Chapter Eight
Kara followed the strange bald woman and the large green man through corridors that seemed to shift and bend in ways that made her head hurt if she looked too closely.
She was confused.
Deeply, thoroughly confused.
How did this woman know her name? How did she know about the fight with the green monster? And why did she speak as though time itself was just another room she could walk through?
They arrived quickly at a chamber, circular, with a table at its center and chairs arranged in careful symmetry. Refreshments sat waiting, steam rising from cups that looked hand-crafted and ancient.
The bald woman gestured for them to sit.
Kara remained standing. So did the green man.
The woman smiled, as if this was exactly what she'd expected.
"Miss Zor-El," she said, her voice calm and measured, "I know you must be busy and have much to do, so I'll be brief."
She gestured toward the green man beside them.
"This is Bruce Banner, also known as the Hulk. But he is not from this universe." She paused, letting that sink in. "If I'm not mistaken, I believe he is from what those who travel the multiverse have come to call Earth 619."
The green man, Bruce started to open his mouth, his face full of disbelief.
The woman raised one finger.
He closed his mouth.
"You see," she continued, turning back to Kara, "they traveled through time via the Microverse, or as some have come to call it, the Quantum Realm. Though they succeeded in going back, it was to a different universe. The Microverse, much like Yggdrasil, connects to all universes in every multiverse. They simply... made a wrong turn."
Kara blinked.
Multiverse. Quantum Realm. Yggdrasil. Wrong turn.
Her brain, powerful as it was, was struggled to keep up.
Bruce tried again. "Wait, hold on, that doesn't make any—"
The woman shushed him.
Kara would have laughed if she wasn't so utterly lost.
The woman turned back to Kara, her expression growing more serious. "Now, Miss Zor-El. Please have your team meet here after the battle, so I can explain things better."
She produced a small card from within her robes, simple, cream-colored, with elegant script written across its surface. She handed it to Kara.
"Give that to Mr. Stark once you can."
Kara took the card, staring at it. The words seemed to shimmer slightly, as though they existed in more than three dimensions.
The woman raised her hand and made a circular motion in the air.
Golden light erupted from her fingertips, tracing a perfect ring in the space before them. The air inside the circle rippled, twisted, and then opened—revealing a street on the other side. Rubble. Debris. Smoke rising from shattered buildings.
And people.
People in danger.
Kara's eyes went wide.
Her mouth fell open into a smile of pure, childlike wonder.
Real magic.
She could see it all clearly now, civilians trapped beneath rubble, alien soldiers advancing, the sounds of battle echoing through the portal.
Her expression shifted.
Wonder became resolve.
She firmed herself, straightened her shoulders, and walked forward without hesitation.
Kara stepped through the portal and into chaos.
The street was a war zone. Smoke billowed from burning vehicles. Chitauri soldiers swarmed through the air on their flying chariots, weapons crackling with alien energy. And above it all, massive, armored creatures, Leviathans, her mind supplied from nowhere, swam through the sky like living battleships.
She heard a voice cutting through the noise.
Captain America.
"—need a perimeter on the south side, Barton, you're—"
He stopped mid-sentence as Kara landed beside him, boots touching down on shattered asphalt with barely a sound.
Every head turned.
Tony Stark's voice crackled through the comms. "Uh, Cap? Did we order reinforcements? Because I don't remember ordering a—holy crap, is that the girl from the Helicarrier?"
"Kara," Thor said, and she could hear the relief in his voice. "Sister, thou hast arrived."
Steve Rogers looked at her, taking in the cape, the suit, the way she held herself. His expression shifted from surprise to something like hope.
"Can you fight?" he asked simply.
Kara nodded.
"Good." Steve pointed upward at the Leviathans circling above. "Those things, the flying whales, we need them down. And civilians." His voice grew harder. "Anyone you can save, you save. Understood?"
Kara's jaw set.
"Understood."
She shot into the air.
The first Leviathan never saw her coming.
Kara moved so fast the world blurred around her, sonic booms trailing in her wake as she crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat. Her fist connected with the creature's armored skull, and the impact was catastrophic.
Bone shattered. Metal plating crumpled. The Leviathan's entire head caved inward, brain matter and alien blood spraying outward in a grotesque halo.
The creature went limp instantly, its massive body tumbling from the sky.
Kara didn't stop to watch it fall.
She was already moving.
The second Leviathan roared as she approached—opening its mouth to unleash a barrage of energy fire.
Kara flew through it.
Literally through.
In one side and out the other, her body punching a hole clean through the creature's armored hide. Internal organs exploded from the pressure differential. The Leviathan convulsed once, twice, and then plummeted.
"Uh," Clint Barton's voice came over the comms. "Am I seeing this right? Did she just—"
"She did," Natasha confirmed, her tone oddly flat.
Kara grinned.
It felt good to let loose. To move without fear of breaking something, without worrying about being too strong or too fast. Here, in the middle of a war zone, she could finally be everything she was made to be.
A group of Chitauri soldiers on their flying chariots swarmed toward her, weapons raised.
Kara blurred.
One moment she was thirty feet away.
The next, she was among them.
Her fist caught the first soldier in the chest. He didn't fly backward, he disintegrated, armor and flesh unable to withstand the force. The chariot he'd been riding exploded into shrapnel.
She spun, her hand catching the second soldier by the throat. One squeeze. His head separated from his body.
The third tried to fire.
Kara moved faster than the energy bolt could travel, appearing behind him. Her palm slammed into his back, and he folded in half, spine snapping, ribcage collapsing—before careening into two of his companions.
They never even saw her.
She destroyed twelve soldiers in the span of three seconds.
