Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The locker room was a symphony of slamming locker doors, the roar of communal showers, and the thick, humid fog of floral-scented body washes. As the other girls hurried to strip off their damp gear, complaining about the heat and the grime of the track, Clara moved with her usual quiet deliberation.

While Brittany and Courtney stood under the steaming showerheads, their voices echoing off the tiles as they continued to dissect the social hierarchy of the coming Prom, Clara went straight to her locker. She was bone-dry. Not a single bead of perspiration dampened her gym clothes. Her body was a perfectly regulated machine, fueled by a star that didn't allow for the common frailties of human exertion like sweating or shedding.

The idea of showering in this room- of exposing herself to the judgmental or even the curious eyes of her peers wasn't just unappealing, it was unthinkable.

Clara’s sense of modesty was a fortress, built brick by brick from the moment she was old enough to understand she was different. The last time another human soul had seen her without the protection of her clothes, she had been five years old, sitting in a plastic basin in the farmhouse kitchen while Martha carefully lathered her hair with tear-free soap. Even then, as a child, she had begun to instinctively pull away, a budding sense of privacy taking root alongside her growing strength.

In a moment of absolute privacy she quickly swapped her gym clothes back for her Levi’s and her favorite red checkered flannel, her movements so efficient they were almost a blur. She felt more like herself the moment the thick wool was buttoned up to her collar.

"You're not even going to wash your face?" Sarah asked, stepping out of the shower area with a towel wrapped around her head, looking at Clara in disbelief. "I'm literally melting and you look like you just stepped out of an air-conditioned library."

Clara adjusted her Buddy Holly glasses, the thick frames settling comfortably back on the bridge of her nose. "I'm fine, Sarah. I guess I just don't run as hot as everyone else."

"Clearly," Sarah muttered, though there was no malice in it, only a deepening confusion.

Clara grabbed her grandpa’s canvas backpack and headed for the exit. She didn't look back at the steam or the girls who were still frantically trying to scrub away the morning's effort. She stepped out into the hallway, the cooler air of the school building a welcome change.

As she walked toward her next class, she felt the familiar weight of her secret settle back into place. To the world, she was a mystery- a girl of who lived among the stars. But to herself, she was the girl who still remembered the warmth of her mother's hands in a kitchen basin, and who valued the sanctity of her own body far more than the approval of a room full of strangers. She didn't need to be seen to be real; she just needed to be whole.




The dry dirt of the long driveway crunched beneath Clara’s feet, but the sound lacked its usual rhythmic calm. She didn’t wait for the bus to come to a full stop; she hopped off the bottom step and marched toward the farmhouse, her canvas bag swinging with a bit more force than intended.

Inside, the kitchen was a sanctuary of heat and grease. The scent of frying potatoes and the sweet, buttery aroma of crispies met her at the door. It was her favorite meal, a comfort food tradition the Kents reserved for long days.

Martha and Jonathan were already at the table, but they didn't need Kryptonian senses to read the room. They saw the way Clara's shoulders were bunched under the flannel, the slight downward curve of her mouth, and the way she set her glasses on the counter with a sharp clack.

"Tough day in the trenches?" Jonathan asked, sliding a plate of golden fries toward her.

Clara sat down with a thud, "That's one way of putting it, dad."

"Uh-oh, that sounds like a signal fire for garlic sauce." her mother added, trying to keep the smile off her face while running her hand through Clara's hair "Welcome home, sweetheart."

"The girls at school," Clara began, her voice tight with annoyance. "They spent all of gym class and half of lunch mocking me. Because of Tyler. Because of the Prom. They think I’m some kind of freak or a coward because I won’t just 'pick someone' and go."

She took a fry but didn't eat it, twisting it between her fingers. "Courtney basically called me a boring loser for wanting my life to actually mean something. They don't get it. They treat people like... like seasonal clothing. They wear them for a few weeks and then toss them in the back of the closet when the next trend comes along."

Her dad reached across the table, covering Clara’s hand with his own. "Honey, they're just kids. They’re trying to find their way, and most of them are terrified of being alone. Maybe you could just go as a friend? It wouldn't be the end of the world to just have one dance and a nice dinner."

"Your father's right, Clara," Martha added gently. "A little music and some normal teenage fun might do you some good. You don't have to marry the boy."

Clara looked up, her blue eyes flashing with a sudden, diamond-hard intensity that made both of her parents go still. This wasn't the annoyance of a teenager; it was the conviction of a soul that had been forged in a star.

"No," Clara said, her voice dropping into a register of absolute finality. "I won't do it. I won't pretend."

She stood up, pacing the small kitchen with a restless, bottled energy.

"The only man who will ever hold me in a dance, the only man who will ever touch me or hold my hand or see me for who I really am is going to be the man I spend the rest of my life with. Why should I give even three hours of my time to someone who is just a 'maybe'? Why should I let some boy put his hands on my waist just because it’s Prom night and there's a theme?"

She stopped by the window, looking out at the vast Kansas horizon. "I have forever," she whispered, her voice softening but losing none of its strength. "I'm going to live a long, long time. If I start giving pieces of myself away now to people who don't matter, what's going to be left when I finally find the person who does? I’m not 'holding out', Mom. I’m protecting something sacred. I won't betray myself just to fit in with girls who don't even know what loyalty looks like." of course Clara didn't mention that she's already met someone- someone she already cared about deeply.

Jonathan and Martha looked at each other. They had raised her to be moral, to be modest, and to be true- but they sometimes forgot the sheer scale of her integrity. She didn't do anything halfway. Not saving the world, and certainly not her heart.

Her father nodded slowly, a look of profound respect crossing his face. "Fair enough, Clara. If that's the line you've drawn, then we'll stand behind it. You don't owe anyone a dance."

Clara exhaled, the tension finally leaving her body. She sat back down and picked up a crispy. "Thanks, dad. I just... I want it to mean something. To have value."

She took a bite of the fried dough, the flavor finally reaching her eyes. She was a daughter of two worlds, but in this kitchen, she was just a girl who knew her own worth and she wasn't going to trade it for a corsage and a 'Starry Night'.




The barn was a cool, cavernous cathedral of cedar and hay, smelling of old timber and the approaching rain. Up in the loft, the world of high school felt like a million miles away. Clara had carved out a sanctuary there, centered around a beat-up red velvet couch she’d dragged up two summers ago.

She was stretched out on the cushions, her laptop perched on a small table nearby. The distorted, melodic riffs of 'Unbroken' by Todd Thibaud filled the rafters.

"Clara? You up there? Your mom said I'd find you out here!"

Sarah’s voice drifted up from the hay-covered floor below. Clara sat up, closing her textbook. Finding Clara was always a chore, in an age where every other teenager at Cottonwood Falls High lived their lives through a five-inch glowing screen, Clara was a ghost. She didn't have an Instagram to scroll through, no TikTok to keep her updated on the latest nonsense, and certainly no smartphone. If you wanted to reach her, you had to call the farmhouse landline and hope she wasn't out in the fields, or call Jonathan Kent’s rugged flip-phone.

"Come on up, Sarah," Clara called back, swinging her legs over the side of the couch.

Sarah climbed the ladder, huffing slightly, and pulled herself into the loft. She looked around at the low-tech haven- the stacks of books, the CD cases, and the girl in the flannel shirt who seemed perfectly content in her sanctuary, they had spent a lot of time up here even growing up as kids, lots of memories.

"You are the hardest person to reach in the twenty-first century," Sarah panted, sitting down on the edge of the couch. "I tried calling your house three times, but your mom said you were 'decompressing'." and she finger quoted.

"The phone was probably ringing in the kitchen," Clara said with a small, apologetic smile. "I just... I didn't feel like moving."

Sarah looked at her friend, really looked at her. "The whole school is talking about what you said today, Clara. Courtney is telling everyone you’re joining a convent, and Tyler looks like he’s ready to move to another state out of sheer embarrassment."

Clara sighed, leaning back against the red velvet. "I didn't mean to make it a spectacle, Sarah. I just answered your question. I don't see why my personal standards have to be a headline."

"Because nobody has standards like that anymore!" Sarah exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "We live in the era of 'swipe right', and you’re over here waiting for a knight in shining armor or something. People think you’re judging them."

