She was pretty sure it was a curse at this point. There was no way, absolutely no friggin way, that so much kryptonite would be practically littered everywhere in Smallville by mere happenstance.
There was a better chance of the average man getting hit by a damn meteorite walking down the street than this!
Either she was actually living in a comic book and the heros can't ever live in peace tropes were acting up, or God/The Universe was blalantly having fun at her expense. Considering the fact she was pretty sure there were cosmic embodiments of concepts she would bet on the latter.
Victoria can't ever have nice things it seems no matter what world she was in. Hopefully none of the cosmic entities figure out or decide she was a mistake in the timeline or something and erase her from existence. Wait, crap, didn't thinking about them or calling their name brings their attention or something? Oh crap what if someone knew about her already? What if Darkse-
"Somebody once told me, the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the sheddd~!"
Singing All Star was as good of a way to distract her as any from accidentally damning her eternal soul and calling about the apocalyse. She took a deep breath- more to calm her nerves than any real need for oxygen- before diving into Perry Lake. It was a pretty popular fishing spot that connected to Kansas River on the south end and she was thankful to be able to avoid the crowd with a midnight trip. It was bizarre standing at the bottom of the lake, felt as if she had taken a dip into a pool of ink, yet she could see her surroundings perfectly clear, even the crescent moon and twinkling stars above couldn't be hidden from her sight. The shifting currents created by the fishes didn't bother her.
They only served to highlight the beauty of it all, the invisible streams of matter was noticable as a brush of blue across a black canvas, the countless hues of color reflecting off their hundreds of scales. An ever shifting painting of light and colors that she couldn't even begin to describe, a wonder the human part of her could't even begin to conceive.
After all, how would a mantis shrimp properly convey the world it sees to a human?
Victoria must've spent hours beneath the waves star gazing because by the time she finally got up the lake was filled with the golden rays of the sun. Five fragments the size of her pink nail was safely locked away in a containment unit she kept hidden in a backpack as she swam back up. It was almost dawn and the folks of Kansas were nothing if not hard workers. Everyone was an early riser here it seems, she's convinced there was something in the water. An entire town all getting up before 7 A.M?
That was boarderline blasphemous.
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...Maybe I could convince Ma and Pops to let me build a robot to go to school in my place?
This week really settled it for her. High school truly was a soul sucking place that drained the life and energy out of the youth. It was the only explaination! Victoria hadn't gotten around to testing it, but she was fairly confident in her guess that Kryptonians supplied with sufficent amounts of sunlight didn't require food nor sleep. There was no way the food she ate could provide her with enough energy for any of her superhuman feats and despite her superhuman body she still felt exhausted coming home everyday.
Clearly the school was evil.
Truly, if only Lex Luther had ever learned that all he needed to do to defeat a Kryptonian was to weaponize the subpar American learning system, she shuddered to think of what he nerfarious plans he could acomplish with such a sinister device.
It would be the end of the world.
"How was school, sweetie?" Pops asked as she got into the truck. While she was perfectly capable of flying or walking home, appearences had to be kept. Well, that's what they claimed anyways, Victoria knew they were just worried about her. Invincible alien god or not she was still their baby. It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside, but in a good way that didn't involve involuntary hurricane winds sneezes.
"I hate it." She said as she stared out the window, imagining an invisible figure running along on top of the roof top doing flips and tricks as they ran. When they ran out of roof the indisinct figure soon morphed into a more familiar red capped one flying across the sky, duck and weaving in between the trees and power line. Blue eyes darted about scanning for various unseen enemies and obstacle, plotting out the most the best way to get pass her mental game of three dimensional bullet hell. She had just contemplated on the legitimacy of plowing through the ground to get to the laser turret entrenchment when a rather rude snort and series ofbellowing laughter dispersed the fantasy.
"Yeah, I still remember how boring it was when I had to go, and I can only imagine it being a hundred times worse for you."
"... Miss Wilson had us learning the Pythagorean theorem yesterday. It'll be the only thing we'll be working on for the rest of the week." The worst part of it all was that all her teachers loved to call on her and made sure to pay her extra attention during classes which means she couldn't just sleep through them or work on her own projects. It was ironic in a way how the ones who least needed help tended to occupy most of the teacher's time.
