison that attacked not her body, but the very source of her power.
She dropped to her knees, a choked groan escaping her lips, her body shaking uncontrollably. The strength that had been her constant companion, the limitless energy she drank from yellow suns, hadn't just vanished; it was being actively devoured, replaced by an overwhelming weakness, paralyzing nausea, and a fatigue so profound it felt as if her bones had turned to lead.
She looked up, and she understood.
The sky of this world was a toxic, sickly green. And dominating everything, hanging in the firmament like a malign eye, was a sun. A sun that radiated not warmth or life, but a pulsating green light that bathed the alien landscape in a nauseating glow, making everything look sick and on the verge of decay. It wasn't the light of kryptonite. It was something older. More fundamental. A radiation designed with a single, terrible purpose: to kill Kryptonians.
The landscape was a reflection of the sky. Rocks as sharp as teeth rose toward the horizon. The vegetation wasn't green, but twisted shades of black and dark violet, nightmarish forms that looked more like fleshy tumors than plants. Thorny vines coiled around the trunks of dead trees, and flowers with petals like obsidian blades opened and closed slowly, like hungry mouths. The air was thick, humid, and smelled of decay, of swamp, and something metallic, like the smell of old blood. From the nearby alien jungle, guttural, predatory sounds emerged, the clicks and growls of creatures that had already scented new prey.
(Kara POV)
'Not... not like the red one,' she thought, her mind struggling to stay clear through the fog of pain. 'The red sun... it makes me human. It takes my power, but it lets me be me. This... this is different. This is a poison. An attack. I feel... I feel it unmaking me from the inside.'
The pain was a blinding migraine, an icy fire in her veins. She tried to focus, tried to activate her heat vision to scan the surroundings, an instinct ingrained from years of being the protector. Her eyes glowed with a faint crimson flash for a split second, and then extinguished, leaving her with a coughing fit that doubled her over, her body convulsing. The energy wasn't there. The well was dry. Worse than dry; it was cracked.
She looked at Ruthye. The girl was standing, her father's sword in hand, her eyes wide with terror, but her posture was defiant. She was unharmed. This world wasn't designed to kill her. It was designed to kill me.
The realization hit her with the force of a Doomsday punch. For the first time since she had accepted Ruthye's mission, the tables had completely turned. She was no longer the protector. She was the burden. The "maid of might" was now a sick, vulnerable woman, trapped on a planet designed to be her tomb. And the only thing standing between her and the monsters hiding in the shadows was a twelve-year-old girl with a sword too big for her.
'I can't protect her,' she thought, and that idea was more painful than the radiation itself. 'I can't... I can't even protect myself.'
(Third Person)
Ruthye, though terrified by the nightmarish environment, was physically unharmed. She turned to Kara, looking for the calm, the strength, the safety her protector always radiated. But what she saw froze her.
She saw Supergirl, the woman who had unleashed the power of a phoenix to defeat a space dragon, now on her knees, pale, sweating profusely, her body trembling like a leaf. She saw the invincible hero reduced to a fragile, sick figure, fighting for every breath of poisoned air.
The realization struck Ruthye with the force of a physical blow. Here, in this terrible place, the roles had been reversed. Here, she was the strong one.
The fear didn't disappear. It was still there, an icy knot in her stomach. But it was pushed into the background by a new, terrifying emotion: responsibility. She looked at the vulnerable woman at her feet, then at the dark jungle from which the growls were coming. Her hand, small and calloused from farm work, gripped the hilt of her father's sword. The cool, familiar weight of the steel was a small comfort, an anchor in a world of madness.
She unsheathed the sword. The silver blade glinted weakly under the green light.
"Don't worry," she said to Kara, her voice trembling, but she tried to fill it with a conviction she didn't feel. "I will protect you."
She planted herself over Kara, a small, determined guardian against an entire world designed to kill gods. And in that moment, on that hellish planet, Ruthye Marye Knoll's journey ceased to be a simple quest for revenge. It became something more. It became the story of a protector.
…..
The echo of Ruthye's brave promise—"I will protect you"—had barely faded into the thick, foul air when the jungle responded. The first attack was not a stealthy ambush, but an explosion of primal violence. From the twisted, sickly-colored vegetation, a pack of creatures emerged. They looked like an abomination of nature, an impossible cross between wolves and insects, with slender, chitinous bodies that moved on six-clawed legs, their heads crowned with mandibles that split open in four directions, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. They moved with unnatural speed, their compound red eyes fixed on the weaker prey: the kneeling, trembling figure of Kara.
