"Alright Pops, I think that should do it." Victoria called out as she closed the hood of the truck and effortlessly tossed the old enginee to the side. She didn't know if she'd use it as spare parts for a different project or sell it as scrap metal, but she'll figure something out- waste not want not and all that jazz.
"Why don't you test it out?"
There was something decidedly hilarious about watching Jonathan Kent, her new adopted father, all but skipping with joy as he hopped into the driver's seat and gave the trunk a joyride. They had just gave the thing a new paint job last week during their "Sunday bonding time" and just earlier in the morning she had found some rather choice parts at the junkyard.
It was rather fun actually, with her strength and alien knowhows, it reminded her of when her dad used to brought home Legos set for Christmas. A bit more smelly and slick perhaps but no less satisfying when all the pieces came together to form a greater whole. She hopped onto the bed of the truck as her Pops absolutely gunned it. Their roaring laughter echoed through the field as he raced around the farm before doing donuts in front of the house.
"Incredible, it rides like a dream!" He said with no small amount of awe at how his baby fixed up his other baby. Old Betsy has been with him for a long time and it showed with all the scratches, faded paint, and even some dents they never had the time or money to smooth out. There wasn't much to do in this neck of the wood besides watching football, drinking, and long car rides and he wasn't much for drinking outside of social gatherings.
It wouldn't be wrong to say that Betsy was the second love of his life after his wife and now she was good as new- no even better than ever!
"Thank you for the wonderful surprise, dear." Jonathan said as he watched his daughter grin bashfully and looking away while rubbing her nose with the back of her hand unaware of the dark smudge growing on her face. Not very good at acepting compliments, this one. Seems they'll have to change that he thought as he saw his wife coming out with a pitcher of cold lemonade.
Victoria had gotten rather good at tinkering with stuff if she says so herself.
Not much happens in small sleepy towns like Smallville, especially for a 10 year old- even if they could bend metal with their barehand or shoot lasers out of their eyes. Thankfully most of her other powers came more or less naturally to her and he quickly learned to only experiment inside the empty barn out back.
One bush fire scare was plenty, thank you very much.
So she mostly spent time helping out on the farm or scouring the junkyard for parts to make home improvements since she didn't feel comfortable being a freeloader despite the Kent's insistence. She was an adult! Kinda! 16 was old enough in her book, and technically she was 28 if you add in Kara- and wow wasn't that a depressing thought-
Others might argue that's not how mental ages added up, but unless you could get Dr. Strange himself to tell her otherwise then that was the hill she was going to die on.
"Alright you two grease monkeys, it's time to take a break and get cleaned up." Martha said while carrying little Clark Kent in a shoulder bag of sorts. Victoria happily agreed as she took her glass of the refreshing drink. She never drank fresh squezed lemonade before, but she had decided she was sorely missing out in the last life. So much better than store brought or cheap iced teas she used to buy at 7-elevin.
She had trouble cooping at first and all but became a hermit when the kind couple found her and Clark, but she quickly found herself enjoying this new routine of hers.
"Ahhh~!" Everyone turned to look at the infant squinting something fierce as he made a grabbing motion towards his 'Sister'
"Aww, did somebody miss me?" She cooed as Ma handed over the baby with a well practiced ease. Clark was always a clingy child and made it abudantly obvious who was his favorite. She smiled around her glass as she received the little tyke with her other hand, at least she did until a chubby hand yanked at her shirt and pawed at her glass causing it to chink against her teeth. She snorted some juice up her nose in her surprise.
"-Ack, why you little..!" However all the mock anger drained out of her at the toothless grin and excitable clapping she saw. After all, what could she say to a face like that? She simply gave a long sigh and puff of air and was going to put down her cup to get a towel when the tugging came back with a vengance.
"What now? You wanna dump the rest of it on me too?"
A rather pleading look and grasping fingers towards her cup made her relent, not like he could possibly actually hurt himself with it anyways.
"Knock yourself out kido."
Everyone watched with anticipation as the space baby had its first taste of lemonade.
"Blargh!"
And promptly had the wind knocked out of them in sheer gut busting laughter as his face all but scrunched as he toss the glass faraway from him as if it's existence personally offended him. Guess he wasn't a big fan of sour.
All in all life wasn't bad. Sure, farm life didn't have many of the conveniences of the city but she found herself enjoying the peace and straight forward life. Wake up, do you chores, change some diapers, ignore the existential dread- ignore it, help make dinner, sing Clark a lullaby, rinse and repeat.
Haha, who knows, maybe she'll even find a way back home someday with help from the Justice League? Just gotta sit tight and not radically change the timeline and accidentally create Nazi superman or some Flash Point bullshit and wait for all the superheros to to gather in a decade or two.
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That sure sounds like a plan!
...
She was so screwed wasn't she? Let's... Let's just take a long shower and worry about the fate of the universe and the future for later. Yes, it was a problem for Future-Victoria. Or maybe power girl? Which Earth was she on anyways-
"I'm really bad at not thinking about things when I'm all alone, aren't I? Cmon, mister, you need a bath too"
----------------------------------------
"... I'm sorry, say what now?"
"We both know your hearing is twice as good as mine, Dear. Jon and I have have been talking and we feel you've adjusted well enough to Kansas and Earth, well our Earth anyways, and we shouldn't put off your education any longer."
She never felt more her physical age than she did now, but she opened her mouth to argue regardless. "But, I'm 16... I- You can't just make me spend all day around a bunch of kids just learning their ABCs and determined to try their damnest in figuring out which brand of glue tastes the best!" As a general rule of thumb, she hated kids. Even when she was a child she thought other kids were dumb and gross, a sentiment that did not fade with time. Clark being the obvious exception, although whether that was because he was such a clever child or "Super" cute in her totally-unbiased-opinion was up in the air.
