Chapter 1: Contributions To Society

Chapter 1: Contributions To Society
Date: March 2-3 2020

"Kara Danvers?" Kara whipped around to find herself face to face with a handsome gentleman in a dark red suit.
"Lenny Thorul?" she guessed. The man smiled in return, an obvious "yes".
"Pleased to meet you," he said, extending a large hand. Kara shook it willingly, wearing a smile to match his own.
"Likewise!" she said. "Shall we take a seat?" she gestured to one of several empty tables behind them. They were currently standing in the doorway of a quiet little bar towards the edge of National City.
"Of course," Lenny bowed his head in a playful politeness. Kara laughed a little before leading him towards a table in the far back corner.
Kara and Lenny had been in correspondence for a few months now and it was all thanks to their mutual friendship with Alex Danvers, Kara's older sister. Apparently, Lenny was a fellow DEO agent, though he was serving at a different base. But even though he and Alex were serving at different DEO sites, they had worked together on a mission once and been friends ever since. It was only recently that Lenny learned that Alex had a younger sister, and even more recently that said sister was also the famous Kryptonian hero named Supergirl. Kara had been a bit surprised to hear that Alex had told Lenny her secret identity, but Lenny was able to assure her that Alex had only told him, and this was because he was an old and trusted friend. No one else at his DEO site knew the truth about Supergirl's civilian identity, only him.
Shortly after Lenny realized who Alex's younger sister truly was, it became his biggest dream to get to meet her in person.
"Isn't it everyone's dream to meet the legendary Girl of Steel?" he asked playfully as he and Kara sipped on their beers. "I'm just lucky that I had a direct connection to you," he added with a chuckle, raising his bottle slightly.
"Well, normally I wouldn't meet just anyone that Alex happened to know," Kara laughed back as she raised her own bottle. "You just seemed like a nice guy and I figured that it wouldn't hurt to finally get to meet you face to face. It's a pity Alex couldn't come along though…" just for a moment, Kara's face grew sad. She had wanted this little outing to consist of three people and not just two, but the way schedules worked out, Lenny was only available during the time when Alex wasn't.
"I can see her another time," Lenny said casually. "I've met her in person several times before, actually," he added. "We may have only worked together once before, but we certainly are not strangers. You and I, however…"
"Not anymore," Kara replied with a smirk as she took another sip of her beer. "Now you can cross "meet Supergirl" off your bucket list!"
"I wonder if I can cross "get her autograph" off the list too?" Lenny asked with a laugh.
"Oh, I suppose I could do that…" Kara replied, pretending as though Lenny had asked a great burden from her.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly, the two simply laughing and chatting over DEO life, and Alex. But somewhere into Kara's third beer, she began to feel a bit woozy. In the minutes to come, the wooziness got stronger and stronger.
"I think I might be drunk!" she giggled, looking very uncoordinated and silly.
"Maybe it's time we get you home then, huh?" Lenny asked warmly back. "Can't have your sister raking me across the coals for keeping you out past your bedtime and then bringing you home White-Girl Wasted, right?"
"It is not past my bedtime!" Kara tried to whine back, but when she tried to point an accusing finger at Lenny, her arm dropped to the table.
"Drunker than I thought!" Lenny laughed again, but to Kara, it sounded like she was listening to him speak while she was underwater. How odd!
For just a second, Kara felt a flash of fear and she went to shake her head to try and wake up a little bit, but it suddenly felt immensely heavy. Even that one simple gesture made her feel weak and tired. Her entire body felt as though it were melting, and no part of her body would physically respond to her. She couldn't even shake her head, or raise her arm! Before she could realize that this was beyond a typical drunkenness, though, her mind followed in her body's footsteps and it too stopped responding.