"I’m not judging them... okay, fine, maybe a little.." Clara said softly with a small grin, her eyes tracking a dust mote dancing in a beam of afternoon light and becomign serious again. "I just know what I want. My parents have something real. I’ve seen the way they look at each other when they think I’m not watching. Why would I settle for a fake version of that just to satisfy a bunch of people who will forget my name by the time we graduate?"

Sarah went quiet, the frustration fading into a curious sort of envy. She looked at Clara- so still, so certain and realized that her best friend wasn't the one missing out.

"You're serious," Sarah whispered. "You'd really wait years. Decades, even." dipping a bit into hyperbole.

"If that's what it takes," Clara said, her voice a steady, unshakeable anchor. "Besides, you know it won't be decades. Or years."

"Riiiight, Mystery Guuuy!" Sarah teased "Okay, so, spill. Come on, give me deets. Not even the mice under the floorboards are listening this time!"

Clara tried to suppress a smile but was failing at it spectacularly, finally, she relented "His name is Peter-"

"And?" Sarah pushed and prodded with a finger.

"He's not from Kansas. And that's all I'm saying, now give it a rest!" Clara huffed and got up, her hands smacking against her legs as she started pacing the loft.

"UGH!! You're killing me over here!" Sarah just whined in a dramatic fashion while sliding down the couch.

Clara just laughed "Drama queen. Look, I want to be sure, well- we both want to be, Peter and I. He's a wonderful guy, he makes me feel seen, safe, and I know how corny that sounds, but I've never met anyone like him, ya happy now?"

"Stop drip feeding me, Clara, or I swear to God, I will become your nemesis."

"From drama to melodrama, I see." she then sighed "Look, I really-really like him, and I can tell that he likes me, too. We've gotten to know each other pretty well- he's funny, he's kind, he totally gets me. Whenever I'm around him my stomach feels like it could just float away any second!"

"You got it bad, homegirl. You got. It. Bad." Sarah teased while righting herself into a normal sitting position.

Clara just bit her lower lip and blushed. "We haven't spoken in, well, over a week, and I miss him."

Sarah looked at her like she grew a third arm "Well, send him a message, what are you waiting for, Christmas?"

"Peter and I, we don't talk online..." Invent something, invent something "We write letters." Something better, something better! "Emails! We write emails."

"So, Jane Austen's gone digital, I see. Someone notify Congress." Sarah stated with pursed lips, her head nodding absentmindedly, a look of 'I'm impressed' on her face.

"Ha. Ha. Ha. You should take it on the road." Clara sat back down with her arms crossed.

"No, I'm not making fun, girl, it's just, well... it's a bit more I dunno, traditional? I guess? Very early 90's of you, very 'You've Got Mail'.

"People cheat in that movie." Clara pointed out with a flat tone of annoyance and a pointed look.

"You get my point, Arwen."

"Yeah, I do... it's just..." she didn't know how to explain the impossible.

"What? Spill it, Kent."

"It's- it's a bit complicated.."

"How is it complicated? You like the guy, right? Like, a lot, and he likes you, so what's the matter?"

"Ugh, fine! He's from New York, as in New York City, okay? Not exactly a hop and a skip away."

Silence fell.

"Shut up! When did you meet a guy from New York?!"

Clara knew that the more she talked the deeper the hole beneath her became Come up with something good! "We met in.. Emporia, about a month ago. He was passing through town, on his way home, he asked me for directions to a local diner cause he probably thought that I was also from Emporia too, and I- we just started talking, and.. it all just clicked."

"Clicked, huh?" Sarah raised an eyebrow. "He's not 39, right?"

"Sarah!" Clara threw her arms up in annoyance her face turning a shade of green. "No! Ew! God, no! What is WRONG with you?! Do I look like Courtney to you?! UGH!!! He's not 39! He's only three months older than me!"

Her friend only grinned. "Just pulling your leg, sis. Sometimes you're too easy to tease, I can't resist it." and then her tone became serious and kind with a deep steadying breath "If you're telling me that this Peter is your Mr. Forever, then he's your Mr. Forever. I see the way you look when you're thinking about him, don't think I haven't noticed you daydreaming in class." Clara softened at that, her defensive edges fraying, an expression of wistful longing spreading across her face as she sighed and sank back down on the couch. Her hand going to her stomach as if she could tame the butterflies.

"Okay, okay, dial it down! Don't give me diabetes!" Sarah replied, making a face as she teased Clara.

"Sarah..."

"So go talk to the guy! Write him a letter, figure out a meet-up, or hell, invite him here!"

"You don't think I haven't thought of that every day for a month now?!" Clara huffed again with frustration.

"So why don't you?"

"Kansas from New York isn't exactly a cakewalk, Sarah!" and she put more emphasis on her friend's name each time she said it "It's like a day by Greyhound alone, Sarah! Probably more, Sarah!"

Clara was doing her best to make it seem like she couldn't just fly to New York in about 5 seconds or less. She hated lying to her best friend, but the alternative was telling her that she's a supepowered alien from another world and that she's the last of her kind. Can. Open. Worms. Everywhere. To say nothing of the fact that she was too ashamed to see him, still working through it. "I'll figure something out."




Wednesday morning arrived with a stubborn Kansas fog that clung to the windows of the school bus, matching the heavy atmosphere Clara knew awaited her inside the halls. She hadn't slept poorly- she rarely did, but she had spent the night thinking about Peter. She'd been tempted to just spy on him from fifty-thousand feet from above New York, she was sure that he'd be at the Chrysler Building at 4PM the day before, but had decided against it, it would have been an invasion of privacy.

She stared out the bus window now, Sarah's words barely a background murmur. The only thing she was hearing now was Peter's laughter, which brought a smile to her face. I'm being dumb, and I know I'll regret it...

There was also another matter that Clara wished to correct and resolve. Tyler. She spotted him near his locker before the first bell. He was hunched over, staring intently at a textbook as if he could disappear into the diagrams. The space around him was a vacuum; the usual 'buddies' who slapped him on the back- had drifted toward Courtney’s circle, sensing that Tyler was currently socially radioactive material.

Clara adjusted her glasses and walked straight toward him. She didn't sneak up; she let her boots hit the linoleum with a steady, purposeful rhythm.

"Tyler?"

He jumped, his textbook nearly slipping from his fingers. He looked at her, his face instantly flooding with a painful, blotchy red. "Hey, Clara. Look, if this is about the 'gross' thing, I get it. I shouldn't have-"

The lockers around them, which had been a chorus of slamming metal and frantic morning gossip, fell into a heavy, artificial silence. It was that specific kind of high school quiet- the kind where people pretend to be busy with their combination locks while angling their ears like radar dishes.

"Stop," she said gently. "That’s why I’m here. I wanted to apologize."

Tyler blinked, his brow furrowing in confusion. "You’re apologizing to me? You’re the one everyone’s talking about."

"I’m apologizing for how it came out," Clara said, leaning against the locker beside his. "I was talking to Sarah, and I didn't realize the whole locker room was listening. I wasn't calling you gross, Tyler. You’re a good guy. You’re kind, you’re smart, and you deserve a girl who is actually excited to be on your arm."

She looked him directly in the eye, her blue gaze softened by the thick frames of her glasses.

"My standards aren't a wall to keep people like you out," she explained. "They’re a way of making sure that when I finally say 'yes' to someone, it actually means something. I don't want to be just another Friday night for you, and you shouldn't want me to be. You’re worth more than a temporary date, Tyler.

The boy’s defensive posture relaxed. The humiliation that had been simmering in his chest for twenty-four hours began to dissipate, replaced by a strange, quiet clarity.

"I just thought... it was just a dance," he muttered, though he was finally looking at her instead of the floor.

"It’s never 'just' a dance," Clara countered softly. "Everything we do tells the world how we want to be treated. I want to be treated like I’m irreplaceable. And I think you should look for a girl who feels the same way about you as well. Don't go for the girls who have a different guy every week just because they’re easy to ask. Wait for the one who makes you want to be better. Wait for the one who wouldn't dream of being anywhere else but by your side."