"Well, you'll just have to tough it out sport! We all know you're far too smart to actually learn anything there, but the law says ya have ta go!" Pops chipped in from the otherside of the dining table as he turned the page of the morning papers. Victoria frowned at his words, mostly because she knew he was right, as always it seems. She didn't have to like it, but that was just how things worked. Suddenly a warm hand touched her cheek and tilted her face ever so slightly up. Blue met honeyed brown as she stared into the older woman's eyes.
"Don't worry Dear, you just go do your best to have fun and I'll see if I can't get you approved to take a competency test and skip some grades. Might as well get the boring bits over as fast as we can, eh?"
Victoria was pretty sure the Kents were secretly Metahumans. Something about them just made you practically feel the natural warmth of their personalities and they always seemed to know what to say or do to get her to cheer up. It has been a bit over half a year since they found her and Clark crash landed in some cornfields and not only did he couple take them in, but they did their best to accomadate and support her.
Nothing and nobody could replace her old parents Kryptonian or otherwise, her moms and dads, but they didn't have too. They were Ma and Pops, simple as that.
Shooting a beaming smile at her Ma, Victoria dug into her breakfast with gusto before rushing off in a blur towards the barn. She had a lot of projects she wanted to finish and no time to waste. A half dozen neatly packed hay blocks were sitting at the far end of the bar before she promptly shoved them aside revealing a large metal plate a meter in length and width with a ring sticking out dead center.
The young girl flew over and slowly lifted it up in the air revealing it to be a solid block of metal of differing hues. Victoria didn't really pay attention to what she had threw in it when she made the thing and took a page out of some old school Superman comics and used it as a sort of door to her hide out, but the thing definitely weighed a couple of tons at least, like four to five Betsy's.
She made sure to carefully close the entrance as she flew down the long tunnel she had dug. It was no Batcave by anymeans, but she thought she did a rather good job making her own secret hideout. Not only did it require someone with Super strength and flight- or a rather ridiculously long rope- to even get pass the entrance, but the tunnel was completely devoid of light and full of a multitude of traps, dead ends, and loops.
It was pretty fun consulting an online D&D group for tips and advice on her Dungeon... Of Justice of course!
The name was a work in progress. After a couple of minutes she finally arrived at a large cavern where she had stashed her's and Clark's ship.
While her brother's ship had been placed in a far off corner with a sheet covering it, her's was practically gutted with wires sticking out of the opening in the hull and nuts and bolts littering the floor. She had taken everything apart, disected it's insides, examined every single clog, and analyzed how it worked togethed as a greater whole. It was as utterly fascinating as it was humbling.
The more she knew the more she realized how utterly out of her depths she and Earth was compared to the universe at large. After all, to her eyes this was an absolute master piece, something that was decades ahead of anything she had ever seen. It was probably centuries ahead of her own Earth if not outright impossible, she wasn't sure if physics was just different back home.
However the Kara in her wasn't as impressed. Oh, sure, this was still an incredible piece of work even by Krypton's rather high standards and was the work of her father a certified genius, but in the end it was still something that was a juryrigged or a rushed job at best. After all the news of the impending doom of the planet was kind of a sudden surprise.
Limited in time and resources during the admist of a civil war because of General Zod and working by himself in secret under the watchful eye of the Council, her father still managed to make a space worthy ship in record time just to save his only daughter.
Really, her dad was just incredible beyond words.
"Now... Let's see if I can't clean up Smallville before Clark have to deal with any of this bullshit?" Victoria muttered underneath her breath as she carefully donned her self made lead lined suit. It was an ugly thing that had her pracctically swimming in it with a bulky helmet that had a camera to allow her to see. She wouldn't be winning any beauty contests, but it was very functional.
Carefully she retrieved a small box from her ship's storage and placed it on her workbench, hands shaking ever so slightly as if it was a poisonous viper ready to strike. Maybe that wasn't too far off she thought as she opened it, revealing a glowing green rock.
Kryptonite.
"Really, the greatest irony of life..." That a piece of her homeworld would be one of the only thing that could kill her and Clark. Her hands shook ever slightly harder as she remembered the sheer agony of when she stumbled upon this piece of Kryptonite, nothing more than a pebble the size of her nail and it sent her crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes. She didn't scream, but as much as she would've liked to claim it was due to her amazing pain tolerance or fortitude that would be a blalant lie, her body had locked up and she simply didn't have the energy to scream. To cry for help. If it wasn't for Martha leaving the house to tend the garden and noticing her predictament- Kara Zor-El, the once upon a time Super Girl and hero of the world, would've died a nameless nobody with their face in the mud in their own backyard in the middle of Kansas.
She didn't leave the house for a week and had nightmares and anxiety attacks for half of that time. After all, if her own home wasn't safe...
What a cruel joke to play on your children, Rao. As Victoria stared at the stone she could admit that it really did seem beautiful just like watching Jewl Mountain during the sunrise or the Firefalls at night.
She crushed the melancholy that threatened to consume her. She was Victoria now, she was on Earth, she has a new family. She was ok. She was over this now. She was Over this. She was stronger than this, she had to be, for Clark and the Kents and her own sake.
"Ok, deep breath girl, you got this."
She can't risk having something so dangerous around Clark, it was simply unacceptable. Ignoring the tears that built at her eyes at the mere sight of the rock she pushed down the fear and phantom pain as she got to work on her scanner. They wouldn't help her locate any wish granting balls, but safety and peace of mind wasn't a bad trade off. At least Smallville had to be safe for them.