Kara tried to react. Her instinct, forged in a thousand battles, screamed at her to get up, to fly, to unleash an inferno of heat vision. But her body betrayed her. An attempt to stand turned into a stumble, her muscles refusing to obey, weakened by the poisonous radiation of the green sun. She barely managed to raise an arm in a useless defensive gesture.
It was then that Ruthye acted. Fear was an icy knot in her stomach, a choked scream in her throat, but love and responsibility were a fire that melted it. With a cry that was more terror than fury, she threw herself between the beasts and Kara, her father's heavy sword held in both hands, the tip trembling in the air.
The lead creature, larger than the others, lunged at her. There was no time for technique, no time for elegance. There was only time for instinct. Ruthye didn't try to slash. She remembered her father's words about taking down the wild boars of her homeworld: "Never meet force head-on, girl. Use their own weight against them."
At the last second, she threw herself to the side and, with all the strength of her small body, drove the sword's point into the ground, creating a makeshift barrier. The beast, unable to stop its charge, impaled itself on the blade with a horrific shriek. The impact sent her flying backward, but the creature fell, twitching and screaming, dark green blood pouring from its wound.
The other creatures paused, surprised by the unexpected resistance. That moment of hesitation was all they needed.
"The joint!" Kara yelled from the ground, her voice a hoarse but urgent whisper. "The joint of their front legs with the thorax! It's not covered in chitin!"
Ruthye, breathing heavily, saw what Kara meant. On the next creature that lunged, she didn't try a wide swing. She aimed, as her fallen protector had instructed, and thrust the sword into the weak point. The blade sank in with nauseating resistance, and the creature fell with a whimper.
It wasn't a battle. It was a desperate butchery. Ruthye was not a warrior. She was a terrified child with a sword, fighting with a ferocity born of love and panic. Every move was clumsy, every parry an effort that made her arms tremble. But she fought. She fought until the last two creatures, seeing their companions fall and realizing this prey was more trouble than it looked, retreated into the jungle, their growls fading into a threatening echo.
Ruthye stood, gasping, her body covered in sweat and the green blood of the beasts. Her father's sword felt like it weighed a ton. She looked around at the nightmare landscape, and then at Kara, who was watching her from the ground with an expression of pain, pride, and a deep, bitter guilt.
"We have to move," Kara whispered. "They'll be back. And they'll bring more."
(Kara POV)
'She did it,' Kara thought, as Ruthye helped her to her feet, draping the Kryptonian's arm over her small shoulders. 'This child... this child just saved my life.'
The shame was a taste as bitter as the poison she felt in her veins. She was Supergirl. The Maid of Might. And a twelve-year-old girl had just acted as her shield. Every step was agony. Her legs trembled, her head spun, and every breath of this planet's thick air felt like she was breathing ground glass. Leaning on Ruthye was a humiliation, but she had no other choice.
'I can't protect her,' the thought returned to her, stronger this time. 'I'm an anchor. I'm dead weight. I'm dragging her to her death.'
She looked at the girl, who moved forward with grim determination, her eyes scanning the jungle for danger, her father's sword in hand. She was no longer the child she had met in the bar. The fear was still there, she could smell it, a sour scent beneath her sweat. But responsibility had overcome it. She had become a guardian. And she was protecting her.
'I'm sorry, Ruthye,' she thought, though she didn't say the words. 'I'm sorry I brought you to this hell.'
(Third Person)
The flight began. They plunged into the alien jungle, a labyrinth of twisted vegetation and menacing shadows. Ruthye was now the leader, the scout. She used the skills her father had taught her for hunting in the hills of her home: she looked for tracks, listened for the snap of twigs, felt the changes in the wind. Kara, at her side, contributed what little she had left: her mind.
"That plant," she would whisper, pointing to a fleshy flower dripping an iridescent liquid. "Its spores are a neurotoxin. Go around it."
"The sound of those creatures," she'd say, her hearing still catching frequencies Ruthye couldn't. "It's coming from the east. We have to go west."
They became an unlikely team. The brains and the brawn. The fallen goddess and the farm-girl-turned-warrior. For hours that felt like days, they moved through the nightmare landscape, always with the feeling of being watched, of being hunted. The green sun, unmoving in the sky, bathed them in its poisonous light, a constant reminder of Kara's vulnerability.
