The moment I stepped outside, I felt a slight itch behind my eyes, and suddenly I couldn’t help but stare. Thanks to the sword, what had previously been pitch blackness now looked like a particularly cloudy day. For a moment, as I took in the familiar skyline, I could imagine that everything was fine. But only for a moment, the occasional red glow of burning fires and car-sized gouges in the once pristine glittering skyscrapers shattered the illusion.

Taking a second to steady my suddenly racing heart. I could do this. I nodded to myself, I had been trained by the Grand General, and I had the Sword of Rao. “I could do this.” I mumbled to myself as I took the first daunting step down the stairs. Slowly but surely, my steps grew more steady and less shaky.

I could do this.

Then I came across the first bodies and promptly threw up. With my newly gained night vision, I could see every grisly detail of the bodies, details I couldn't see before, in my desperate run through the darkened city. Everything from the too pale skin, to the almost glazed look in their eyes as they stared off into the aether, all of them with deceptively neat holes in their heads. And the blood, so much blood it clogged up even the permeable concrete, and instead of flowing through it like other liquids, it pooled on the surface in sticky red puddles.

I tried taking a deep breath to center myself, and instantly started gagging. The smell of iron, piss, and shit was overwhelming. Even breathing through my mouth proved to be of no help, as the stench had permeated the air so thoroughly that I could taste it.

I couldn’t do this. I thought as I clenched my eyes shut to block out the many corpses in front of me.

I didn’t want to die. Again. This was supposed to be my second shot at life! I didn't want to die! Just the thought of willingly going near the robots was enough to make me feel faint. The one in our home had been different, with the adrenaline and the fear of my Mom being hurt, it had been easy to forget the insanity of charging at the death machine. But now I was going to have to do it again, on purpose. The thought terrified me. Just imagining Its glowing red eyes staring at me was enough to paralyze me, all the people I had seen die to the monsters replaying in my head with perfect clarity. The downside of having such a good memory was that you remembered everything, good and bad.

It was the sound of someone screaming that snapped me out of my panicking spiral. I stared down at the glowing blade in my hands for a moment. Suddenly it became so much simpler. Someone was about to die, and I had the power to save them. If I didn't do something now, their death would be a direct consequence of my cowardice. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I didn't at least try.

With clenched teeth and a renewed determination, I ran down the street hoping against hope that I wasn't too late, thankfully the sound came again but this time it was much closer, and if I wasn't mistaken it was coming from the apartment complex from my right.

Dashing through the already mangled door to the building, I made my way up the stairs, my enhanced ears straining and hoping for more sound. After all, even a scream of pain meant they could still be saved. The doors to the different apartments I passed had all been broken inward, sometimes I could see the prone form of their residents. It looked like the robots had gone door to door. I had to swallow bile as I realized the building was at least twenty stories, and considering it was nighttime when the attack began, almost everyone would have already been in their homes. The likelihood of any of these apartments having been empty was very low.

I was on the fourth floor when I ran across my first robot, it was in the process of exiting the last of the apartments at the end of the hall, fresh blood dripped from its palms, no doubt coming from the retracted cables. My grip tightened on the sword's handle at the sight, my anger drove me to action. The robot's sensors must have detected my approach as it turned towards me, unlike the one with my mother, this one immediately made to attack me. I wasn't sure if it was because it wasn't currently busy, or because it recognized the blade in my hands as a threat, but either way, the sharp cables shot from its palms towards me.

The sword was increasing my abilities both mentally and physically, as I not only was able to track the cables through the air but I was able to easily bat them aside with the flat of the blade. I must have been moving nearly ten times my usual speed as I closed the distance between us and cleaved it in half at the waist before it could even begin to retract the cables. The robot however wasn't done yet as even missing its lower half it made to grab my legs from its position on the floor. Before it could even make contact I had plunged the blade downward, pinning its head to the floor and ceasing its functions. I may not have been an expert in swordsmanship, but I had trained with Zod in the basics of a great variety of melee weapons. And at the end of the day, swinging a sword with a vibrating monomolecular edge, was still swinging a sword with a vibrating monomolecular edge regardless of skill.