"Chin up soldier, Ma and I had already written a request to the principle and he had promised that if you did well on your exams and passed te counselor's acessment we'll be able to let you skip a grade or two yet."
She gave him a fierce hug before taking off her backpack to use as a makeshift pillow. It was going to be 45 minutes to an hour until they got back so she might as well take a small nap. Holding her thumb over her wrist watch caused the red face to slowly fade away as it finished scanning her finger print. Victoria smiled in contentment as the red sun radation was quickly flushed out of her system by its golden counter part. She leaned against the window and slept enveloped the roar of the engine and guitar from the radio.
"Sweet dreams, princess."
She hear Pops whisper as Johnny Cash swept her off to Morpheus' realm.
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"... I need money." There was only so much one can do with old toasters and parts scavaged from the junkyards. Her prototype Kryptonian power limiter proved that her idea worked, but it still had a tendency to fizz out at times. Kal was still an infant and thankfully enough his powers hadn't kicked in yet.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
According to what she knows from the shows and cartoon they wouldn't until puberty. She wasn't going to risk her parents lives on something as stupid as half baked assumptions. Besides when she was at school, in which case he was always in a room with a red sun lamp, the baby was basically glued to her hip night and day. The idea that his powers might suddenly kick in at any moment and a simple child's tantrum could turn into a blood bath scared her shitless.
If she could she would've made power armor for both of her parents already.
Sadly, superpowers or not it seems like money issues was always going to be haunting her. Now, how can someone like her make some? What skills did she have that was marketable? Sell inventions? She could probably pull out a dozen different patents out of her ass off the top of her head. No, that wouldn't be a good idea. She didn't want to mess up the timeline more than she strictly had too and she definitely didn't want to bring any attention to her family.
Nobody would hire her with her age and lack of credentials. Maybe something online? She could simply make a fake resume and some false records...
"Ba-ni!"
"Huh?"
"Baaani!" Clark shouted once more, hands grasping the empty air. It only took a second for Victoria to realize he meant his stuffed rabbit. She wasn't sure if he just wasn't able to pronounce bunny or if Bani was a name. Still, she picked him up anyways and started to look around. "Now where did you put it..." She muttered to herself as she paced around the room. Good thing X-ray vision made finding lost things quite easy.
"There we go! Try not to lose it this time, Clark." Victoria said as she handed over the doll with a triumphant grin. "I wonder how it got buried underneath the couch..!" Her eyes widened as an idea just popped into her head. Laughing like a maniac she twirled Clark around in the air and peppered his face with kisses. He was understandably confused but delighted in the affection nontheless.
"Ma! Could you watch over Clark for a bit? I gotta go and do something for a bit!" Ms. Kent came into the room and pressed her palm on one of the family portrait next to the closet, soon the entire room was dyed in red light. "Well, alright dear, but make sure you come back in time for dinner! I'm making shepard's pie tonight."
"Alright Ma, I'm off!"
Grabbing a spare backpack and a beaten up old motorcycle helmet to cover her face ran a couple of miles away from home before flying off in a blur. She had some buried treasure to find.
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While Kansas did have gold underground, it wasn't anything to write home about it seems. Oh, with her speed and x-ray vision she had still manage to gather a couple thousand dollars worth of nuggets, but it was becoming increasing tedious to constantly pick up all the pathetically small grains. She even flew pass quite a few pocket of gold specks simply because she couldn't be bothered to spend her time sorting through the gravel for them.
A gold rusher would probably have an aneurism at her actions, but her time was valuable damnit! more than the couple of bucs she would've gotten from each piece. If she wanted chump change she could've just went and melted down all the scrap metal at the junkyard and sold that.
Which was why now she was currently hovering over the Caribbean Sea looking for pirate booty. She felt a certain pleasant tingle run up her spine as she watched the seemingly endless blue all around her. The smell of the ocean, the warm breeze caressing her face, the call of gulls on the horizon. This was her first true fantasical scene in her new life. Oh sure flying around the barn was nice, and setting firewood on fire with her eyes was all fine and dandy, but she always made sure to only use her powers in a strictly controlled environment and be wary of wandering eyes.