Finally, they found a temporary refuge: a small cave hidden behind a waterfall of a thick, dark liquid that smelled like tar. They slipped inside, the sound of the waterfall masking any noise they might make and hiding their scent from predators.
Inside, in the damp darkness, they allowed themselves a moment of rest. Ruthye, using a strip of her own tunic, cleaned one of Kara's wounds, which was bleeding slowly.
"My father taught me to dress hunting wounds," she said quietly, her voice an echo in the cave. "He said respecting your prey meant not letting it suffer."
Kara watched her, her vision a little blurry from the fever that was beginning to take hold. "Your father... was a wise man."
"He was a farmer," Ruthye replied. "But he knew how to survive. He knew how to read the land. He knew that every creature, no matter how small, had a part to play. I don't think he would have liked this place. Here... everything seems to want to kill for the sheer pleasure of killing."
A silence fell, and in that silence, Ruthye asked the question that had been floating between them. "Are... are you afraid?"
Kara looked at the girl, at this small, brave soul who had fought monsters for her. And for the first time, she was completely honest.
"Yes," she whispered. "I'm terrified. Not for me. For you. This is my fault. I'm the target. You're just caught in my trap."
Ruthye shook her head, her eyes shining in the darkness. "I'm not caught. I chose to come with you. You're my only hope of finding Krem. And now... I guess I'm yours."
In that simple declaration, their bond solidified, no longer based on a contract or on power, but on a desperate interdependence. They were two orphans, alone in a hostile world, looking out for each other. And in the darkness of that cave, in the middle of a planet designed to kill, that small spark of connection was the only weapon that truly mattered.
…..
The time in the cave became a hazy cycle of fever and wakefulness. Kara drifted in and out of a state of semi-consciousness, her body fighting the insidious radiation. In her lucid moments, she saw Ruthye caring for her: changing the makeshift bandages, bringing her water from the waterfall in her cupped hands, or just sitting silently in the darkness, her father's sword across her lap, acting as a tireless sentinel. They had become a strange, small family, bound by desperation.
The sounds of the hunt never fully ceased. The creatures of the slaughter-planet often came close to the waterfall, drawn by the scent of blood and life, but the sound of the running water and the darkness of the cave seemed to dissuade them from entering. Even so, their silhouettes would sometimes be framed against the entrance, constantly reminding them that their refuge was temporary, a small bubble of safety in an ocean of death.
It was on the third cycle of "night"—a period when the planet's moons briefly eclipsed the green sun, plunging the world into an even deeper gloom—that they were found. It was not a pack of the insectoid-beasts, but something far worse.
A tremor shook the cave, not from the ground, but from the air itself. A low, rumbling sound, like a mountain moving, approached the waterfall. Ruthye leaped to her feet, her heart hammering against her ribs. Kara, despite her weakness, managed to sit up, her eyes fixed on the entrance.
A colossal claw, the size of a small car and covered in an oily black carapace, tore through the curtain of dark liquid, ripping the rock as if it were paper. The creature that followed it was an abomination, the planet's apex predator. It rose to a height that nearly touched the cavern ceiling, its body a nightmarish blend of a scorpion and a crustacean, with multiple compound eyes that glowed with a cold, malevolent intelligence. It had not come to hunt for food. It had come to eliminate the intruders.
There was no escape. They were trapped in a dead end.
(Ruthye POV)
'This is the end,' Ruthye thought, a cold, clear thought in the midst of the whirlwind of panic. 'This is how my story ends. Not with vengeance. Not with justice. But in a dark cave, on a nameless world, eaten by a monster.'
She looked at Kara, who was trying to get to her feet, her body shaking violently, refusing to give up even on the verge of collapse. She saw the fire in the Kryptonian's eyes, a fire not of power, but of pure, defiant will. And in that moment, Ruthye's fear transformed. It was no longer the fear of dying. It was the fear of Kara dying for her.
'No,' she told herself. 'She protected me. Now it's my turn.'
She stood between the beast and Kara. "RUN!" she screamed at the fallen goddess, though she knew she couldn't run. She drew her father's sword, the sound of steel against leather a sharp challenge in the tense silence. The silver blade looked like a toothpick against the creature's immensity. She braced herself for one last, desperate stand, knowing it would be futile, but determined to buy Kara a few more seconds, even if she didn't know what for.