I couldn't even stop to think about what I had just accomplished as more screams came from the floors above. I dashed into the stairwell once more. This time however I didn't need to search each apartment for the robots. Now that the sword had come in contact with the enemy it was able to analyze the energy signature they emitted. That enabled it to now detect the robots, which it projected directly into the visual center of my brain, giving me a sort of HUD. The robots outlines now glowing red through the many walls and floors that separated us. I could see four glowing spots above me on different floors.

I made short work of the second robot, using the same tactic to take it down as the first. The third proved a slight challenge as it opted for close range melee from the get go. But like the first two it fell with a severed and sparking head.

I made my way to the roof with some confusion, the last robot for some reason skipped the other floors and seemed to be waiting on the roof, unmoving. As I got to the roof the first thing to hit me was the cold biting wind from being so high up. I quickly zeroed in on the robot, it just stared at me unmoving. Feeling uneasy at its aberrant behavior I approached cautiously.

Even when I got within swinging distance it didn't move. I raised my blade slowly, looking for some sort of trap, but still not seeing one. 'Perhaps this one was defective?' It was as I had already committed to my swing that I realized my folly.

The moment I had started to swing my sword, my senses went haywire. A sudden flood of information was jammed into my head. With my enhanced perception, I was able to parse the data, just barely. A projectile was headed towards me from behind, and judging from the angle of it, it had come from one of the taller buildings nearby. With myself already committed to the swing, I could do nothing to deal with the bolt of superheated plasma that was hurtling towards my head. It all happened in less than a second, the sword flared with a brilliant red radiance, which formed a glittering shield around me. By the time I had completed my swing, felling the robot in front of me, the shield was already fading away. The shield had been created so fast that it was unstable, barely able to maintain a corporeal state for less than an eye blink, thankfully those few milliseconds had been all it had needed to disperse the plasma enough that all that had gotten through was a puff of superhot air which ruffled and slightly singed my hair. Considering the alternative was a charred stump where my head would normally go, I would gladly take a bad hair day any day of the week.

Now free, I whipped around and stared at the building that the shot came from, the sword doing almost all the work by highlighting the trail of ionized particles in the air, giving me what amounted to a line pointing directly to the shooter. With a slight amount of vertigo my eyes zoomed in on the offender, its shape was almost the same as the ones I had seen previously, but this one had merged its arms together to form a long barrel, it's still faintly glowing insides further proved it was what it used to fire at me with. A specialized bot then, one made for tasks such as this, I supposed in hindsight it was foolish to think there would only be one type of robot in an invasion force. Judging by the teamwork and adaptability I had seen with these bots, I suspected that the robots were actually connected to a hive network of sorts, meaning what one robot sees they all see, allowing for much greater coordination and planning than if they were all individual units.

The slight build up of light in the barrel was all the warning I received before it fired again. This time without the distraction of another robot, I was able to easily swat it aside, blowing a chunk out of the roof to my right. I narrowed my eyes in thought as I tried to think of ways to deal with the sniper. After all, it would take me a while to get back to street level, and then even longer to reach the sniper. Time which it would no doubt use to reposition, starting the game of cat and mouse all over again, wasting even more of my time. And it wasn't like I could just ignore it either, as it would just shoot at easier, more unsuspecting targets.

Once more the sword provided an answer, I blinked in surprise at what it had shown me. Shrugging my shoulders and taking a breath to calm my sudden nerves at what I was about to do, I ran toward the edge of the building and ran off the edge, and kept running. With each step a glowing disk would form where my foot met air, allowing me to run unimpeded by gravity, though it was no less terrifying as the platforms would form just before my feet expected to make contact with the ground in normal circumstances, and faded as I lifted my foot. My brain screamed that I would fall with each step, but the sword did its job and kept me aloft. If I closed my eyes I would have thought I was simply running up a set of stairs, and not running on air high enough to go splat on the road beneath me. It was terrifying, it was exhilarating, but most of all, it was satisfying seeing the robot freeze at the sight of me running on air towards it.