Courtney was standing just three lockers down, her hand frozen mid-air as she reached for her geometry binder. Brittany and a few of the other track girls were clustered nearby, their smirks fading into expressions of confusion, and perhaps a flicker of something that looked dangerously like shame.

Tyler was silent for a long moment. The frantic, desperate need to have a date for the social event of the year suddenly felt small, childish, even. He looked at Clara and realized she wasn't being arrogant. She was being honest in a way most people were afraid to be.

"You really think that's how it should work?" he asked. "Just... waiting?"

"I know it is," Clara said, a small, encouraging smile gracing her lips. "Because when you finally find her, you won't have to wonder if she's comparing you to the guy she went to Prom with last year. You'll know you're the only one. And that's worth a lot more than a Starry Night theme."

She reached out her hand to shake. "We're good?"

Tyler nodded, a genuine, albeit shy, smile finally breaking through and he shook her hand. "Yeah. We're good, Clara. Thanks. I think... I think I might just something smarter to do on Prom night."

"That sounds like a much better investment," she replied.

As the bell rang, Clara turned and headed toward her History class. She felt lighter. She hadn't compromised her soul, and she hadn't left a casualty in her wake. She was still fully Clara, but today, she had used her strength to build someone up instead of tearing a monster down. And as she sat down in Mr. Henderson’s class, she found she was actually looking forward to the lecture on the Great Depression. After all, she knew a thing or two about surviving the hard times to find something that lasted.

After Clara walked away, the silence held for a heartbeat longer. The students hadn't heard a lecture, and they hadn't heard a girl acting holier-than-thou. They had heard a girl treat Tyler like a person of value. They had heard a philosophy that stripped away the glamour of Prom and left it looking like a pile of cheap sequins.

"Did she just... give him a pep talk?" Brittany whispered, her voice lacking its usual bite.

Courtney snapped her binder shut, the loud crack echoing in the hallway. "She’s insane. She’s literally telling him to be as lonely as she is."

But Tyler didn't look lonely. For the first time all week, he stood up straight. He didn't look like the boy who had been rejected; he looked like a guy who had just been given a map out of a maze. He ignored Courtney’s comment, slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked past them with a nod of quiet confidence.




The secret of Clara Kent’s true nature remained, against all odds, the most secure vault in Kansas. It was a testament to the human brain’s ability to reject the impossible in favor of the mundane.

People remembered the Bus Incident from four years ago, of course. It was the stuff of local legend- a freak occurrence where the small school bus had skidded off the bridge into the rain-swollen Cottonwood River. A few of the kids who had been on that bus were still in her class, including Sarah. They remembered the terrifying rush of cold water, the screaming, and then the sudden, impossible sensation of the entire multi-ton vehicle being shoved upward and onto the muddy bank as if by the hand of a giant.

But memory is a fickle thing. Over the years, the story had morphed. The shove became a lucky snag on a sandbar. Clara’s role- having been seen for a split second chest-deep in the churning water had been rationalized away as adrenaline-fueled strength or simply she hung onto the open door in the back and the water didn't snatch her away. No one wanted to believe that a fourteen-year-old girl had the power of a tectonic plate; they wanted to believe in a lucky break. The human mind does its best to rationalize the impossible in order to remain whole.

And as for Hope? The name was everywhere, but the distance between a grainy satellite photo of a woman fighting in the vacuum of space and the girl in the Buddy Holly glasses and baggy clothes as to not show her figure- sitting in AP Chem was too vast for anyone to bridge.

Even Sarah, who had been on that bus and had seen Clara do things that defied physics, couldn't make the leap. To Sarah, Clara was just... special. Maybe she was a little stronger, a little faster, and definitely a lot more moral than anyone else she knew, but she was still just Clara. The idea that her best friend was a Kryptonian refugee who had just saved the world was a thought so big it couldn't fit into a high school hallway.

In the cafeteria, a group of seniors was huddled around a laptop, watching a leaked GDA analysis of the solar incineration. "Look at the way she moves," one boy said, pointing at the screen. "She’s like a god. You think she even eats? Or sleeps?"

Clara walked right past them, carrying a tray with a ham sandwich and a carton of milk. She felt a strange, flickering irony in her chest. She had literally just been discussed as a being who didn't eat, while she was currently wondering if the cafeteria lady had remembered to put extra mustard on her bread. Technically she didn't need to, to her all food was like comfort food basically, it made her feel even more connected to the world, something she really didn't ponder before she realized that she wasn't even from Earth, but now held an even more special meaning to her.

She sat down across from Sarah, who was busy doodling stars on her notebook.

"You okay, Clara?" Sarah asked, looking up. "You’ve been kind of quiet today."

"Just thinking about the history test," Clara lied easily. It was a white lie, the kind her father said was necessary to keep the world from losing its collective mind.

"God, I wish I had your priorities," Sarah sighed. "The world is literally being protected by a space alien, more and more people are deciding to just skip Prom, and you’re only worried about World War II."

Clara took a bite of her sandwich, the simple flavors grounding her. "I'm not worried, I just find it a fascinating subject. It’s about how people take care of each other when everything falls apart. The worst and best of humanity during one of our civilization's most turbulent periods."

Sarah laughed, shaking her head. "You really are one of a kind, Kent, and for the love of God, stop talking like we're in the 19th century."

Clara just smiled and kept eating. She was a ghost in plain sight. She was the most powerful weapon in the Universe, hidden behind a flannel shirt and a pair of fake glasses, protected by the simple fact that no one expects a god to be interested in a ham sandwich or a history lecture.

She was safe. Her secret was safe. And as she looked at the Starry Night posters one last time, she felt a profound sense of peace. The world was looking at the stars for its hero, which meant they would never think to look for her right here, in the middle of a Kansas high school's lunchroom.




It was Thursday afternoon when a small interview with Hope had hit the internet like a lightning strike, it was filmed by a couple of kids in Vancouver, she had just put out a large fire in a 5 story building in downtown Vancouver, with the firemen of Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services around her, men from Engine 15 with wide grins on their faces, shaking their heads in disbelief.

The two boys, barely 12-13 by the sound of their voice were recording her, they shouted her name to get her attention, she spotted the boys and walked over, a sweet smile on her face.

"Hope, Hope, can we- ask you some questions?" the boys were clearly nervous, she just smiled sweetly at them.

"How can your symbol mean hope when it looks like an S?" she only smiled and looked down at her symbol, she looked away for a moment to collect her thoughts.

"It's meant to-" and her fingers traced the shape "It's meant to wind- like a river, it comes and goes, but, you can always find your way to it, no matter where you are. Hope is always close by."

"Have you ever fought a lion?" she just grinned at that question, her eyebrows tenting in affection, it was the look of a big sister listening to a younger brother. But the older boy nudged his friend and blurted out the question that would soon be printed on every newspaper on the planet. "What's the best thing about planet Earth?" at that, she looked at the ground, contemplative.

She lowered herself a bit to their level "I could probably stand with you two here all day listing everything, but the best thing? The best thing is humanity's faith in itself, that no matter how dark and adverse things get, you push on, you don't despair, you don't give up. You always find your way back to the light." and her voice broke a bit at the end.

The video was raw, shaky, and shot on a smartphone that couldn't quite handle the glare of the afternoon sun reflecting off the wet pavement of downtown Vancouver. But the clarity of the audio and the proximity of the subject made it the most-watched piece of media in human history within three hours of being uploaded.

In the background, the smoke from the apartment fire was already turning from black to a thin, harmless gray. The men of Engine 15 were visible in the frame- heavy-duty firefighters looking like awestruck children, leaning against their truck and watching the girl in the blue and red.

Clara watched the video on her laptop in the barn loft. She remembered that moment- the smell of ozone, the frantic beating of the boys' hearts, and the way the cool Vancouver air had felt against her skin. Good kids.

She closed the laptop, the silence of the barn rushing back in to fill the space where her own recorded voice had been. She leaned her head back against the red velvet couch. Seeing herself like that- without the glasses, without the flannel, felt like looking at a stranger. But the words were hers. They were the truths her father and mother had poured into her since she was a toddler.

Down in the house, she knew her parents were likely watching the same clip. They would recognize that smile, the way she looked at the ground when she was thinking.