The next time Kara woke up, she was in glass chamber full of some sort of liquid. She was also totally naked. The only thing on her at all was a face mask, hooked up to tubes that vanished through the ceiling of her glass tank. She shot awake with a muffled scream and she began to thrash around in a wild, violent panic. Her eyes flashed with anger, confusion and raw desperation as she flailed around in her tank, trying furiously to escape. She punched and clawed as the glass that encircled her, but she was unable to even scratch the surface. It was like all of her powers and strengths had gone. Her freeze breath wasn't working, her laser vision wasn't working, her super-senses weren't working. For all intents and purposes, she was a normal human. She continued to scream, but even she could hardly hear herself just because of how tightly the mask was strapped to her face. As helpless as she was, though, she continued to thrash and panic.
"I don't see why you insist upon wasting your time and energy. You're only going to make yourself upset, trying to do that. But you won't get out. I can assure you of that," an eerily pleasant voice behind Kara suddenly began to speak. She rotated her body around and then recoiled in horror as she realized she was looking into the sadistically delighted eyes of Lex Luthor.
"Impossible!" she breathed, so stunned by Lex's appearance that she forgot that she was totally naked.
"Ah-ah," Lex waggled a finger in mock chastisement. "Not impossible," he said. "Just improbable. But as low as the odds were, I still had a chance, and I know how to make the best of my chances," the smile he gave her was chilling.
"How?" she wasn't quite sure how Lex was able to hear her speak, unless he'd somehow hooked up a microphone inside her breathing mask, but she already knew she didn't have to speak above a whisper in order for him to hear every terrified word she said.
"How?" he asked back, showing off more of his teeth as his smile widened sickeningly. "Why, Ms. Danvers, I am so glad you asked!" then, he proceeded to explain, gloating over her as his sick and twisted plan unfolded before her very eyes.
Lex had been coming and going from his jail cell for months now, him having since bribed the guards into letting him leave every once in a while. During one of his many outings, he ran into an old friend and associate of his, Lenny Thorul. Lenny, like Lex, had been a vehemently anti-alien man. He still held those same hateful views, but he had been relatively inactive and underground ever since Lex was imprisoned. Now that Lex was free again, though, it didn't take much to persuade him to hop back onto the old bandwagon of attempting to wipe out every little last alien species from the planet until only a pure human race remained. During his time in prison, Lex had come up with an ingenious new plan that was far more subtle than anything he had previously concocted. All he needed to set that plan in motion was a human who was safely on the outside of things. That human was, of course, Lenny. Stupid, devoted, determined, and perfectly obedient, Lenny.
So while Lex still spent most of his time locked away, Lenny never rested, constantly out and busy, doing the Luthor's dirty work. He bought up an abandoned factory and fixed up the machines until everything was up and running again. This time, though, what used to be an old slaughterhouse for common farm animals was remodeled into a nightmarish laboratory that could contain and clone Kryptonians. As soon as that lab was done, Lex then commanded Lenny to go and find Supergirl and gain her trust in any way he knew how. He had chosen the lie that he was a mutual friend of Supergirl's' dear, beloved sister: Alex. The rest was history.
"And that's how he knew so much about the DEO!" Kara breathed in horror and disbelief.
"Correct," Lex said smugly. "He is quite the actor! I can't believe he even managed to get you to meet him up at a bar!" the mad scientist added with a cackle. "I thought for sure that a girl like you would've had the brains to avoid a first meeting like that, but I suppose that being an invulnerable, perfect little Kryptonian has given you a god-complex, a false sense of security. I like that," he paused to smile serenely at Kara.
"How deliciously ironic it is," he mused. "I was always told that my pride was what caused my fall. Had I not overshot and overstepped my boundaries, I would've been happy. But now look! Supergirl! The hero the country, second only to Superman, has made the very same fatal flaw that once ensnared me. You and I have the same foolish pride. The only difference is that your mistake will be much more permanent than mine…"
"You're crazy!" Kara tried to bluff bravely. "Someone will know that I am gone and they will come looking for me and once they do-"
"Ha! Oh, Kara, my dear, no one will come looking for you! Lenny has taken care of that," Lex turned his head to the right and Lenny himself stepped out of the shadows, grinning twistedly up at Kara. Kara felt an unspeakable fury start to burn in her chest the moment she looked into those warm brown eyes once again only to see a bragging sort of triumph within them. That sick, little-
"You see, Karrie, it is very simple in deed!" Lenny began, voice suddenly cruel and demeaning. "That little bar I invited you to was no normal bar. Didn't you ever stop to ask even once why it was so quiet and clean? No normal bar is quite that empty! Especially not at night!"