Whatever scenarios it was programmed to deal with, clearly didn't include eight year old girls literally sprinting across a nearly quarter mile gap through the sky towards it. I knew this because I ran half of the quarter mile before it started to fire upon me again. But since the sword was doing all the work in regards to the platforms I was able to focus entirely on deflecting the oncoming barrage while running. The shots were weaker and slower, but they came far more rapidly in what I assumed was the hopes that I would be overwhelmed by the sudden volley.

Now that I was less than a hundred feet away from the still firing robot, I could see the outlines of more than a dozen energy signatures scattered throughout the building. With the amount of momentum I had gathered, I couldn't simply just stop so I dived past the sniper whilst simultaneously taking a swing at it and sailed through the open balcony doors behind it, tucking into a combat roll to help bleed off the momentum.

A glance behind me confirmed my blade had struck true as the robot was on the ground unmoving, and missing the upper half of its head. The glance proved to be a mistake however as the door to the room was blasted inward, and I barely turned back around in time to see the robot charge straight into me, sending us both tumbling over the balconies edge.

With the way I had been knocked from the balcony, it was impossible to properly reorient myself in time to use the same platform trick from earlier. But that didn't mean all was lost, as all I had to do was conjure a bigger platform, which I slammed into back first knocking all the air from my lungs. The impact itself didn't even hurt since I had caught myself before I fell even four floors, at least not with my currently enhanced body anyways. But enhanced or not, getting the air knocked out of me still left me a gasping mess.

The robots in the building were less than considerate to my troubles however, if the sound of shattering glass from above me was any indication. It appeared they were less than pleased with the fact that I didn't go splat on the sidewalk. And being the disposable unthinking droids that they were, they decided the best course of action was to throw themselves through the poor innocent windows, in some vain attempt to ensure my demise.

Unfortunately for them, I managed to get a field up in the shape of a steep wedge and was able to sit back in some amusement as they slammed into it and scrambled for purchase on the slick barrier only to slide off to the sides. The distant sound of them slamming into the ground put a grin on my face. It quickly faded into a scowl once I remembered they had survived falling from orbit, meaning a fall from such a paltry height probably wouldn't even scratch their paint.

I walked over to the window in front of me and with a few slashes cut a hole big enough for me to fit through. A quick glance around showed only three robots left, the rest having jumped out the windows after me. Working quickly I hunted them down, I needed to hurry since I could see the ones who had jumped out the windows were currently rushing up the stairwell in a wave of red, and it appeared that more robots from the surrounding area had joined them, swelling their numbers even further. I started to plan out how I would deal with the oncoming group when the sword once more pumped information into my brain.

Even with the healing factor the sword gave me, the constant info dumps were starting to give me a headache, so it took me a few seconds of wincing before I realized what it was. I ran to the stairwell and looked down at the approaching robots, pointing the sword down the middle of the stairs. I concentrated on what I wanted. This one took a few seconds longer than I expected since it required a combination of different systems working in concert and it was much grander in scale compared to what I had done previously. The symbols on my arm heated up instantly, it seemed the heat was in direct correlation with the usage, it felt like I had dunked my arms into a jacuzzi. Hot enough to make me flinch, but not enough to actually be painful.

A wall of shimmering red light shot up and down the stairwell, coating every contour of the space from the very bottom floor to the very top floor. Once every nook and cranny was coated, I proceeded with the next task, this time though it just took a single thought for a similar red light to coat my own form. With the protections in place, the crystal blade in my hand was suddenly wreathed in red flames, and with a single swing I sent a wave of superheated plasma rolling down the enclosed space. Once the inferno finally died down, a flowing river of molten slag was all that remained of the robots. The last part of the plan took nearly a minute to complete as a blue mist spread throughout the stairwell cooling the air to more flesh friendly levels, and freezing the glowing slag. A few seconds later the red shield coating the stairwell and myself winked out of existence, revealing the pristine and undamaged surface underneath. For a few brief moments the temperature in the stairwell had rivaled those found in the heart of Rao.