The world was falling in love with a symbol. They were projecting their dreams onto Hope. But as Clara looked out at the darkening Kansas sky, she knew the most important part of that interview wasn't about what her symbol meant, or what she thought of Earth- it was the fact that she had looked at those two boys and seen the best of humanity in them.

She stood up, stretched, and headed for the ladder. It was Thursday night. She had a history test tomorrow.

But Clara Kent was right where she belonged: heading inside for dinner, her secret safe, and her heart full of the very faith she had described to the world.




The screen in the GDA’s subterranean command center in Washington D.C. flickered, casting a cool, blue light over the faces of the people who held the world’s most dangerous secrets. Director Stedman leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the grain of the smartphone footage. Beside him, Agent Ferguson stood with his arms crossed, his expression unreadable, while April Howsam leaned forward, a faint, knowing smile playing on her lips.

They watched Clara- the girl the world knew as Hope walk toward those two boys. Her Kryptonian skinsuit seamless, a marvel of bio-molecular engineering that looked less like fabric and more like a second, invulnerable skin.

"Look at her," April whispered. "She isn't acting. That’s just who she is."

Stedman grunted, but it wasn't a sound of disapproval. "She’s a high school senior from Kansas who just dismantled a Viltrumite war party and then stopped to explain the philosophy of hope to a couple of twelve-year-olds. It’s consistent. Infuriatingly consistent."

For the GDA, this interview wasn't just PR; it was a confirmation of the psychological profile they had been building since Clara had send Conquest packing back in February.

The Symbol: They had analyzed the sigil for days, trying to find military or political meaning. Hearing her describe it as a river- something that winds and returns sent a clear message: she wasn't here to rule; she was here to guide.

The Temperament: Most beings with her power would be distant, cold, or burdened by their own godhood. But Clara- because to them, she would always be Clara first- possessed an empathy that was almost tactile.

The Anchor: "Humanity's faith in itself," Ferguson quoted, shaking his head. "She sees the best in us even when we’re staring at a burning building. It’s her greatest strength, and if we aren't careful, our greatest liability."

"She isn't a liability, Donald," April countered, her voice sharp. "She’s the only reason we're still standing here to have this conversation. She isn't a stranger to us, she grew up on Earth, right here in the good ol' US of A. She’s just... integrated. She knows exactly who she is."




Back in New York, the wind tore at the red and blue fabric of Peter's costume, biting into the March chill, but he hardly felt it.

Thwip.

He anchored a line to the gargoyle of a neo-gothic high-rise, letting the momentum carry him into a dizzying pendulum arc over the glowing arteries of the Upper West Side. Usually, the sheer kinetic thrill of swinging was enough to silence the static in his head. The rush of gravity, the calculus of the perfect release, the neon blur of the city below- it was his therapy.

Not tonight. Tonight, the rhythm of the swing was just muscle memory. His mind was millions of miles away.

Fourteen days. It had been exactly fourteen days since Clara dropped off the grid.

Thwip. Release. Dive.

Peter tucked his knees, thread-needling through a narrow gap between two glass-fronted corporate towers. He loved her. He hadn't said it out loud, but he knew it. It had only been a little over a month since she literally flew into his life, they'd met a bunch of times since then, and she came to him again, just before she had to face the Viltrumite threat. But since then? Nothing. Silence.

Clara Kent. The girl with eyes like a supernova and a laugh that made him forget he was just a broke teenager from Queens with a weird spider-like problem. She was the last of her kind, an alien refugee who carried the weight of a dead world on her shoulders. Yet, for a month, she had just been Clara. They had traded secrets, complained about homework, and shared a quiet understanding of what it meant to carry secrets no one else could understand.

Then, the sky had almost fallen.

Peter swung past the glowing sign of Beacon Theatre and landed on one of the Ansonia's corner towers, the screen was still playing some variation of the same news loop, even two weeks later.

The world knew the broad strokes. Astronomical observatories and deep-space telemetry had picked up the incoming threat: Grand Regent Thragg and two dozen elite Viltrumite warriors, a galactic conquering force that could shatter planets like glass. They had breached the edge of the solar system.

And Clara had gone to meet them with a group of aliens- friends of hers, apparently.

The grainy, reconstructed satellite feeds didn't show the details of the battle out by the Kuiper Belt, but the aftermath was clear. Thragg was dead. The Viltrumite strike force was wiped out. Clara had crossed a line, doing what she had to do to ensure Earth wouldn't become a slaughterhouse. She had saved eight billion lives. The whole planet was calling her a hero.

But to Peter, she was just the girl who liked extra sweet tomato sauce on her pizza and tucked her hair behind her ear whenever she blushed.

He fired a web, vaulting over a water tower. He landed softly on the edge of a new tenement building at Sherman Square, crouching like a gargoyle as the sounds of the city washed over him. Was she ignoring him? Was she done with him?

No, Peter thought, shaking his head. That’s not Clara.

Was she hurt? The Viltrumites were notoriously brutal, he remembered Invincible's fight with Conquest a few months ago, Chicago was still rebuilding and it would be another two years before the city recovered.

Or maybe... maybe it was the guilt. Clara had never killed before. She had always talked about preserving life, how she saw the beauty in every living thing, from flowers to people. To slaughter Thragg and two dozen warriors- even to save the Earth... had to have fractured something deep inside her. Was she hiding out of shame? Was she pulling the classic superhero trope of pushing him away to keep him safe from her enemies?

"I literally fight guys dressed as rhinos and octopuses, Clara," Peter muttered to the empty night air. "I can handle a little danger."

The silence from her was deafening, a heavy vacuum that threatened to pull him under. He wanted to just sit beside her in the quiet and let her know she didn't have to carry the blood of the Viltrumites alone. 

Down below, the sharp, frantic wail of police sirens suddenly cut through the ambient hum of the traffic. Three cruisers drifted around a corner, tires squealing, lights flashing red and blue against the wet asphalt. A 10-31 in progress.

Peter stood up on the ledge, the wind catching his suit. He took one last look up at the sky, past the smog and the light pollution, searching the faint, distant horizon of the south-west.

"Come back to me, Clara," he whispered.

With a deep breath, he stepped off the edge, plummeting into the neon-lit canyons of New York, letting the freefall take him. Time to go to work.




At GDA headquarters, the footage kept pouring in, Stedman, Ferguson, dozens of analysts, behavioral psychologists, geniuses were going over them all.

Inside the GDA’s Situation Room, the air was thick with the hum of high-end servers and the frantic clicking of mechanical keyboards. Dozens of monitors created a panoramic glow, each one playing a different fragment of a life being lived at incredible speeds.

Director Stedman stood at the center of the chaos, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes darting from a screen showing the Congo field to the one showing a playground in Vladivostok.

"The psychological profile is shifting," one of the lead behavioral psychologists said, tapping a tablet. "Initially, we looked for signs of a God complex or detachment. We expected her to view humanity as ants. But look at the playground footage."

On the main screen, the sound of Clara’s laughter- clear and bell-like voice echoed through the sterile room.

"She isn't just indulging them," the psychologist continued. "The micro-expressions- the closed-eye grin, the way she leans into the dogpile, it’s genuine joy. She isn't performing, sir, she’s participating. She views herself as part of the collective, not an observer of it."

Agent Ferguson paced the isle, his brow furrowed. "It’s the lack of ego that’s the most terrifying part, sir. A being with an ego can be manipulated, bribed, or reasoned with via their own vanity. But she has no vanity. She’s giving directions to tourists in Barcelona like a local college kid. She’s doing UN-level demining work without even filing a report. She’s bypasssing every geopolitical structure we have because she doesn't think they apply to her. Not because she’s a rebel, but because she doesn't think in terms of authority. She only thinks in terms of helping people."

"And the airplane?" Stedman asked, pointing to the footage over the East China Sea.

"She stayed in 14A's field of vision for exactly forty-two seconds," an analyst piped up. "Matched the speed of the 787 perfectly. Our engineers are baffled by the lack of sonic boom or wake turbulence. She’s manipulating gravity on a localized scale we don't even have the math for yet. But more importantly? She waved at a six-year-old. She chose to be a miracle for one kid instead of a threat to the regional air defense."

Stedman looked at April Howsam, who was leaning against a console, watching the ISS footage. "What do you see, April?"