(Third Person)
The apex creature ignored her. Its target was the larger prey, the one that smelled of stars and poison. It lunged, not with the speed of the smaller beasts, but with the unstoppable force of a glacier.
Kara, on the brink of collapse, looked over Ruthye's shoulder. She saw the claw descending. And then, she saw something else. Through the torn entrance of the cave, she saw the sky. And the green sun... the green sun was finally beginning to set on the horizon. A thin sliver of darkness was beginning to devour the emerald disk.
A spark of hope, the first she had felt in days, erupted inside her. She gathered her last strength, not to fight, but to protect. With a cry, she shoved Ruthye aside, putting her own body in the path of the descending claw.
'If I'm going to die,' she thought, 'I'll die a shield.'
And then, the last ray of green light vanished.
For an instant, the cave was plunged into the near-total darkness of the alien night. And in that darkness, something changed.
The effect of the poisonous radiation vanished. Kara's cells, starved of energy, deprived of their sustenance for days, drank in the faint light of the stars and distant moons that filtered into the cave. It wasn't a trickle. It was a flood. Her powers didn't return; they erupted with the force of a nova.
The golden aura that enveloped her was so intense it lit the cavern like a midday sun. The creature's claw, which was inches from crushing her, stopped, not by a physical barrier, but by the sudden, incomprehensible surge of power.
Kara rose. She was no longer trembling. Her body, once frail, now vibrated with limitless energy. Her eyes, once clouded with pain, now burned with the fire of a yellow sun.
The beast, feeling for the first time in its long life of predation the unfamiliar emotion of fear, recoiled.
"My turn," Kara said, her voice no longer a whisper, but the contained thunder of a goddess.
With a primal scream of rage, of accumulated pain, of relief, and of a just and terrible retribution, Kara unleashed all her power. There was no fight. There was an annihilation. A blast of heat vision, brighter and hotter than the core of a star, split the apex creature in two. The cave walls melted under the intensity of the attack. She rose into the air, a golden figure of divine fury, and with a single wave of energy, disintegrated the beast's remains until not even dust was left.
She hovered in the center of the now-open cavern, wrapped in a golden aura, her eyes shining with the power of a sun. The goddess had returned.
…..
(Urahara POV)
The infinite white of the conceptual workshop was an unblemished canvas, immune to the chaos unfolding light-years away. In the center of the nothingness, Urahara Kisuke sat on a tatami chair, a steaming cup of tea in his hands. In front of him, a constellation of holographic monitors floated in the air, each displaying a different stream of data. There was no sound, only the silent dance of information.
One of the main screens showed a real-time image: the view of a shattered cavern on a green-sky world. In the center, a furious, golden figure was slowly fading, revealing a young Kryptonian, pale and exhausted, who was falling to her knees beside the smoking remains of a colossal creature. Other screens showed complex graphs: energy readings, biological analysis, probability fluctuations, and a conceptual EKG that measured not the beat of a heart, but the resonance of a will.
Urahara took a sip of tea, his face, illuminated by the glow of the holograms, was a mask of calm, satisfied concentration. The experiment had entered a fascinating phase.
'Hypothesis confirmed,' he thought, his fingers drumming softly on the ceramic cup. 'A Kryptonian's strength is a dependent variable, directly proportional to solar radiation. Predictable. Boring. But the will... the will to survive and protect when all else is taken away, when the system has been driven to a null state... that is the real measure of a being. That is the constant that defies the equation.'
He watched Kara's biometric data during the ordeal. He saw her vital signs plummet under the green sun's radiation, her body fighting at a cellular level against an environmental poison. He saw the moment her muscles, deprived of their divine power, responded with the desperate strength of a mere mortal. And then, he saw the spike. The moment the last ray of green light vanished and her starved cells absorbed the stellar energy. The power output graph wasn't an upward curve; it was a vertical wall, an explosion of energy so violent and pure it made Urahara's sensors overload for a fraction of a second.
'It wasn't just a recharge,' he mused. 'It was a catharsis. A violent release of all the pain, rage, and frustration she has been suppressing. The system, upon being deprived of its primary asset, developed a countermeasure. It turned her trauma into a weapon. A fascinating and terribly unstable defense mechanism. I'll have to study the long-term effects of this... release.'
His gaze shifted to a second monitor, one showing Ruthye's biometric readings throughout the entire ordeal. The graph showed a level of adrenaline and cortisol that should have caused a child her age to collapse. But beneath that, a different line, one measuring psychic coherence, had held steady, even strengthened.