With all the combatants dealt with and the sword being unable to detect anymore within its range, I decided to go see if I could help any injured. A quick pulse of xray and radar told me that this building was twenty seven stories tall, had a total of two hundred and ten apartments. A total of seven hundred and two kryptonians were detected in the building, and of those, only one hundred and six showed signs of life.

I pushed down the nausea that wanted to rise forth at those dismal numbers, I didn't have the time or the luxury to feel sick. The sword didn't even detect any injured, which I supposed made sense in a morbid sort of way. These people were civilians, so couldn't really put up a fight, meaning the robots could go straight for the kill.

For a moment I wondered why they had stayed, surely it would have been smarter to make a run for it rather than stay indoors while the bots were going door to door? It only took a few seconds of pondering before I realized why these people had stayed. They literally couldn't leave, with everything that could connect to the net being shut down, that meant that the sliding electronic doors Kryptonians loved to use so much couldn't be opened. These people were literally fish in a barrel, they knew they were going to die but could do nothing but wait for the end. The people in the streets couldn't seek shelter, and the people who were in shelter couldnt flee to the streets. It was a lose-lose scenario.

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My hands clenched around the leather grip, knuckles white. With a snarl I ran down the stairs. There was no point in staying here any longer, every second I wasted here was another person dead that I could have saved elsewhere. These people should be safe now, especially since all the robots in the area had joined the group on the stairs.

The next hour was much the same, me going from street to street destroying all the robots I could find. Quite a few times I ended up saving survivors that were about to be killed, I never stayed to see their reactions, but I imagined it was a mixture of confusion at being saved by a little girl wielding a glowing sword and crushing relief at still being alive.

Eventually, I came across fighting. It appeared the police either managed to get a form of communication up, or followed some sort of protocol. The sheer amount of weapon fire filling the street in front of me was larger than any other skirmish I had seen today. There were at least forty officers kneeling behind a semi circle of overturned vehicles in front of what I assumed was a police station based off of the architecture. Dozens more were scattered throughout the building shooting through windows at the seemingly endless horde.

Robots converged on their position, more robots streaming in from side streets to replace any that fell. They would win through sheer numbers alone it seemed.

Unfortunately for me, the robots in front of me had detected me. And apparently thanks to my hours of hunting them, they must have classified me as more of a threat than the Police in front of them. I actually felt a shiver of fear when every single robot stopped their march and turned around in sync, completely uncaring of the plasma rain that splashed off their shields. A sea of red eyes were locked on me, I took a single fearful step back, and like wolves scenting blood they surged forward.

With a curse I ran back the other way relying on the sword to help me dodge the slew of cables and plasma bolts that followed me. Sure the sword had more than enough power to turn the lot of them into slag, but without putting up a barrier like in the stairwell I would not only roast myself but also everyone hiding in the buildings around me. And thanks to all the blue silouettes the sword highlighted in my vision, I knew there were always people trapped in the buildings. Putting up a barrier of such magnitude would take at least a few seconds of intense concentration, and somehow I didn't think the tidal wave of metallic death would give me those seconds.

I needed to take them somewhere without any people, fortunately I knew just the place. Unfortunately however, the place I had in mind was nearly a ten minute run, even with my sword given speed. Which by itself wouldn't have been a problem, but the constant dodging I had to do as I ran made the whole thing infinitely more difficult.

After what felt like an eternity, I finally made it to my destination and a quick glance around revealed that it was indeed empty of any people. Now able to finally cut loose I spun around with a savage grin on my lips. These things had been shooting at me for ten minutes straight, I was rightly frustrated at that moment.