"I see a girl who is lonely for something normal," April said quietly. "Look at the way she gave that thumbs up to the astronauts. She wasn't just being helpful; she was looking for a connection. She likes being up there because they’re doing something difficult and human, and she wants to be part of the team. She wants them to know that if shit goes sideways- she'll be there."

"She’s seventeen," Agent Ferguson reminded them, his voice dropping. "She’s supposed to be thinking about her future, her career, maybe a prom. Instead, she’s carrying the moral weight of the entire planet on her shoulders."

"That’s just the thing, Donald," Stedman said, finally turning away from the screens. "She is thinking about those things. She’s still in school. She’s still living that life in Kansas. Every bit of footage we see here is just what she does in her 'off' hours. She’s not trying to be a god. She’s trying to be a neighbor who happens to be able to fly."

He looked back at the screen where Clara was playing with laughing children.

"God help us if she ever stops smiling," Stedman whispered. "Because as long as she’s smiling, we’re safe. But the moment she stops finding us funny or charming... that’s when the world ends. Keep the feed open. I want every frame analyzed. I want to know what makes her happy, and I want to make sure she stays that way."

Their on the ground teams, who were now embeded in a few places in Cottonwood Falls were sending in their reports, a waitress from a local diner who had started last week. A janitor at the high school along with a new assistant at the Principal's office, a college age girl who now worked at the restaurant where Clara would come in with her parents on occasion to order crispies, though she hadn't been there since the agent started working undercover there as a cashier.

The GDA’s reach was no longer just orbital; it was granular. While the analysts in DC were busy deconstructing her laughter, the operatives on the ground in Cottonwood Falls were documenting the silence.

On Stedman’s private terminal, the Log updated in real-time. It was a collection of mundane observations that, when stitched together, painted a picture of a girl trying to hide a sun inside a mason jar.

Field Report: Cottonwood Falls (Operational Update)
The Principal’s Office, Agent 'Maddy':

"Subject arrived at school at 07:53. No deviation from the standard path. She spent three minutes at the 'Starry Night' bulletin board. Noted a subtle tightening of the jaw. She isn't just uninterested in the Prom; she seems fundamentally opposed to the social artifice of it. She greeted the janitor (Agent 'Miller') by name. She remembers everyone. It’s not a tactic; it’s because she cares."

The Main Street Diner (Agent 'Sarah-Jane'):

"Shift started at 06:00. The Kents haven't been in for the Friday special yet. I’ve been briefed on the 'crispy' order. It’s a local favorite, but for her, it’s clearly a comfort ritual. The cashier at the bakery (Agent 'Lacy') reports the girl hasn't been seen near the shop since the Viltrumite incident. She’s nesting. Staying close to the farm. The local mood is high, but the Subject is withdrawing into the ordinary to compensate for the global 'Hope' activity."

Cottonwood Falls High (Agent "Miller" - Janitor):

"Observed Subject during the passing period after History. She was walking with subject Doyle, Sarah. Subject appears to be using her physical posture to minimize her presence: shoulders rolled forward, head down. It’s a masterclass in 'un-noticeability.' If I didn't know she could catch a satellite, I’d think she was just a shy kid with bad eyesight."

Stedman looked at the reports and then back at the screen of her playing with the group of children in far eastern Russia. The contrast was jarring. One version of Clara was a vivid, primary-colored beacon of joy; the other was a gray-clad teenager trying to disappear into the beige walls of a Kansas high school.

"She hasn't been back to the bakery since Lacy started," Ferguson noted, pointing to the report. "You think she knows, sir?"

"She has super-hearing and X-Ray vision, Donald. She probably knows what Lacy had for breakfast," Stedman grunted. "She's not avoiding the agent; she's avoiding the change. She wants the world to stay the way it was before she had to kill two dozen monsters. She wants her crispies to just be crispies, not a Subject Feeding Event."

April Howsam leaned over Stedman’s shoulder. "The more we watch her, the more I realize that the Hope persona isn't the mask, nor is Clara Kent the mask either. They’re both real, and she’s struggling to keep them from localized collision. She’s apologizing to boys she rejects and clearing landmines in the same twenty-four-hour window. It’s the modesty that’s the anchor," April continued, thinking of the locker room reports. "She won't shower at school, she won't dress like the other girls, and she won't go to a dance with a stranger. She’s old-fashioned because the old ways have rules. And she needs rules. Without them, she’s just an omnipotent force with no place to land."

Stedman tapped a command, silencing the audio of her laughter. "Keep the teams in place, but tell them to back off two degrees. If she feels the net tightening, she’ll stop coming into town altogether. I want her to feel safe. I want her to get those crispies. Because if she loses the farm, we lose our only leash on a god."

In the quiet of the GDA hub, the screens continued to glow. In Vancouver, she was a miracle. In the Congo, she was a savior. But in a small high school in Kansas, Clara Kent was currently sitting in a desk, staring at a clock, waiting for the bell to ring so she could go home to the only two people who didn't want anything from her but her company and love.




Not long after getting home, Stedman decided to go pay her a visit, teleporting just outside their home, and knocking on the front door.

The door of the Kent farmhouse groaned slightly as it swung open. Clara stood there, still in her flannel shirt and jeans, a half-eaten cereal bar in her hand. Her blue eyes behind those thick lenses didn't widen in shock; instead, they narrowed with a weary, knowing sort of sigh.

She had sensed the displacement in the air- the sharp pop of displaced molecules that accompanied GDA teleportation, seconds before the knock.

"Director Stedman," she said, her voice flat but not unkind. "I was really hoping for a Friday night that didn't involve the government."

"I try to be a man of surprises, Clara," Stedman replied, his hands deep in the pockets of his charcoal overcoat. He looked past her into the warm, yellow light of the kitchen, where the scent of a vegetable soup and old wood spoke of a life he couldn't quite fathom. "Your parents home? I’d rather not discuss world security on a porch in view of the road."

"They're in the kitchen. Come in."

Clara stepped aside. Jonathan and Martha were already standing by the table, their expressions a mix of parental defensiveness and the quiet hospitality that was baked into their bones.

"Director," Jonathan said, nodding stiffly. "Hope you're not here to tell us there's another fleet on the way."

"Nothing so dramatic, Mr. Kent," Stedman said, taking a seat at the heavy oak table as Martha wordlessly set a cup of coffee in front of him. He looked at Clara, who remained standing, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed.

"I came because of the footage," Stedman said, gesturing vaguely toward the world outside. "The airliner, the ISS, the playground... Vancouver. You’re becoming a global phenomenon, Clara. Faster than we can keep up with. Every time you smile at a camera, my analysts have to rewrite the book on international relations."

Clara looked down at her socks. "I'm not doing it for the analysts. I'm doing it because those boys asked a few questions, and those kids wanted to play. I'm not going to ignore people just because it would make your job easier."

"I'm not asking you to," Stedman said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "I'm here to tell you that the world is changing. People are looking for you. Not just the GDA, but everyone. You're giving them something we haven't seen in a long time."

He paused, glancing at the fake glasses resting on her nose.

"I also wanted to tell you that I know about the Prom. Or rather, the lack thereof. My team was... concerned about your social isolation."

Clara’s expression hardened. "Your 'team' should mind their own business, Director. I'm not isolated. I'm happy. I don't need a dance to feel like I belong on this planet."

"I told them that," Stedman admitted, a ghost of a smirk appearing. "I told them you were the most grounded person I’ve ever met. But be careful, Clara. The more the world sees of Hope, the more they're going to try to find the girl behind the symbol. You’ve got a target on your back now- not a military one, but a cultural one. They’ll want to own you."

He stood up, leaving the coffee barely touched.

"Enjoy your weekend. Stay off the radar if you can. And Clara?" He paused at the door. "The bit about the river- your symbol? That was good. Even Ferguson liked that one."

Clara stayed quiet for a long time, the ticking of the kitchen clock the only sound filling the void.

"Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent, Clara." with a nod, Stedman turned and headed for the door.

"He's right, isn't he?" Martha asked softly. "They're going to keep looking."

Clara didn't reply to her mother, only her nostrils flared as she processed what was said, as Stedman left and the door closed behind him, Clara got up and went outside after him before he could teleport back to GDA HQ.