This was one of the rare times she could really let loose and just have fun without worry about anyone else. It was time for an undersea adventure!
How strange it was that even her memories of an actual alien planet didn't quite seem as... Different as the world underneath the waves. There was simply just so much life and motion everywhere, countless creatures moving in such free flowing ways in complete disregard for gravity. As she scoured the bottom for sunken pirate ships she quickly found her mark. She rubbed her hands in glee as one of her childhood fantasy was realized. Watch out Luffy, there's a new king on these seas.
Rotten wood and rusted sheet metal around her as if wet tissue as she simply plowed her way to the captain's quarters. Bars of solid gold and bags of small gems littered the floor as the broken chest was lying in a far off corner of the room. Besides a couple of mischievous hermit crabs nestling nearby and refusing to release their hold on a couple cold coins she managed to gather a large haul without much of a delay.
"Hashtag just going with the flow, lol." Victoria smiled as she took a selfie with her multifunctional wristwatch. The lighting wasn't the best, but nothing some photoshopping back at her spaceship wouldn't fix.
5:46
She had spent a coule hours roaming underwater at this point mindlessly chasing fishes and observing the wild life. She even seemed to have made a new friend in the form of a young blue whale swimming with his mother that didn't seem to mind her presence as she layed ontop of his head. Unfortunately her leisurely trip came to an end when she felt a truly massive object moving, the flow of the water shifting ever so slightly around them. It seems even the pair of whales noticed as they started to swim away in a hurry.
"I'll see you later, Little Blue."
Curiousity grabbed a whole of her and she decided to investigate. Victoria arrived at a truly bizarre scene was she watched an octopus the size of an apartment building. Awe filled her at sight of such a massive living thing. For all of five seconds before she blew a hole through its head when she noticed it was trying to crush a little kid.
"Are you okay? What's your name? Where're you from, I'll take you home." She asked as she gave the little girl a check over with her x-ray vision. A bit bruised up and she had a rather nasty cut on her left arm, but all in all she was remarkably whole after an encounter with a goddamn Krakken. Honestly, what kind of parent just let's their daughter wander off all... Alone... 3 miles below the surface...
Holy shit. She gave the child another closer look. The girl looked like she walked out of a picture book of the Little Mermaid. Bright crimson hair, blue eyes, green body suit that looked as if they were made a fish scales, and a tiny golden tiara. Victoria... Victoria knew who this was. Queen- or rather princess of Atlantis. Wife of Aquaman. This was...
"Mera," The child unknowingly finished her own thoughts. A bright smile was on her face and even without moving her lips Victoria could hear her speaking. The voice was high pitch, yet incredibly clear to her ears unlike the distorted wobbly words that came out of her own mouth. The water... It was dense. Heavy. Mera was somehow controlling the surroundings and directing the vibration to her ears. "Princess of Xebel. Thank you for saving me, please take this as a token of my apreciation." Victoria didn't know what the heck she was going to do with a red clam, but she took it anyways. What the heck was a Xebel?
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Having a bonafide native of the sea showing her all the sights really was a different experience than wandering around by herself, although it might've been just the company. It was a shame outsiders weren't really allowed to visit her kingdom. Apparently there were six other underwater kingdoms besides Atlantis, who knew?
"It's getting late and I have to go home now, but do you want to meet up again next week?"
"Sure, I'll meet you at the Titanic?"
"Sounds like a plan, laters!" She said as they both took off at breakneck speeds. Huh, while she wasn't giving it her all, Mera was certainly faster than Victoria had ever gone.
Really, to think she would be meeting an honest to God mermaid princess, life was getting interesting she thought as she flew out of the waters wit her backpack stuffed to the brim. The two girls had found so much together that they decided to just store it in one of the many ships they explored. They had to do a lot of clean up, but after burying the dead the Titanic made the perfect hide away.
"... Maybe a bit too interesting." She muttered as a winged man who looked as if he had just walked out of a He-man convention flew pass her overhead, weird shirtless X-shaped chest belts and all. Thankfully he didn't seem to notice her and she had quite enough of an adventure for today, thank you very much.
She hopes there was still some apple pie left by the time she got home.