It only took a thought for a shield to coat myself, and for the blade in my hands to blaze to life. The park I had been sitting in earlier that afternoon was suddenly bathed in brilliant red light. Unlike the last time I had used the ability, it wasn't an enclosed space, so I had to pump a lot more power into the swing to affect the approaching tide. My vision, from edge to edge my sight was filed with the red roiling plasma, my hearing was nearly defeated by the roar it made. The warmth in my arms flared to scorching levels, nearly causing me to drop the blade, and considering the veritable tidal wave of ionized gas that was gushing from it at that moment, I wasn't sure what would have happened if I had actually dropped the thing, so I bit my tongue and gripped the sword tighter.

When it finally ended I had to blink at the sudden darkness, only a second passed by before my sword granted night vision reasserted itself. Though even without it, it was kind of hard to miss the results of my labor. Everything in my line of sight and even things to the sides of it wasn't just burned, it was molten. A field of molten metals and stone was all that was before me, where once there was a field full of Krypton's colorful flora. I couldn't even tell what part of the field was made of the melted robots, everything glowed a uniform orange. The edge of the cone had burning flora to clearly outline the death zone.

To say I was in awe at the destruction was actually wrong, I wasn’t in awe, I was fucking Terrified. While true I had to put some effort to achieve that level of destruction, I knew I could have put a lot more power into it. And the thought that I could have done orders of magnitude more damage was filling me with dread. I stared down at the softly glowing blade in my now shaking hands. 'What possible reason could my family have to create such a terrifying weapon?'

As if by divine providence an answer to my question was provided. It started with a muted rumble, more of a faint vibration really, but it quickly intensified into a distant roar not dissimilar to thunder. But it didn't end like thunder would have, no, it got louder and louder to the point that I had to cover my ears. Finally, mercifully it was over.

I glanced around warily for the source of the Krypton shaking sound. Not seeing anything around me, I looked in the only direction I hadn't checked. My jaw dropped, and the sound of the crystal blade clattering on the ground rang distantly in my head. But I paid none of that any mind however. I was far too busy staring, trying and failing to comprehend what I was looking at.

Up above me, floating in the sky was something. It wasn't a ship, it couldn't be a ship. The thing floating above the city of Kandor, was bigger than Kandor. I literally couldn't take in the entire thing without having to turn my head, for all intents and purposes, it was the sky. It was so massive in scale that I could only see its belly which appeared to have hanging spires, which on further inspection vaguely made me think of tentacles or some type of segmented stalactite, each one was as big if not bigger than any skyscraper in the city. And it had at least a hundred of those spires.

There was a giant glowing hole right in the center of the thing, big enough to fit the entire park comfortably in its radius. I narrowed my eyes as I realized that the icy blue light emanating from its depths looked like it was starting to get brighter in intensity. A klaxon started ringing in my head as the sword warned me that there was a massive energy build up in progress. Though I didn't really need the warning as I could already smell ozone, and my hair was starting to stand on end from the static build up in the air. My eyes widened at the numbers the sword was throwing up, the amount of energy being gathered up there was astronomical.

Without any warning a massive blue beam hurtled towards the ground. I stood frozen in fear as the ungodly amount of energy speared towards me, there was nothing to be done, the scientist in me knew that such a concentrated beam wouldn't be stopped by anything I could throw up in the mere seconds I had to react. It also didn't help that the sword was still lying on the ground where I had dropped it in my shock.

Just when the beam reached the height of the tallest building it appeared to hit some sort of invisible shield. Instead of continuing on it path downward, it splashed outwards and looked like it was spreading over a dome of some kind. I stared in confusion as it continued to spread across whatever barrier that had miraculously stopped it.

But that couldn't have been right. If the city did indeed have a shield that could halt such a discharge of energy, then this invasion would have ended the moment the robots had slammed into it. Something else was happening, and I didn’t think I would like the results.