"What are you talking about?" Kara snarled as it suddenly occurred to her that he was right. She had considered that bar to be quaint, charmed by its small and quiet group. She hadn't even thought that such a small number of people should've been a red flag.
"That is because, my dear, stupid Kryptonian, that was an anti-alien bar. Don't you ever even do your research? Or is your god-complex so big that you think you can just waltz in to any old location and think that you are safe?"
"Anti-alien bar?" Kara echoed, anger turning into horror and revulsion. Lenny only nodded back at her, grinning gleefully.
"Yeah! Everyone in there despises aliens with a passion! That's why they wouldn't address you, or I. They knew who you were too. Oh! Perhaps they didn't quite make the connection that you were Supergirl, but they knew you were an alien."
"But how?" Kara could only shake her head, the tubes in her mask shaking as she did so.
"It's because I told them, dud!" Lenny cried in disdain. "I am Lex Luthor's righthand man! Of course I would know where to find an anti-alien hub. That bar is one of them. Now, it's unofficial, of course, but that means nothing. That is a spot notorious for anti-alien folks to meet up and discuss. I am amazed you didn't realize that sooner! But no matter. It made my job easier. All I had to do was let the bartender know who you were, what you looked like and when you'd come. Then, once you arrived, every drank you had that night was laced with Red Kryptonite."
"Red Kryptonite!" Kara echoed in horror as she remembered how weak she had felt after her third beer. It hadn't been a normal drunken stupor, it had been the Red Kryptonite, weakening her system.
"Yup!" Lenny smiled. "Once you were full of the stuff, it was easy for me to cart you away. And remember, since the entire bar despised you. Or rather, what you were, I had no trouble in receiving help. I had one of them take your phone and drive it off to an abandoned gas station halfway into the next state! Good luck hoping that someone will be able to track your location now, sweetheart! We intend upon keeping you here for a while. Lex, after all, still has quite a few plans for you."
"Yes, Kara," Lex agreed with his assistant. "I have come to see aliens in a new light, and I believe that there is a great deal that your kind can still offer to humanity. I am a changed man, and I believe that you can still make many great contributions to society, as you already have. I intend upon exploiting that noble trait of yours, and then amplifying it a thousand fold," he grinned mysteriously.
"So what are you going to do now? Try and clone me and hope you'll somehow get away with building a Kryptonian army?" Kara scoffed bravely, trying her best to calm her pounding heart. Lex and Lenny both laughed at this.
"Close, Kara, close," Lex said, speaking in a gentle tone. But then it hardened as he gestured for Lenny to approach her glass tank.
"But not close enough..." and before Kara knew what was happening, Lenny had opened a panel right in the front of the tank. Before too much fluid could escape, he shoved his arm inside. Kara immediately yanked herself backward, but the tank was too small for her to escape his hand.
She then tried the opposite approach and grabbed his hand hard, hoping to break it, or twist it, or even rip it clean off! But there was still Red K residue in her system and although she did manage to break a couple of Lenny's fingers, it was not nearly enough to fend him off. Instead, after swearing up a storm and screaming at her for breaking his fingers, he yanked her arm back out through the little hole in the tank. While one of his hands held her arm out, the other reached into his back pocket, pulling out a golden syringe.
"Golden Kryptonite!" Kara's efforts to escape redoubled, but she still made no progress. Instead, she could only watch in horror as Lenny plunged the needle into her arm. That would remove her powers permanently.
"Saves me a lot of money on Red K and red sun lamps," Lex cackled sadistically as Lenny then shoved Kara's arm back inside her glass tomb, sealing the little panel shut once again. Kara immediately attacked the place where the little opening had once been, but it still was of no use.
