This was absolutely not her intention.
Before leaving Krypton for Earth, she had indeed undergone a series of military training—but all of it focused on infiltration and assassination.
No one had ever told her how to fight another Kryptonian under a yellow sun!
She had killed her cousin with her own hands!
What made it worse was that the clone she had planted in the laboratory as a decoy had, by sheer accident, recently established communication with Krypton.
The other side already knew that the missing Kal-El had reappeared.
Although the leader of the 'Sword of Rao,' Jor-El, was no longer the kind and gentle uncle or the wise and rational scientist he once was, he still cared deeply about his long-lost son.
Even on the far side of the universe, where the allied forces of the Thanagarian Empire and Rann had already fallen into complete disadvantage across a front spanning six sectors—
Jor-El was still willing to abandon a near-certain victory, just to withdraw from the battlefield as quickly as possible and head for Earth.
If he were to arrive in this primitive star system in a few days, only to see his son's corpse—
Kara, as the killer, couldn't even imagine the kind of pressure she would face.
Nearly twenty years of infiltration—Kara had done everything she could to ensure Krypton could take over this planet peacefully. She didn't want it all to end with her becoming a kinslayer.
At that thought, Kara—who had been away from home for two decades—broke down in tears after killing the first Kryptonian she had seen since leaving home… her own cousin.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
Joey pushed himself up from the ground. For a moment just now, it had felt like his consciousness had blanked out.
One second he was still grabbing that Kryptonian woman by the head and plowing the surface of Jupiter with it—next second he felt like he'd just woken up from a hangover, his head splitting with pain.
And then he saw that same Kryptonian who had just been fighting him was now sobbing.
"I was literally about to get up and continue! And now you're crying?"
"That's impossible! Your heartbeat had already stopped!"
Kara didn't even bother wiping away her tears as she rushed toward Joey.
Kal-El wasn't dead—thank Rao! She hadn't killed her cousin!
But when she turned and actually looked at Joey's injuries, what she saw filled her with even greater terror than before.
The massive wound across his chest from her earlier slash, and the penetrating wound she had driven upward from his ribs into his heart—both were slowly healing.
And yet, in Kara's ears, her cousin still had no heartbeat.
Which made sense—because with her super vision, she could clearly see the hole still left in his heart from her strike. It hadn't even fully healed yet.
The way Kara looked at Joey now was as if she were staring at some kind of monster.
She dropped the cape that had been covering her body and scrambled away.
"This can't be... Get away from me!"
This completely unhinged reaction left Joey baffled. Just a second ago, she had been overjoyed and rushing toward him—
And now she was terrified again. Had he really smashed her head so hard into the ground that he'd knocked her stupid?
Before Joey could even give chase, the panicked Kara tripped over the debris and trenches scattered across the ground—ironically, the very craters he had made using her head.
It's confirmed now—what I just did really did knock her stupid;
"Did you forget you can fly?"
Kara climbed back to her feet. After the initial panic, she realized she probably couldn't escape being hunted down anyway, so she might as well save her strength:
"Just kill me!"
"Do all of you have something wrong with your head?"
Joey glanced at this dazed, disheveled Kara and quickly turned his eyes away, just looking up at Jupiter's sky instead.
Only then did the still-shaken Kara realize things weren't nearly as bad as she'd imagined.
At that moment, fragments of Kryptonian history flooded her mind. The overwhelming fear piling up in such a short time made her lose all restraint:
"No wonder your father rushed to send you away from Krypton before the Phantom Drive engine was fully tested..."
"The High Council's accusations against him weren't fabricated—that was all real! You're the living proof!'
Joey kept his head tilted up toward the sky and replied:
"What are you even talking about?"
As soon as he spoke, a massive green net formed from willpower light descended from above and covered Kara.
The net then transformed into ropes, binding the still-ranting riddle-speaker Kara tightly, with three additional sealed layers wrapped around her like a locked vault.
Bathed in green light, Starfire finally arrived at Jupiter from Earth. She had found a brand-new ring in the Justice League Watchtower's storage—fully charged, no less.
Capturing Kryptonians was already basic training for the Green Lantern Corps: immobilization, kryptonite radiation, containment—routine work.
The kryptonite radiation generated by the ring wasn't as strong as the real thing, but it was more than enough to weaken Kara so she couldn't escape.
This Kryptonian was a bit slow, honestly—she'd been scared earlier yet just stayed put instead of running. Joey had been waiting for backup.
What exactly had she been waiting for?
"Don't kill her, Starfire."
Joey said it almost out of habit, because he'd noticed that after nearly dying once, Starfire's emotions had stabilized a lot.
Or rather, she was returning to the natural temperament of a Tamaranean—she had realized that hatred didn't make her stronger, but love and compassion did.
Starfire glanced over the devastated surroundings, then at Kara trapped inside the Green Lantern construct, and immediately switched the light to opaque mode.
Only then did she turn back to Joey—whose clothes were damaged but whose body was completely unscarred:
"Heading back?"
"To the Watchtower. There should be more than one red sun prison there."
What Kara had said earlier was completely disjointed—Joey honestly hadn't understood a single sentence.
He'd run into far too many people lately who spoke in riddles instead of plainly. He planned to lock this one up first.
After that, he could just rotate between red sun radiation and kryptonite.
He refused to believe she'd still be able to keep talking in riddles after that.