Stooping down I quickly retrieved the blade. The leather grip felt reassuring in my hands.

If the thing forming above me wasn't the result of it hitting a shield, then what was happening? I wracked my brain for ideas, each as outlandish or nonsensical as the last. The only thing I could think of was that the purpose of the beam was to form a barrier around the city, or at least try to cordon off a section of the city. But for what possible purpose? Were they trying to keep us in, keep something out, or perhaps it had some other motive I couldn't comprehend?

Whatever it wanted, I knew without a doubt it wasn't in our best interest to let it finish. If it was indeed forming a barrier, then I knew that the best chance I had at getting rid of it was when it was being formed. All shields, no matter how powerful were at their most unstable during the formation process. If I had a chance of disrupting it, the window of opportunity was quickly getting smaller.

With that in mind I held the sword close to my body in a two handed grip, my eyes closed in concentration. If I had any hope of stopping the shield I would need to dig deeper than I had this entire night. I already knew what I needed to do, but the problem was if I just went and did it their wouldn't have been much left of Kandor. I needed something that could safely contain the energy I was about to unleash. Slowly a red tube roughly twenty feet in diameter began to form a few feet above me, I imagined the tube racing upward in length until it rested against the energy barrier forming above me. Then I repeated the process again with a slightly larger tube, and again, and again, each tube just barely larger than the last, each reinforcing the other, and so close in diameter that they might as well have been one incredibly thick tube.

I repeated the process so many times I had nearly lost count, the only reason I knew I was accomplishing anything was by the blazing heat coming from my arms. I was already pushing it with just the shields, and I hadn't even gotten to the main event. I was hesitant to proceed with the next part of the plan, if just maintaining the barriers caused this much pain, then what would happen once I really got going? My need to save everyone warred with my own sense of self preservation. A glance towards the sky however reaffirmed my resolve, the dome, and it clearly was a dome by this point was already sloping down toward the edges of the city, it would probably touch down in less than a minute. Even if I had left at the beginning, I doubt I could have made it out, let alone now with just the minute I had left.

With all the preparation out of the way, the only thing left to do was to do it. No time for doubt, I could only push on and hope I survived the ordeal. With one final breath I thrust the blade skyward. For a moment nothing visibly happened, but I knew different. I could already feel the temperature of the symbols rising. I could taste metal in mouth, and my teeth began to ache. My hair which had already been standing on end straightened even further, looking more like a porcupine had taken residence on my head.

The space at the base of the tube began to ripple, at first it looked like a heat wave, but it quickly got more intense to the point that looking at it gave me a sense of vertigo. The air looked wrong. Arcs of electricity began to form inside the rippling air. Then with what sounded like a thunderclap, the distorted space seemed to fold in on itself like origami. The folded space flattened out into a disk perfectly the diameter of the tube it was in. It was unnatural, not in the sense that it didn't exist naturally in the cosmos, but in the sense that something like this shouldn't exist this close to a gravity well.

This was made evident in the slight wavering of its edges. It wanted to unravel, the gravity of the planet picking apart its very nature. But the sword in my hands was designed specifically for this task.

The thing floating in the air a few feet above me was a wormhole.

My ancestors had not christened the sword with such a pretentious title as "Sword of Rao" because it sounded cool.

All wormholes had an entrance and an exit. That was a fact, no matter if it was a natural one, or an artificial one. It was a scientific impossibility for one to exist without one. But a quirk about wormholes that not many knew about was the fact that when one formed, it took a few seconds for the other end to form, and only for that brief moment did a wormhole not have an end.

And so it was, that for a brief moment, the world was still and peaceful. Then the other end of the wormhole formed, and that peace and quiet was shattered as a pillar of light and fire suddenly erupted within the tube. It did not spew out of the wormhole so much as it suddenly just existed in front of the wormhole. That was the speed at which it came out of the wormhole, one second the tube was empty the next it was filled to the brim and straining against the tube containing it. But the tube did its job, and all that energy was funneled out the end to slam into the barrier forming in the sky.