"Now, now, Kara, you surely don't want to spend the rest of your life squealing like a piglet, do you? After all, your legacy isn't over! You are still going to make many more wonderful contributions to society, just as you always have. The people of Earth will love you for it." Lex chided softly, but because Kara was thrashing around so violently, she didn't hear him at all. Lenny, however, did, and he laughed sadistically.
"Are we ready, boss?" he asked. Lex nodded once and Lenny gleefully scurried over to a large switch on one of the far walls of the lab. With one last maniacal cackle, he yanked the switch down hard and, suddenly, the entire laboratory came to life. But while the ex-factory took its first breath into a new life, Kara took her last.
Over the next few months, every DEO site in the country went mad trying to find Supergirl. When no results were yielded, every other government agency was called into play and, soon, even international and intergalactic organizations were enlisted, but not a single soul could find a single clue about the whereabouts of the missing Kryptonian. No one on Earth or in space had any idea where Kara had vanished to and it didn't matter how hard anyone tried to look, nothing ever came of it.
"Alex..." James Olsen approached the broken DEO agent with a tender and agonized expression.
"Don't," Alex croaked back, voice full of pain and fury. She would've spoken louder, but after Kara went missing, it was like she had died as well, her own strength vanishing entirely. She couldn't even turn around to look at him as he entered her little office.
"I'm sorry," James replied, then he took a seat opposite of Alex's and simply held her hand. No more words were spoken, but none were needed. Instead, Alex's hand only lay limply in James' as the two old friends silently grieved their beloved Kara Danvers.
Back at CatCo, for the first time ever, someone caught Cat Grant crying. She was silent, and almost motionless, but every once in a while, she would wipe at her eyes, or her shoulders would convulse. That was how Winn Schott knew that she was grieving.
"Ms. Grant?" he asked, voice consoling, even though his own eyes were red and swollen.
"Mr. Schott, you had better have your transcript ready for me this time," Cat replied, voice totally devoid of emotion. But she would not meet his eyes and that was how Winn knew just how deeply her heart was aching. Maybe Cat could lie with face and voice, but her eyes could never lie. Winn opened his mouth to say more, but at the sight of his miserable-looking boss, he felt his own throat close up and he quickly left her office before collapsing in his own, muffling his cries with his hand as he whimpered out Kara's name.
"Please, Supergirl, come back! We need you!... I... need you..." but Kara wasn't going to be coming home any time soon.
J'onn had left Earth entirely, joining a squadron hunting the stars and nearby planets for Supergirl, but he was making about as much progress as anyone down at CatCo or the DEO. He would never admit it, but the loss of one of the two girls he considered a daughter was a blow so devastating to his soul that there were some nights when he genuinely wondered if ending it all wouldn't be the better option.
"I failed her," he murmured softly, sadly. "It should've been me who died instead. God, how I wish it had been..."
The rest of the country wasn't faring too much better. Supergirl had been a national symbol, and icon of hope. For her to have gone so completely missing was a crushing blow to everyone in America. But even so, the people of the world were strong, and they fought hard to keep their heads up just as their superhero would've wanted them to. Every citizen played their part in staying strong and hopeful, for Supergirl's sake. And even various large-scale agencies and companies invested in the mourning and grieving processes, sometimes offering some of their goods and services for free in the name of the hero who had so freely given her own self to them, time and time again.
Leading the charge was a relatively new company called Universe Foods. It was a fast-food chain, but it had since garnered massive respect from the public eye, firstly for being so charitable, secondly for being so supportive in the wake of Supergirl's disappearance, thirdly for being a "human-run enterprise with a strong belief that aliens CAN make great contributions to society" and fourthly for having really wonderful burgers. It would never quite gain the mainstream attention that McDonalds had as a cultural icon, but Universe Foods quickly dominated the country and every person who ate there was all in agreement that the burgers were sublime. Or, as the cheesy tagline of the restaurant said, they were "OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!"