'And the secondary variable... the girl...' his internal monologue continued, '...has exceeded all expectations. The role reversal was a success. She has shifted from a passive burden to an active protector, forging a resilience in her that would have otherwise taken decades to develop. Her fear hasn't vanished; it has simply been subjugated by a stronger purpose: the protection of her mission's anchor. The symbiotic bond between them has strengthened, moving from a simple contract to a fundamental interdependence.'
Urahara made a mental note in his vast data archive. The lesson was clear. The key to survival and resilience against conceptual entropy was not invulnerability, but connection. The strongest system was not the one that couldn't be broken, but the one that had a reason to rebuild itself after being shattered. Kara and Ruthye were living proof of his theory.
He stood and walked over to a quiet corner of his workshop. There, in a silk-lined basket of stasis-tech, Krypto slept a dreamless sleep, a soft crimson glow surrounding him, keeping him perfectly preserved on the threshold of death. Urahara petted the dog behind the ears, his touch as light as a feather. The dog sighed in his sleep, oblivious to the dramas unfolding across the galaxies.
'The primary motivation remains intact,' Urahara thought, observing the dog. 'The heroine has a tangible reason to keep going. A cure to find. A villain to hunt. The system has a vector, a clear direction.'
He returned to his seat and looked at the main screen, where Kara, with Ruthye's help, was beginning to search for a way out of the shattered cavern. They looked small, fragile, and utterly alone on that hostile world. But they were no longer broken.
'The experiment's outcome is satisfactory,' he concluded, taking the last sip of his tea. 'The trajectory of their story is becoming... increasingly interesting.'
Omake: "The Still Point" - A Café Outside of Time
The café didn't exist in any particular time or place. It existed between them. It was a small, cozy establishment anchored in a fold of spacetime, a place where past, present, and future were simply options on the menu. The clientele was sparse and strange.
Sitting at a table by a window that overlooked the Hourglass Nebula, Urahara Kisuke was sipping his tea. He was waiting.
The door of the café opened with the jingle of a small bell. A man in a white lab coat, goggles, and an affable smile walked in. He looked like a slightly eccentric university professor. It was Professor Paradox. He dusted a bit of pterodactyl dust off his shoulder and approached Urahara's table.
"Kisuke, my boy!" he said with a cheerful British accent. "Have you been waiting long? I just had a fascinating chat with a tyrannosaurus about the inevitability of determinism. A very stubborn creature."
"Time is relative, Professor," Urahara replied with a smile. "To me, I've just arrived. To the waiter, I've been here since the Big Bang. Gumball?"
Paradox laughed, a genuinely delighted sound. "Always one step ahead! I knew I liked you for a reason."
He sat down and placed a small pocket watch on the table. Its hands were spinning in both directions at once.
"So," Paradox said, turning serious, though his eyes still twinkled with good humor. "What cosmic-scale problem requires our attention today? Last time it was that plague of lost-sock paradoxes in the fifth dimension. A tricky business."
"This one is a bit more... concerning," Urahara said, his tone growing more sober. He set his fan on the table. "I've been investigating my 'Cosmic Silence' hypothesis. And I've found an active specimen. A universe in Sector Gamma-7 that isn't dying. It's being... unwritten."
Professor Paradox stopped smiling. He leaned forward. "Explain."
"It's not suffering a heat death or a Big Crunch. Its fundamental laws are unraveling retroactively. It's being erased from history, not from the present forward, but from the present backward. Yesterday, it had ten billion years of history. Today, it only has nine billion. Tomorrow... less. It is a wound in causality."
Paradox stroked his chin. "Ah. A Chronosapien Vora. A 'time moth'. It doesn't eat matter; it eats history. They are very rare. And very, very dangerous."
"That was my preliminary conclusion," Urahara nodded. "Any suggestions on how to deal with a conceptual plague of this magnitude?"
"The standard approach, of course, is to travel to its point of origin, before it 'hatches,' and ensure it never exists," Paradox explained as casually as if giving a cooking recipe. "A clean, precise temporal intervention."
"A very... orderly solution," Urahara commented. "But risky. Erasing its existence could create a vacuum that an even worse paradox might fill. I was considering a different approach."
"Oh?" Paradox asked, intrigued.