The city of Kandor was bathed in its familiar brilliance.

The wormhole's final destination was the heart of Rao.

The amount of power being unleashed was breathtaking, and to a Kryptonian the intensity of the light was empowering, soothing all aches and pains, and filling all it touched with boundless energy.

But I didn't register any of that. I was far too busy trying not to black out from the pain, while simultaneously maintaining the tube. I was literally holding back the power of a sun, granted it was a small, almost infinitesimal sliver of it, but even that was almost enough to completely shatter the shackles I had placed on it. Something like this was never meant to be controlled, it was power incarnate. Beings all across the universe, all universes, looked up to the sky in wonder of these balls of power. And here I was having the audacity to try and put a leash on one.

After only a few seconds of doing it I was about ready to call it quits. The only reason why I hadn't was the fact that I could see it was working. The dome had stopped its progress across the sky. I focused more intently on maintaining the tubes integrity, it served to block the pain. I was so deep in concentration I was hardly conscious of the outside world. I didn't know how long I had stood there with the blade above my head, but a glance around me showed that the lightshow had gathered attention, both good and bad.

All around me people were fighting, they stood in a defensive circle around me firing outward at the endless metal horde. It seemed that all the police had used my attack as a beacon of sorts to gather around. Unfortunately it worked both ways, the robots could also see where I was, and considering the fact that I was messing with whatever plan they had in mind, they probably wanted to stop me.

But I pushed it all out of my mind. There was nothing to be done except to make sure I kept the pillar going for as long as possible. More time passed in that fugue like state. The next time I came out of it, it was due to a searing pain in my leg. My mind had been so focused on blocking out the pain in my arms that the new source of pain caught me off guard. It was quickly followed by another, this time in my lower back.

It was too much, I couldn't keep going any longer, before I fell I managed to close the wormhole. So when I hit the ground, and dropped the sword, at least the city didn't get scorched. I laid on my back and watched with swimming vision as robots approached my prone form. Their arms outstretched, ready to deliver the killing blow. And in my state I doubt I could have lifted a finger let alone dodge.

I was going to die.

Everyone had their limits, and it seemed I had finally reached mine. The pain and exhaustion, both mental and physical was too much.

The robots were standing right above me, their forms outlined by the glowing background of the barrier. I didn't hear anymore laser fire, so I assumed everyone else was dead. Just like I was about to be.

With the red light no longer there to blind me, and my head feeling like it was full of cotton. The pulsing blue of the sky was absolutely mesmerizing. In my last moments, that's what I was focusing on. Not the fact that I was about to die, not the fact that I had failed. No, I was thinking about what a beautiful shade of blue the barrier was. It was for that reason and that reason alone that I saw the exact moment it happened.

The blue flickered for a second then blinked out of existence. For a brief fleeting moment I was sad. The beautiful entrancing light was gone, leaving me with just the disgusting red of the robots eyes. Though I supposed the light on their chests was nice too.

Then to my joy the blue light filled the sky once more. It took me a few moments for me to realize that there was something different about this light. It wasn't an endless expanse that filled the sky, it was more like spots of blue, like stars all across the black sky. Then to my surprise the sky moved, it felt like it was getting farther away from me. The blue lights getting dimmer as the distance increased.

The sheer impossibility of the sky moving shook me out of my confused state. I watched as the enormous ship rose higher and higher, its thrusters blazing a fierce blue as they pushed the behemoth upwards. In the back of my mind I noted distantly that the robots also froze to look up at the retreating ship. Whatever was happening was clearly not apart of their plan. It was when the ship that was literally bigger than Kandor jumped like a startled puppy and visibly rocked to the side, that I realized what was happening.

My vision was already fading and I was in the worst pain of my life, but I managed to grin anyways as I surrendered to darkness. And why shouldn't I be grinning?

The Kryptonian Defence Fleet had finally arrived.