Who all immediately copy the gesture. "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!"
"-in a giant fireball. And then krypton was free of evil aliens, never to be conquered again!"
...Okay, just a bit worrying. but she did say '
evil aliens'. Hopefully that acknowledges that some aliens are
good.
That doesn't meet with quite the same level of joy as the call-and-response part, but the children seem happy enough. I do spot Kara's eyes lingering on the two tamaranean children who decided to sit in, but they appeared to enjoy the story as much as the kryptonians. Bit of a slant, but I suppose that Karsta might have decided to enculturate them through jingoism.
Nothing wrong with preferring your own civilisation to someone else's. And I say that as someone from objectively the greatest civilisation that the Earth has ever produced.
So... Her recovery has left her with a
little bit of anti-alien bias, I see. But it's not blatant, and she's evidently not being vocal about it...
But that's not a lot like I remember from the comics. Or much like Kara 50. I think… I mean, she seemed fine, and Karsta's been keeping an eye on her-.
"Hey, Mister Grayven."
Kara-50 didn't have her brain rebuilt using an
Eradicator unit...
"Hello, tiny tiny children." I smile at them as I bend down, favouring them with pats on the head as they move past me into the hallway. "Are you behaving yourselves for your teacher?"
"Yeeees!"
I'll
bet they're tiny, in comparison to him. Toddlers are not large, after all, even gene-engineered kryptonians. And the Renegade is
very large.
"I'm glad to hear it. Now, run along, little people. I need to speak with Kara."
The rest of the class files out, heading towards their… Evening meal.
No doubt a meal of tasty nutrient soup and crunchy protein wafers.
Gotta build up those little kryptonian bodies.
"Grayven!" Kara smiles and me and takes a few moments to restore the seating to a perfect grid before walking over to me. "What brings you here?"
"Oh, I like to keep an eye on important projects. You know, turn up in person every so often and talk to people. Make sure that I'm not missing something important."
Hmm. Worrying hint of obsessive-complusiveness there.
"That's very responsible. If Kem-El had kept an eye on Daxam, they wouldn't be a bunch of yokels today."
"Ah, well, to be fair, there was a primitivist movement on Krypton before he got involved. Though, I mean, if you want to, you can use the hush tubes to visit them yourself."
Just be careful not to have any traces of lead in your gear.
"No." Her face slips back into neutral. "They've made their choice, and safeguarding true kryptonians is more important than trying to dig the Daxamites out of the hole they've buried themselves in."
"Okay, and… You sure you..? Want to keep doing this?" She gives me a concerned look. "I know you were studying mathematics on Krypton, and while this is important work, I wouldn't want you to feel chained to it."
To be fair, mathematics was the career she'd probably chosen before the planet blew up. Priorities change after
that sort of thing.
And she's smiling again. "Nothing is more important than preserving the kryptonian species!"
"Right, but… There's more to resurrecting the kryptonian species than child-rearing. Ultimately, they'll need-."
...I can't help but picture the '
Overly Attached Girlfriend' smile.
"A New Krypton to live on." She nods. "I know. I've been talking to Clarissi Dox about it, and he says that we can be folded into the current wave of colonisation projects. Ideally, we'd like a world with no one on it, but I can see that it might be better to share a world until the second generation are born and people are settled into their occupations. Besides." She rises off the floor. "It's not like I can't go back to another career later. No one knows how long kryptonians live when they've got access to a yellow star, but it's a long time."
Quite a
long time, depending on continuities. Never mind alternate futures like DC One Million.
"Well. Okay. If you're happy. Have you and… Karsta, decided what you want done with the Rao system? We've probably got the manpower for… Whatever you decide."
Her eyes… There's an odd expression that I can't quite-.
The Eradicator protocols filling in for her own thoughts, perhaps?
"Could you restore it completely?"
"You mean, transmute the kryptonite back into normal rock and stick the planet back together?"
Building an entire planet? That's
quite the undertaking, especially if you want similar ecological conditions like the gravity.
"I-." The odd expression again. "Y-. Yes."
I do a quick back-of-an-envelope-but-in-my-head calculation.
Just a few
gajillion tons. For reference, Earth is almost 6 x 10
24Kg. (That's
twenty-four zeroes!)
"Yes. Not.. quickly, but it's certainly possible. Be a good deal easier if someone as well motivated as you took the lead-."
"No. My place is here. Living kryptonians are more important than a world that chose not to save itself."
There's an interesting bit of
loathing, from someone who wouldn't have been especially aware of the political side of things...
"Ooooooh-kay.
"So don't prioritise it, but I'd still like it back. Ideally."
Yes, just a
simple request.
"Rightoh. Is there..? Anything else you need?"
She shakes her head. "No, I don't think so. You've resourced this project appropriately."
And another warning sign. Even an intellectual young woman wouldn't be that
verbose for such a simple reason.
I nod. "Okay, I'll leave you to it, then. Have a good day."
"You too!"
Smile, nod and back away carefully...
"
No need to say it. That was not
right. We should have words
with the older one."
Yeah, but… Do the tube thing.
Ping.
"
As you wish."
I walk through the tube to the command station, where Ecksey and Karsta are keeping tabs on things. They both look around, though I wait for the tube to close down before putting a sound-deadening field around the room.
"What's up with Kara?"
Because when you want to have a private discussion with an empowered kryptonian around, you
better make sure it's
private.
Karsta frowns. "What do you mean?"
"Ecksey, you know what I mean, right?"
Unfortunately, neither of them knew her before...
"Her mental activity has not changed significantly since she arrived. Neither has her outward behaviour."
"She was reading a story about the vrang occupation to a class, and-."
...So they have no logical point of reference for her behaviour. Unlike the Renegade's out-of-context knowledge.
"Oh, the one about Hatu-El's resistance movement." Karsta nods. "It's nice to know that she's taking inspiration from the worthwhile members of her House."
"Don't you think it's a bit… Xenophobic?"
Yes, the former military officer is
totally on board with kryptonian independence from alien influence...
"Fighting against people who invaded and conquered our planet? No? I think it's exactly right xenophobic. Look…" She gestures to the monitors with her right arm. "All our kids are growing up surrounded by aliens on a space station build by aliens in a project overseen by you, another alien. That's not a kryptonian thing. We didn't mix with aliens like this."
"Well, if you know a kryptonian with a cloning-."
...But at least she can recognise that the old way might not be the
best way.
"I know. I'm not complaining. I'm grateful. I know I wouldn't do something like this for your species."
"My species does kind of suck."
To be fair,
that's mostly on their ruler.
She gives her head a small shake, and I do know what she means.
"Even if they didn't. But as far as I'm concerned, Kara Zor-El is far more normal than that exhibitionist weirdo Kal-El."
'Exhibitionist'? So his outfit
isn't normal kryptonian fashion?
Ah, yes. Not the Silver Age anymore.
"We did rebuild her brain. She's just… It's just that she's acting so different from the parallel universe version I met, I'm worried that we did something wrong. Got something wrong."
Ecksey shrugs. "Her brain has all the right parts. None of the patterns of activity are all that strange for someone who went through a great trauma. Since I have no idea how she thought when she lived on Krypton, I can't say if it's wrong for her or not."
I nod. "Okay. Let me get back to you."
It's not necessarily the right parts, but the
software running on them.