He didn't have to come, and he didn't have to worry, at least from Clara's perspective. But she knew that her words meant little, it was her actions that spoke loudest.

Stedman had already reached for the small device on his belt when the front door creaked again. He turned, his professional mask of iron and bureaucratic cynicism firmly in place, ready to offer one last piece of strategic advice.

He didn't get the chance.

Clara moved with that fluid, effortless grace that always reminded him she wasn't quite bound by the same laws of physics as the rest of them. Before he could react, she had stuck her hand out for a handshake, a small genuine smile on her face in the moonlight.

"Director? Thank you," Clara said softly, her hand still out. "For everything. For keeping the secret. For... for looking out for my parents and I, even when you’re being a pain about it."

Stedman cleared his throat, and shook her hand, adjusting his coat with his other and looking out toward the dark horizon of the wheat fields to avoid her steady, blue-eyed gaze.

"Don't get mushy on me, kid," he grumbled, though the usual bite in his voice was missing. "It ruins my reputation. I’m a cold-hearted government spook, remember? I’m supposed to be 'the man' you’re rebelling against."

Clara just grinned- the same infectious, clear-as-a-bell smile the world had seen on the Vancouver footage, but this one was just for him. "Your secret is safe with me, Director."

Stedman huffed a small, dry laugh. "Yeah, well. See that it stays that way. And Clara? Take the weekend off. Truly. If a volcano erupts in the middle of the Pacific, let the Australians handle it for once. Stay on the farm."

"I'll try," she promised.

He tapped the device on his belt. The air began to shimmer around him, the blue light of the teleporter catching the edges of his silhouette.

"Goodnight, Clara," he said.

"Goodnight, Cecil."

The air popped with the sound of a vacuum being filled, and the porch was suddenly empty. Clara stood there for a moment, the cool evening breeze ruffling her hair. She felt the warmth of the farmhouse behind her and the vastness of the world ahead of her, and for the first time all week, the two felt perfectly in balance.

She turned and went back inside, the screen door clicking shut with a final, peaceful sound. The GDA had its secrets, and the world had its Hope, but for tonight, she was just a girl in Kansas, exactly where she was meant to be.




Stedman arrived back at the GDA Control Room

The sharp crack of the teleporter’s arrival echoed against the polished concrete walls of the GDA hub. Stedman stepped off the pad, his expression unreadable, though his posture was slightly less rigid than it had been when he’d departed.

The room was a hive of activity. Agent Ferguson was the first to approach, a tablet in hand and a look of professional urgency on his face.

"Director, we’ve got fresh telemetry from the European sector. There’s an anomaly near-" Ferguson stopped mid-sentence. He squinted, his eyes dropping to the sleeve of Stedman’s charcoal overcoat. "Sir? Is that... lint?"

Stedman looked down. A few stray fibers of red checkered wool and a single, faint smudge of flour from Martha Kent's kitchen were clinging to his cuff. He brushed them off with a sharp, dismissive flick of his hand.

"It’s nothing, Donald," Stedman grunted, stepping toward the primary monitor bank.

April Howsam stepped up beside them, her eyes darting from the Director’s face to the faint, lingering softness around his eyes that he hadn't quite managed to scrub away. "How was the farm?"

"Quiet," Stedman said, his voice returning to its gravelly, authoritative baseline. "She’s staying put for the weekend. I want all local surveillance teams to drop to Level Two. No more hovering near the diner, no more random checks at the school for a few weeks. If we startle her now, we lose the trust we've built."

"But Director," Ferguson protested, "with the public's reaction to the Vancouver footage, the risk of a third-party discovery is-"

"I’m not worried about third parties, Donald," Stedman interrupted, turning to face him. "I’m worried about her. She’s seventeen years old. She’s carrying the weight of two civilizations, and she just spent her week being mocked by teenagers for having a conscience. She needs the farm to be a place where the GDA doesn't exist. Where she can recharge. So let the girl be."

He looked up at the massive global map, where icons for "Hope" incidents were still glowing like embers across the continents.

"She called me by my first name," Stedman added, almost to himself.

The room went completely silent. April and Donald exchanged a look of pure shock. In the hierarchy of the GDA, Cecil Stedman was a title, a force of nature, or a threat- never just a man with a name.

"Is that a security breach, sir?" Ferguson asked, his voice hesitant.

Stedman allowed a very small, very grim smile to touch his lips as he looked at the screen. "No, Donald. It’s an investment. Now, get back to work. If she’s taking the weekend off, the rest of us have to pick up the slack. I want a full sweep of the North Atlantic by 04:00. If the world is going to have its Hope back on Monday, we need to make sure there's still a world left for her to save."

He turned and walked toward his private office, leaving the analysts to wonder what had happened in that quiet Kansas kitchen to make the coldest man in Washington look, for a split second, like he actually believed in someone at face value.




The one small tab they did keep on her, apparently she was doing a Lord of the Rings marathon with her father while Martha Kent baked in peace.

The GDA surveillance feed was relegated to a single, low-priority terminal in the corner of the room. It didn't show the interior of the house- Stedman had drawn a hard line at thermal imaging or audio bugs inside the Kent residence, but the exterior sensors told the story clearly enough.

The lights in the living room stayed on well past midnight. Occasionally, the flickering blue-and-white glow of a television screen reflected against the barn's weather vane.

"The long-range acoustic sensors picked up the theme music about four hours ago," Agent Ferguson reported, dropping a secondary update on Stedman’s desk. "Howard Shore's score. Judging by the timing, they’re halfway through The Two Towers. Extended Edition, naturally."

Stedman looked at the report, a cup of lukewarm black coffee in his hand. There was something profoundly surreal about the data. On one monitor, he could see news reports from London, where a massive crowd had gathered in Trafalgar Square just to hold up signs with Hope's symbol, hoping for a glimpse of the girl in red and blue. On the other, a raw data stream confirmed that the most powerful being in existence was currently arguing with her father about whether or not the Balrog had wings.

"She’s completely off the grid," April Howsam noted, leaning against the doorway. "No flight signatures, no sonic displacements. She’s just a girl on a couch. It’s almost funny, isn't it? The world is having a collective breakdown over who she is, and she’s just waiting for the Battle of Helm's Deep."

"It’s not funny, April. It’s necessary," Stedman said. He leaned back, watching the flickering blue light on the monitor. "She needs to see that even when the world is ending on screen, her world- that house, that couch doesn't change. It’s what keeps her from becoming the thing people are afraid of."

He closed the file with a decisive snap.

"Leave them be. Tell the night shift- if she so much as hovers an inch off that sofa, I want to know. But if she’s just sitting there? Let her enjoy herself. God knows she’s earned a happy ending, even if it’s someone else’s."

As the GDA hub buzzed with the global chaos of a world trying to understand its new savior, the feed from Cottonwood Falls remained blissfully, boringly static. In a small farmhouse in the middle of the plains, the King had returned, the muffins were cooling, and for the first time in a long time, Clara Kent didn't have to be anything more than a daughter.




The klaxons didn't even have time to reach their full crescendo before the 'Subject: Hope' alert turned the entire GDA command center into a sea of crimson light.

"She’s moving!" Ferguson shouted, his fingers flying across the console. "Mach speed- 2, 8, 25, 36 and climbing! She’s-! She’s here."

Seven seconds. That was all the warning they got between the farm in Kansas and the airspace over the Potomac.

By the time Stedman reached the teleportation pad to intercept her, she was already descending through the cloud layer. True to her word, she wasn't seeking a spectacle. She hovered at twenty thousand feet, a silent, blue-and-red silhouette against the gray mist, waiting with a patient, regal stillness for the signal to enter the most secure airspace on the planet.

The Pentagon Sub-Level 4:

Minutes later, the heavy blast doors of the GDA’s inner sanctum hissed open. Clara didn't fly in; she walked, her feet making a faint, rhythmic sound on the polished metal floor. She wasn't wearing the glasses. She wasn't the Clara who tripped over her own feet in gym class. She was the girl from the stars.

Stedman waited for her by the central terminal, flanked by Ferguson and April.

"I thought you were in the middle of a marathon, Clara," Stedman said, his voice level. "I believe the Hobbits were just reaching Gondor."