"I was thinking of not eliminating it, but rather... giving it indigestion," Urahara said. "If I could introduce a self-contained bootstrap paradox into the fabric of that universe—a piece of information that is its own cause and effect—it would become conceptually 'indigestible' to the moth. It would be forced to seek simpler pastures."
Professor Paradox looked at him with a mixture of horror and admiration.
"By all the saints of time! That's mad!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "To play with causality like that! The repercussions could be... unpredictable! Chaotic! You could create a whole new branch of unstable realities!"
"Exactly," Urahara said with a smile. "Much more interesting than a simple deletion, don't you think?"
They looked at each other, two geniuses at opposite poles of the same science. Paradox, the guardian of the timeline, who sought to preserve history as it was. Urahara, the scientist of chaos, who saw history as a system that could be hacked and improved.
"You never cease to amaze me, Kisuke," Paradox said, shaking his head. "Your method is that of an anarchist with a doctorate in theoretical physics."
"And yours is that of a librarian who's afraid someone might write in the margins of the books," Urahara countered.
Paradox laughed again. "A fair point." He pulled a small device from his pocket. "Right. I don't approve of your method, but I admire your audacity. Here are the exact temporal coordinates of the creature's origin. Do what you must. But if you break time, don't call me to fix it."
"I appreciate the data," Urahara said, accepting the device. "In return..." He opened a small portal next to the table and pulled out a talisman. "...a conceptual stabilization charm. The next time you have to contain an out-of-phase Ectonurite, this will prevent its instability from bleeding into your own timeline. A small security upgrade."
Paradox took the charm, genuinely impressed. "Clever. Very clever."
They stood, their meeting concluded.
"Tell me something, Kisuke," Paradox said, his tone turning serious for a moment. "Don't you ever get tired of it? Of seeing the bigger picture? Of knowing how every story ends..."
Urahara looked out the window at the slowly turning nebula. His smile faded, leaving only a deep, ancient melancholy.
"The problem, Professor," he said quietly. "Is not knowing how the stories end. It's remembering the ones that already have."
With a slight nod, Urahara turned and walked out a door that led to his shop. Professor Paradox watched him go, then left through another door that opened onto the inauguration of the 1939 World's Fair.
Two men outside of time, alone with their immense knowledge, sharing a brief moment of understanding in the only place they could simply be themselves.
A/N
Hello everyone,
Sorry for not uploading chapters of this fanfic for a while. I've been really busy and distracted lately, and I set this novel aside for a bit, but I've picked it back up!
I have drafts ready up to chapter 17, edited, and it's just a matter of uploading them now. If you want to support me, I have content up to chapter 11 on my Patreon, and it's available in all subscription tiers.
I've been creating new fanfics and even original novels. I have a lot of ideas; I develop the whole plan, timeline, and characters, but then I struggle to actually write the chapters. That also happened with this novel, where I focused heavily on Kara, and now I'm trying to figure out how to put her a little more in the background without it feeling forced. I think I have an idea of how to do it.
I don't know if you remember me mentioning the next fanfic project I was working on, but I'm planning on writing the first chapters now! It will be an HPxTH story—that is, Harry Potter and Timothy Hunter. If you don't know that character, let's just say Harry Potter is a kind of "nerfed" Timothy Hunter. I have the first volume of that story planned out, and I like everything I've planned so far; I've been adding and removing things as I go.
Also, just out of boredom, I started writing a DxD story, which is more focused on NSFW, and another one about Futurama, also NSFW. I've realized that I really enjoy writing NSFW content.
As for original novels, I won't start them yet, as the ones I have planned don't feel quite ready. Well, one is: I plan to create 2 books with hundreds of chapters each. The other one is where I went crazy and designed an entire universe and saga for thousands of chapters. The concepts have been seen before, but I want to put my own spin on them.
Another novel I've been planning is a poker one (strange, I know!), but after playing a lot of Balatro and Cloverpit, I felt like writing something poker related. I also really enjoy playing it. I've also been planning a singer type of novel, you know, where the protagonist is reincarnated into another world and "creates" songs from artists in our universe.
If you would like me to focus on a specific novel besides this one, I'd appreciate it if you commented.
Finally, I will stop translating novels. I just have a couple left to finish, and then I'll focus only on my original works and the fanfics I want to create.
I think I'll upload between 1 and 2 chapters of Better Call Kisuke on Webnovel and other free platforms, and on Patreon, I'll upload between 2 and 4 chapters per week.
See you around, Mike.