Their weapons were useless. The energy bolts that struck her suit simply... stopped. No penetration. No damage. Like throwing pebbles at a mountain.
Kara descended toward a collapsed building, her hearing picking up the sound of a child crying beneath the rubble. She landed, hands already moving, lifting a support beam that must have weighed several tons.
A woman and a young girl huddled beneath, eyes wide with terror.
Kara smiled gently.
"It's okay," she said softly. "You're safe now."
She lifted them both—carefully, so carefully, and flew them three blocks to where she could see emergency responders gathering.
Then she was gone again.
Back into the fight.
"Uh, guys?" Clint's voice came through the comms, and there was a note of disbelief in it. "I need someone to confirm what I'm seeing right now."
"What is it, Barton?" Steve asked.
"Supergirl is using a space whale as a baseball bat."
Silence.
"Say again?" Tony said.
"She grabbed one of the Leviathans—the dead one—and she's swinging it like a bat. At the other Leviathans. And the Chitauri on the chariots."
There was a pause.
Then Tony laughed. "Okay, I need eyes on this. JARVIS, tell me you're recording."
"Indeed, sir. The footage is quite remarkable."
Kara didn't hear the conversation.
She was too busy.
The Leviathan corpse in her hands, easily two hundred tons—swung through the air like it weighed nothing. She brought it around in a wide arc, the impact catching another Leviathan mid-flight. The sound was like a building collapsing. Both creatures tumbled from the sky in a tangle of broken armor and shattered bone.
A cluster of Chitauri chariots tried to flank her.
Kara spun, using the corpse like a club.
WHAM.
Six soldiers and their vehicles disintegrated on impact.
She grinned, breathing hard, adrenaline singing through her veins.
This was—
Her hearing caught something.
A voice. Tony's voice. Strained. Determined.
"—got a missile headed straight for the city. I know just where to put it."
Kara's head snapped around.
She saw it—high above, a sleek shape cutting through the sky, Tony clinging to its side, repulsors firing as he struggled to redirect its trajectory toward the portal.
Toward the portal.
The one that led to an alien armada.
The one he wouldn't be able to come back through if it closed.
Fear hit her like a physical blow.
No.
She dropped the Leviathan corpse.
And moved.
The world became a smear of color and sound as Kara pushed herself faster than she'd ever flown before. Mach 5. Mach 10. The sound barrier shattered behind her like glass.
Her hands closed around its sleek metal body, and she wrenched it away from him with enough force to send him tumbling backward through the air.
"KARA, WHAT—" Tony's voice crackled through the comms.
She didn't answer.
There wasn't time.
Kara adjusted her grip, angled the missile upward, and flew.
Through the portal.
Into the black.
Space opened up around her—cold, silent, impossibly vast. The Chitauri mothership loomed ahead, a massive construct of metal and organic matter, bristling with weapons.
Kara's eyes blazed gold.
She adjusted the missile's trajectory one final time, aimed it directly at the ship's central core, and threw.
The missile streaked forward, covering the distance in seconds.
Impact.
The explosion was blinding—nuclear fire blooming outward in a perfect sphere, engulfing the mothership's hull. Secondary explosions rippled through the structure as power cores overloaded, chain reactions tearing the ship apart from the inside.
Kara turned and flew.
Fast.
She could feel the portal collapsing behind her, the edges already beginning to shimmer and shrink. She pushed harder, faster, until the edges of the portal filled her vision—
She shot through.
The portal snapped shut behind her with a sound like thunder.
Kara tumbled through the air, breathing hard, heart pounding.
Below, the Chitauri forces were collapsing. Soldiers dropped from their chariots. Leviathans fell from the sky, lifeless.
It was over.
Kara descended slowly, landing on the street beside the rest of the team.
Tony was already there, his faceplate retracting, eyes wide.
"You—" he started.
Kara punched him in the shoulder.
Not hard. Well. Not too hard.
He stumbled anyway.
"What were you thinking?!" she shouted, and her voice cracked slightly. "You could have died! The portal was closing, and you—you—"
Her hands were shaking.
She'd been terrified. Genuinely, bone-deep terrified that she wouldn't reach him in time. That she'd lose someone. Again.
Tony stared at her for a moment.
Then he smiled.
"You hungry?" he asked. "Because I'm hungry. We should all get shawarma."
Kara blinked.
"What?"
"Shawarma," Tony repeated. "There's a place like two blocks from here. We just saved the world. I think we've earned some questionable Middle Eastern food."
Kara stared at him.
Then, despite everything, she laughed.
It was a small sound, shaky and breathless, but it was real.
"You're insane," she said.
"I prefer 'eccentric billionaire,'" Tony replied. "But sure, we can go with insane."
Steve approached, shield still strapped to his arm, looking exhausted but alive. "Everyone okay?"
"Define 'okay,'" Natasha muttered.
Thor clapped Kara on the shoulder, nearly knocking her over. "Well fought, sister! Truly, thy strength is—"
"There's something else," Kara interrupted.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She took a breath. "There was... someone. A wizard. Bald. She knew things. About the battle. About..." She glanced around, then lowered her voice slightly. "About a second Hulk. An old one. From another universe."
Bruce, who had been quietly standing at the edge of the group, stiffened.
"She gave me this." Kara reached into her suit and pulled out the card the Ancient One had given her. She handed it to Tony. "She said to give it to you. And that we should all meet her after the battle."
Tony took the card, studying it.
His expression shifted.
"Huh," he said.
"What?" Steve asked.
Tony held up the card so the others could see.
Written in elegant script were the words:
177A Bleecker Street
Come when you're ready.
The tea will still be hot.
Tony looked at Kara.
"A wizard, huh?"