"I can't believe you got us Universe Foods," Alex remarked one night as Winn stopped by with a bagful of burgers and meat pies. She was still grieving terribly over the loss of her little sister, but she was trying to put on a brave face for everyone else.
"What?! It's a new place and it's done so much in Supergirl's memory that I think it's only fair we give it a try," he replied with a sad smile.
"Big Belly Burger was better," James replied, but his voice was hollow, no humor at all in it.
"Just shut up and eat," Winn sighed as he tossed everyone their burger. J'onn, Eliza and Cat were also in attendance, though none of them were even speaking. As much as some of them hated to admit it, though, the burgers were pretty good.
"It is delicious," Alex admitted as she took another giant bite of her sandwich.
"Rip off McDonalds," Cat replied, but no one missed how hungrily she was devouring her own dish.
"Wonder what's in it?" Eliza mused sadly. She still sometimes felt too sick and sad to eat, but for the sake of her remaining daughter, she ate. If only Kara could've been here... She would've loved these burgers! In fact, she probably would've downed a dozen of them and still be hungry for more! A bittersweet tear rolled down Eliza's cheek as she thought about her younger daughter.
But while the rest of the world grieved, two men were more than happy with how things were going.
"How are productions looking today, Lenny?" Lex asked over a prison phone call.
"Excellent, sir!" Lenny replied. "Your cloning machine is working like a charm! I don't think supplies are going to go down any time soon."
"Excellent," Lex replied, then a sickening smile spread across his face, which he buried in his sleeve so that none of the watching guards could see.
"Let me hear it, will you?" he asked.
"Sir?" Lenny faltered.
"I want to hear how production is going," Lex replied.
"But sir, I don't think that's such a good idea," Lenny frowned a little. He knew that Lex was probably surrounded by at least 15 guards.
"Do it anyway!" Lex replied, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice.
"Yes sir!" immediately, Lenny's thoughts of defiance were wiped clean out of his mind. He had been standing outside when talking to Lex but, at Lex's behest, he entered back into the factory.
All at once, Lex was met with a heavenly symphony to rival even the likes of Beethoven and Mozart. He could hear whirring, grinding machines. Metal on metal. The hiss and growl of fire and heat. He could hear an oven creaking open and shut constantly. He could hear the sound of flesh being cut and burned into. He could hear sizzling. He could hear clattering, clanking, whirring and churring. He could hear roaring and moaning. But his favorite sound of all was of the raw and desperate screams and sobs that raised even over the machinery and heat. Thousands of high-pitched screams of pain and pleas for mercy permeated the air and every single voice sounded exactly the same. Every single voice sounded exactly like hers, like Kara Danver's.
Coming out of a small black box on one side of the factory was an endless stream of Kara clones, all naked and afraid, panicked as their first sight of this earth was nothing but death, despair, pain and mutilation. They were quickly held in place by claw arms as they were moved onto a conveyor belt made to burn them alive in the flames of an oven or chop them up into bloody pieces or string them up by their ankles or throats before shoving the charred and chopped up remains into packages sent to be shipped out across the world under the label of Universe Foods. The screaming and crying were so loud, but Lex reveled in it. He liked hearing the Kara clones squeal and cry out and weep. He liked their panic.
"Ahhhh!" Lex sighed in pleasure as Lenny continued to hold the phone towards the chaos. He could hear the Kara clones begging for help or mercy, begging for the pain to stop. He could hear them screaming and wailing in panic and confusion. They didn't understand what was going on. But how could they? They were only, at most, 10 minutes old. And that was about how long any of them ever lasted before the beautiful machinery in Lex's horrible scheme cut their lives and bodies short. Even after the phone had been yanked away from his ear, Lex continued to revel in the sound of his enemy's dying gasps and wails. In an endless round, Kara would die over and over again for all eternity, her body being used to strengthen and power humanity.
"Who said that aliens couldn't make a contribution to society?" Lex asked himself with a small, satisfied smile. Then he curled back up into his little bunk and fell asleep, dreaming of all the profit his new company would continue to turn for years and years to come.