Warning! Chapters 10-14 were all posted back-to-back! Returning Readers, make sure you pick up where you left off!
Chapter 14 – Second Summons
“Relax, Rylia. We spent hours going over the options, then had a week longer to think about it in further detail while you got an identity set up for her. I doubt there’s any such thing as a perfect choice, and she covers a wide breadth of skills we can seriously use.”
Rylia nodded jerkily as she waited for the final minutes of the timer on the ‘Help’ summoning door to run down. Apparently, it wasn’t actually twenty-four hours from the side of the person they were summoning. It was something that had come up in idle conversation with Momo, who had experienced the other side of things. Momo had been given an two entire weeks to prep, not a mere twenty-four hours. There was apparently some time compression shenanigans going on.
Which, given that the current years were in no way matched between Momo’s reality and this one, made a lot of sense. Likewise, the options of people she could choose from ranged pretty wildly over a spectrum that covered thousands of years. It made her feel considerably less guilty at pulling someone away from their life, knowing that the Marketplace at least gave the summoned person time to put their affairs in order. Though it did make her a little curious why there was a wait timer at all. She’d poked around in the system and not been able to find any sort of answer, having eventually been forced to give up despite considerable curiosity over the reasoning.
“I’m just still not completely sure it was more important to get more help on the tech and science side than it was to get a shadow operations expert. What with the possibility of taking over the Broker Network on the table. As well as Cerberus to look into.”
Momo nodded, far calmer than Rylia was, sitting and sipping tea while her boss paced.
“I understand. As you, yourself pointed out though, a lot of initial data gathering can be done by cloaked probes and such, and nothing has come close to beating the R3s on the data defense side. She’s got the experience with small craft and robotics development, including probes, to help with that part of things. She also has experience with helping against galaxy-spanning threats, even if not in the tactical or strategic sense. We both agreed that bringing her in early would be a case of a snowball rolling down hill, which is exactly the sort of thing we badly need.”
Rylia nodded and forced herself to stop pacing, knowing Momo was right. Besides, there were only thirty seconds left! Best to put on a strong front! Slapping her cheeks with both hands, she put on her best smile and turned to face the door hanging in midair. After a few agonizingly long final seconds…it opened with little fanfare and a gorgeous five-foot-eight blonde, appearing to be in her early twenties, stepped through.
“Hello, Kara! Or do you prefer Doctor Zor-El? Or one of your aliases? Whichever you’d prefer is fine! I’m Rylia, the person who got your contract from the Marketplace. Momo’s the one sipping tea! She’s like you, someone I summoned through the Marketplace to help stop a race of horrible, run-away A.I.s that have been culling organic life in this galaxy for hundreds of thousands of years!”
Kara Zor-El blinked, seeming taken aback by Rylia’s statement, even as the door behind her faded.
“Um, Kara is fine? I’m not big on formalities, really. You…do know that I’m not a front-line Hero that can punch galactic scale problems in the face, right? That’s more my cousin’s thing…”
Momo chuckled, putting down her tea and interjecting before Rylia could say anything else.
“She knows. The Marketplace gives a pretty solid overview of anyone that has a contract with it. The threat is, hopefully, at least a decade and change away. We need your R&D and scientific expertise to help build defenses, not someone who can punch their way through all their problems. That would be worse than useless given the spans of space involved.”
Kara’s shoulders, which had tightened a bit at the information deluge, relaxed. Rylia, realizing she’d perhaps jumped the poor woman with a bit too much information too fast, hastily backtracked.
“What Momo said! The crisis isn’t immediate and I shouldn’t have rushed! Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of time, and your first week or so will just be settling into a new legal identity we have set up for you. There will be plenty of time to cover the scary stuff and challenges later. For now, a tour and basics!”
“First off, as you might have guessed, I’m not human…anymore, at least. Bit of a complicated case that, but for now just know I’m an Asari. You’re on the Asari colony world of Nevos, in the Earth year 2167 CE. Humanity is around, by the by, not just Momo. They are pretty new on the galactic scene, but not nearly as much so as the version of Earth you most recently resided on. Krypton, I’ve afraid, either never existed here…or might have been wiped out in an earlier cycle by the Reapers.”
Rylia winced at that, given it could very well be true and could be a sensitive topic for Kara. She quickly steered away from it.
“Anyway, we have plenty of briefing material for you, and an entire day to get you oriented a bit. After that, I’ll still be available and you’ll mostly be working with me anyway. Momo is a bit busy running the company we’re using to fund our efforts…”
Easily looping an arm around one of Kara’s, Rylia channeled her best extrovert energy and guided the slightly-bewildered looking blonde to a seat. They had time, stuff to go over, and snacks to do it with! Time to get started bringing the newbie onboard!
… … …
The last few days had been a bit of a wild ride for Kara. Which, given her life so far, was saying quite a lot. Saying goodbye to what family and friends she still had back home had been a bit rough. As much, admittedly, because of how stilted some of those goodbyes had been. Clark had never quite forgiven her for making the deal she did with the Omniversal Market, feeling that even bringing him back from being controlled by Darkseid hadn’t justified making a deal with ‘an Eldrich Power.’ He persisted in always trying to protect her, despite the fact that she was originally meant to protect him.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad, if that piece of Gold Kryptonite hadn’t lodged in her ship on the way to Earth. With years of exposure to it before she’d ever arrived, there had been no chance of her developing the powers her cousin held. Something which had, much to her frustration, caused him to treat her like spun glass. It was extra stupid, in her opinion, since she was the normal one by Kryptonian standards, not him. The House of El had always and ever been scientists, not warriors. Kal El was something of an aberration that likely would have horrified many of his ancestors.