Clara stopped ten feet away. She didn't look angry, but there was a sharp, crystalline clarity in her gaze that made the analysts at the nearby desks suddenly very interested in their keyboards.

"You've been watching the house," she said. It wasn't a question. "You know about the movies. You know about the muffins. And I can hear your heart rates- you’re all relieved."

She took a slow step forward, her eyes scanning the room, seeing through the walls, the servers, and the layers of hidden tech.

"You think that’s the leash, don't you?" she asked, her voice quiet but carrying to every corner of the room. "You think that as long as I have my normalcy, as long as I can sit on a couch with my dad and watch a movie... I stay safe. You think that if you take away the farm or the crispies, I’ll snap. That I’ll become some... monster?" there was no acusation in her tone, more like a deep sadness.

Ferguson shifted uncomfortably. That was exactly what the psych reports said.

Clara tilted her head, a look of genuine, heartbreaking sympathy softening her features. "That’s such a small way to think of people. To think that goodness is that fragile. Do you really believe that someone becomes 'evil' just because they were wronged? Or because they lost something they loved?"

She shook her head, a faint, sad smile touching her lips.

"I’m not a glass vase, Director. I’m not going to break because life gets hard. Becoming a monster because you suffered... that’s not a tragedy. It’s just pathetic. It’s an excuse people use when they’re too weak to hold onto their own light."

She walked right up to Stedman, looking him in the eye.

"I don't stay good because I have a farm. I stay good because being good that's simply who I am. I feel for people who break that easily- I really do. I feel sorry for the ones who let their light turn dark just because they’re hurting. But that’s not me. I’m not here because of the movies, Director. I’m here because there’s a seismic shift happening in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that your satellites haven't picked up yet, and if I don't go down there and stabilize the shelf, half of the East Coast will be underwater by sunset."

The room went dead silent.

"...what?" Donald asked breathlessly.

"I felt the shift while I went to grab a mug from the kitchen, that's why I'm here now. I just stopped by to ask you to alert the Navy and any civilian traffic that might be in or headed toward the area," she added, her tone shifting back to the calm, practical girl from Kansas. "I’ll be back in time for the finale. Dad paused the movie, Sam and Frodo are almost at the Cracks of Doom, and I’d hate to miss the ending."

"A massive earthquake in the Mid Atlantic Ridge? That's highly unlikely. It's a divergent, not a subduction plate boundary." an analyst spoke up from next to Stedman.

"Normally, that would be so." Hope replied, "But not if a magma influx causes intense fracturing. Which is about to happen. Which means that I'm going to have to create a massive shunt for the magma and redirect the flow."

Before anyone could respond, she turned. There was no flash, no sound, just a sudden displacement of air that ruffled the papers on the desks.

"She can do that?!" someone whisper shouted.

Stedman stood there, staring at the empty space where she had been. He looked at Ferguson, who was pale. The entire bunker erupted into controlled chaos. He was already shouting. "Get Hampton Roads on the horn, now! Contact the NSC in Northwood, wake them up! Donald, contact the Coast Guard! Ours, the Brits, Norwegians, I want everyone on standby!"

He then turned to the rest of the room, "Contact the NTWC and NEAM, we're not waiting for a miracle, I want all early warning systems on standby as well! Righ the fuck now!"

"Sir!" analysts and control technicians were a well-oiled machine, Stedman could already pick out half a dozen foreign languages as links were established.

"Sir, Strike Group 10 under RDML Preston is out there as we speak."

"The Wireless Emergency Alert system is up and is on hold!"

"Keep everything on hold, we don't need to cause a mass panic! Not if we can avoid it." Stedman directed, turning his attention back to the main screens.

Meanwhile, the GDA's satellites tracked Clara's movement as the first NOAA/PMEL Autonomous Hydrophones in the Array started picking up seismic activity, not long after that, the French SIRENA Hydrophone Array also started going off.

"The new integrated sensors on the SMART Subsea Cables are starting to sing, Director!" an analyst spoke from the front of the room "When this thing hits, the fallout will make the 2018 Sunda Strait tsunami look like a puddle splash."

"Hope's reached the Strike Group, sir, and I got Admiral Preston on the horn!" Ferguson reported as the speakers above them crackled to life, even the storm's windshear audible in the background.

"Stedman, Preston here!" they could hear the Admiral's voice over the main comms, we're in a bit of a bind out here! We're in the middle of a major excercise, it'll take us a solid half a day to reorganize and start leaving the A.O.!"

"He's right, sir. Task Force 80.4- Carrier Strike Group 10 has been participating in Intrepid Alliance with elements of the French and Spanish navies for the better part of a week." Ferguson noted from the side. "Hell, they only finished their Composite Unit Training Exercise two weeks ago. They're 1800 miles east of Bermuda."

But Stedman cut into it "Admiral, you're right above the MAR. Now, I don't know what Hope is planning to do, but better safe than sorry, I need you to break off the exercise immediately."

"Director?" another voice cut in, Hope, from the Admiral's end. "I can have them turned around and heading out of the area in less than an hour, it'll take me a bit of work, cause I don't want to overstress the hulls of the ships, even with my tactile telekinesis."

Stedman held his silence for a moment "Admiral Preston, you're out there, not us. Ultimately, it's your call. But make it fast."

The silence didn't hold longer than 3 seconds "If the kid says she can do it, then we're doing it." his Texas accent doing the work for him, conveying his trust.




Out on the stormy north Atlantic a girl from Kansas stood on the Navigation Bridge of the USS George H. W. Bush, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the silence held a few moments after the line with the GDA closed. RDML Preston, who along with a part of his Flag Staff had come up from the Flag Bridge- a deck below to make things simpler. Mainly his N2, N3, N6, and his Chief of Staff were with him. He wasn't the type of man to stand on ceremony and wait around by the 24MC.

He looked at the girl standing on the other side of the lee helm, between them the helmsman doing his best to only stare dead ahead "You know the Shepherd's Prayer, Hope?" he asked with crossed arms.

"I know Alan Shepard's prayer, sir." at that half the Bridge crew snorted and she smiled.

"Well, then, in that case. Let's get to work." and he turned to the Flagship CO "Set Condition One."

*Airbourne - Runnin' Wild*

The Captain of the ship turned to the Officer of the Deck "Sound GQ." who in turn turned to her assistant, the Boatswain's Mate of the Watch.

"Sound GQ. Sound GQ." her voice echoed, the BMOW nodded stepping up to the 1 Main Circuit, his voice echoed over the 1MC "Now, General Quarters. General Quarters. All hands, man your battlestations. Traffic route: up and forward to starboard, down and aft to port. Set material condition ZEBRA throughout the ship!"

"Set flight quarters. Exercise is terminated." RDML Preston continued, nodding to the Captain.

"Set flight quarters. Aye, aye."

"Exercise is terminated. Aye, aye."

"Captain, recover the CAP. Set Fox Corpen one-two-zero for immediate recovery; all other Flight Ops are suspended."

"Aye, aye. OOD, recover the CAP."

"Boatswain's Mate, pass the word."

"Now, Flight Quarters, Flight Quarters. Emergency recovery of the CAP. Cease all other flight operations. All non-essential personnel clear the flight deck!"

"Helmsman, left full rudder. Steady on course one-two-zero."

"Left full rudder, aye, sir! Steady on course one-two-zero!"

"Order is given, Captain. Rapid Deck Clear." the OOD replied.

"CAP going into Marshal Stack."

"Bridge, Air Ops. We need three-zero knots of wind!" the comm sounded from Pri Fly a deck above.

The OOD turned to the lee helmsman "Lee helm, All Ahead Flank. Indicate one-three-five revolutions for three-zero knots."

"All Ahead Flank, indicate one-three-five revolutions for three-zero knots, aye, ma'am!" the barely twenty year old young man replied.

"All ships, standard formation, turn to one-two-zero."

The OOD was on the UHF a moment later "Atlantis, Atlantis, this is Charon. Break. Turn together, one-two-zero. Break. I say again: Turn together, one-two-zero. Execute on Grid. Over."