Nor, unfortunately, had Clark been the only one she’d had a bit of a strained relationship with. Barbara had been more than a friend for years, and catching her sleeping with Nightwing, even if she claimed it had been under the influence of one of Ivy’s drugs, had cause that relationship to fracture. It had broken down completely when Kara had taken drastic measures to deal with some of Superman’s villains while he was under Darkseid’s control.
Drastic measures which had also soured much of the Justice League on her, given that she hadn’t hesitated to have the robot versions of her cousin she’d created kill some of the worst repeat offenders. She still didn’t know why they were upset she’d killed Luthor, given how many problems he’d caused. Lobo, she could admit she’d killed mostly for her own satisfaction, thank you very much, even if it had been very hard to figure out how to make sure he’d stay dead. Given the massive list of intergalactic crimes he had, she was very off put that they’d taken issue with her doing that either, though.
Well, most of them had taken issue with it.
Diana and Hawkwoman had been fully on board and were much of the reason the League hadn’t tried to arrest her or some other idiot idea afterward. The fact that they had seriously considered that as an option at all was why she had a very poor opinion of the League as a whole, and had generally stayed away from them. Something which, in turn, had soured a few of her other friendships. She’d never quite gotten good at interacting with normal humans, so with the majority of Heroes shying away from her, the last several years had gotten a bit lonely.
Yet for all that her few goodbyes had been very awkward, she had to admit that the last few days had been their own special kind of odd. Not bad, just a bit surreal as she adjusted to her new reality. The big threat they were up against was certainly serious, and would have been even back home. Yet it was the sort of thing she was used to considering, even if she’d rarely been the one people leaned on for solutions to such things.
No, what had her feeling a bit off kilter was the differences between this reality and the one she’d known. It was just…different…in so many ways that she had trouble knowing where to start. Some of them had rather horrifying implications that she wasn’t sure Rylia and Momo were quite able to grasp from their own frames of reference, too.
The total number of worlds and races in this ‘Mass Effect’ universe was far too low. Part of that might be that they really only had access to a small percentage of the galaxy via the Mass Relays and a rather limited form of FTL used to move in the bubble of systems immediately around each of those Relays. Yet, if the space outside the Relays wasn’t mostly empty, then other races should have developed enough to find Citadel Space. Personally, she was horrifyingly certain that one of Rylia’s idle musing was probably true.
That the ‘Reapers’ moved the Mass Relays between cycles, to focus them on those species who were most likely to reach spacefaring levels within a set number of Harvests.
Doing that would explain why only a few lost civilizations at a time were ever noticed. There should have been far more than just the Protheans, Inusannons, and one or two more minor powers. At least, based on the model of commonality for life-bearing worlds which Kara was familiar with.
For each of those bubbles that currently had a Relay, she was distressingly sure there were dozens more that were currently off the Relay network. Victims of previous harvests that the Reapers moved the Relays away from so that the ruins of so many civilizations didn’t give the pattern away. That might present some opportunities, along with the horror. But that remained to be seen.
Other things about this universe bothered her too, of course. Absent a group like the Guardians of the Universe, the overall level of civilizations here were far more barbaric. Life was cheaper, with even the more peaceful races like Asari disregarding loss of life on scales that would have horrified most of the civilizations back home. Not all, of course. Monstrous empires like The Reach would have slotted in quite well with the Batarians. Though the mere fact the Batarians were allowed to behave like they did while nominally being part of Citadel Space was disgusting. Never mind the levels of depravity apparently common in the Terminus.
Kara was fully onboard with the plan to take that area over, even if the Reapers proved not to exist.
Bonus points if they did away with the Batarian Hegemony too.
All of which made Rylia’s flamboyant personality and the fact that they were currently funding the effort to save the galaxy with a Sex Toy Empire induce a very surreal aspect to the last few days. Though, admittedly, she was intrigued by some of those toys. She’d only been seventeen when Krypton had gone boom and hadn’t ever worked up the nerve to try some of the more exotic options that her own people produced. Nor had she quite been able to bring herself to make some of them, despite more than a little interest. It had seemed like too frivolous a use of her knowledge of Kryptonian technology, despite how fun it likely would have been to try some of them out with Barbara.
Well…maybe she could suggest a couple, in order to expand their catalog?
Blushing at the thought, Kara shook it off as she finished tweaking the Rapid Learning Device that Rylia had purchased from the Marketplace via trade. It hadn’t been a bad design, but it was a bit kluged together, and Kara knew how to make better versions. Just tweaking this one for now, so she could absorb more information and get up to date faster, was enough. Though, in the future, she’d suggest they redesign a better option themselves. Both for bringing more people up to speed, and possibly trading back through the Marketplace for other things they needed…
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A/N 1: Kara won a poll for Patrons I ran to be the nest summon. A few quick notes on this version of her that haven't made it into the fic yet.
1) This Kara is in her late twenties, looking a bit younger than that because she hasn't lost her Kryptonian genetic engineering just because of no yellow sun powers. She has a multi-century lifespan and slowed aging past maturity as a result.
2) She's taller than most versions of Kara (excluding the Power Girl versions), on account of being fully developed, not a teenager.
3) This version of her is very much a Kryptonian, not a slightly exotic earthling. Meaning different culture values, better education, genetic advantages, and less Justice League koolaid drinking.
A/N 2: You probably know this bit by now, but I need to say it anyway ;-)! Once per release, Check my profile for the address, or search the web for 'Novus's Fanfiction Works.'