One floor down on the Flag Bridge, the Flag Tactical Action Officer switched to the primary CWC Command net "Atlantis, this is Charon. Set Readiness Condition One. Acknowledge all units, over."

The helmsman began to turn the massive vessel as her escorts, the Cruiser- USS Leyte Gulf- whose decommissioning has been pushed back a further three years, and Destroyers- USS Gonzales, USS Donald Cook, USS Mason, and USS Ross- elements of DESRON 22, along with French ships FS Forbin, FS Chevalier Paul, and FS Provence and the Spanish ESPS Méndez Núñez and ESPS Navarra began turning along with the Carrier to maintain Group formation.

Preston then slowly walked up to the 5' 9.3" tall alien girl, not wanting to shout over the span of the Nav Bridge. He was a man of hard-won experience, and like many senior officers in the Armed Forces, has read every available document on the Last Daughter of Krypton. Everything she's done, everything she was capable of.

The girl looked at the screens for a moment and nodded once "Yes, sir. Precision nudge incoming."

The Captain nodded for the OOD to open the watertight door that lead to the starboard platform, where Hope had arrived not 15 minutes earlier.

She walked out, scanning the horizon, the sea was rough, the rain still coming down hard, the carrier herself was doing fine, but some of the smaller ships in the Strike Group were rolling with the waves. She looked back, gave a tiny nod and took off.

Preston got on the JV Circuit and contacted the FTAO one deck below "Flag Plot, Nav Bridge. Admiral orders: To all units, the GDA asset will provide maneuvering assistance, over."

The man didn't hesitate to inform the Strike Group "Atlantis, Atlantis, this is Charon. GDA asset to provide maneuvering assist. Acknowledge, over." the UHF then came alive a moment later:

"Leyte Gulf, aye."

"Mason, aye."

"Ross, aye."

"Gonzales, aye."

"Forbin, aye."

"Navarra, aye." they all replied.

Clara didn't hit the water like a stone; she sliced into the whitecaps with a surgical entry just to the right of the massive ship, disappearing into the dark churn of the Atlantic.

Under the waterline, the Nimitz-class was a mountain of steel, she found the reinforced sweet spot- extended her tactile telekinesis near the bow’s bulbous protrusion. She didn't just punch it- she gently spread her palms flat against the hull and braced it with her back as well, seeing the structural ribs of the ship through the steel skin.

Whatever you do. Don't eff this up.

The massive ship began to slowly heel to port, then faster and faster, the deck tilting slightly as Clara forced the bow through the water. It was a power slide performed by a vessel the size of the Empire State Building.

On the bridge, the Quartermaster of the Watch gasped as the digital compass started spinning. "Sir! We’re swinging! Heading 2-1-0... 2-0-0... 1-9-0! Rate of turn is exceeding design limits, but the hull is holding!"

"I'll be damned..." the Captain breathed while holding on, hearing about her exploits, even seeing them on the news was one thing- but to actually see and feel them? Whole nother ball game.

Admiral Preston held out his hand and Captain Ruiz, his CoS, handed him a 20, disbelieving grin on his face.

Clara breached the surface, flying upward in a shimmering spray of seawater, the silence that followed was heavy with relief.

"There she is! Starboard bow!" the Officer of the Deck called out, her eyes tracking the girl in blue.

She then moved again, assisting the other larger vessels, the Arleigh Burkes didn't need much help, fortunately, limber little things, the French and Spanish ships even moreso.

They watched from a distance as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser, Leyte Gulf, also turned with a speed that you'd normally see on a school bus, and not a guided missile cruiser of 9,600 long tons.

"Spank me thrice and hand me to me mama." Ruiz breathed, binoculars almost glued to his face.

Once the last ship had been pointed toward the correct heading, Clara returned to the Island of the Carrier, landing on the port platform of the Navigation Bridge. She was slightly damp, her hair matted to her forehead, she wasn't even breathing hard.

"I hope that did it, sir," she said. Everyone just stared at her in stunned silence.

The Admiral only grinned, and turned to the Captain "Mike, bring 'em home." who in turn contacted the Air Boss.

The Captain nodded and flipped on the 21MC on "Boss, you have your wind." who in turn used the 5MC to begin recovery.

The last CAP Super Hornets of VFA-105, the 'Gunslingers'- didn't waste a second. With the Nimitz-class now racing into the wind, the jets had the lift they needed. They dropped out of the sky like falling bricks, snagging the wires with textbook precision. The last aviator, '106', shut down his engines just as his fuel state hit zero on the digital display.

"All right, we should be clear in two hours, that enough time for you?" Preston asked, folding his arms over his chest.

Clara didn't respond, she simply looked down, her gaze becoming focused, peeling through the layers and decks of the Carrier, down deep into the cold depths of the Atlantic, past the seafloor and vents, through the layers of the lithosphere.

"I need to prevent a massive vertical displacement, and I've never done something like this before. Fortunately, I have a few hours on my hands, so yes."

The Bridge crew exchanged silent glances, subdued 'wtf' expressions on most of their faces. No one spoke a word.

She stepped back out onto the platform, the rain hitting her once again "Fair winds and following seas!"

The Admiral and his staff looked at her in surprise "My dad and grandpa were both swabbies!" she yelled over the wind, grinning, and with that, she gently lifted off, the carrier and the task group drifted lazily by as she hovered in place, waiting for them to be at least 60 to 70 miles clear before she began.

The crew of the Carrier- from the Island's catwalks, the deck, and below from the fantail- just watched her as she drifted there, the wind and rain wiping her hair in every direction imaginable, while the last F/A-18F touched down. Catapult 1 and 2's areas, along with the Parking Areas on the Carrier's deck were already stuffed with over a dozen Hornets, a few Growlers and a couple of Hawkeyes just forward if the Island, all of them secured with over 20 chains, just in case of heavy weather.




"Your girl's a piece of work, Stedman." the Admiral's respect-laced tone came over the GDA's comms "You don't mind if I put in a request with 2nd Fleet for possible future fleet exercises with her participating?"

Stedman only huffed a laugh "I'll pass it on to the Chief of Naval Operations and the Joint Chiefs, Admiral. I'm sure they'll approve it. The real question is whether or not she'll want to."

"Hah!" Preston barked from the other end "Take care, Cecil."

The man in question didn't respond as the line went dead.

A satellite in low Earth orbit remained locked on her, she watched the ships sail by and patiently waited, then her gaze tilted downward, probably assessing where she would be needed the most.

The GDA tracked her as best they could, they'd have to bring another satellite overhead soon to maintain a continuous feed.

Then she dove into the ocean, and in a second hit bedrock.

On the GDA’s primary tactical map, Hope's icon vanished from the atmospheric scan and reappeared as a pulsing violet dot on the seismic sensors.

The analysts watched in stunned silence as the depth readings plummeted: 1,000 meters... 5,000 meters... past the abyssal plains and straight into the crust.

"She’s not using the fault line," Ferguson whispered, his eyes glued to the structural integrity readouts. "She’s... she's just making her own way."

To the sensors, it looked like a kinetic projectile had hit the ocean floor. But to Clara, the miles of salt water were just a cool weight, and the bedrock was little more than damp clay. She didn't struggle; she didn't even have to strain. She plowed through the ancient granite and basalt with the effortless grace of a needle through silk, leaving a wake of pulverized stone that the immense pressure of the deep sea instantly crushed back into place.

She reached the boundary where the solid crust met the plastic, glowing heat of the upper mantle. Here, the world was a symphony of groaning tectonic weight- a pressure that would have flattened a titanium submarine into a coin.

Clara hovered in the magma-adjacent dark, her eyes glowing with a faint, barely noticeable white that allowed her to see the stress lines of the plates. She saw the snag- a jagged shelf of the North American plate that had been hooking into its neighbor, the African plate, building up to hundreds if not a millennia's worth of catastrophic tension.

She didn't punch it. She didn't blast it. She simply placed her hands against the continental shelf- a piece of rock the size of a small country, extended her tactile telekinesis- extending it to a range she's never tried before, but it held steady and strong. Like trying to lift a cake with two spatulas without the whole thing collapsing under its own weight. Gently, she began to push to create a space large enough to shunt all that excess magma. Too slow, it won't budge, too fast and a piece the size of Iceland might break off and the flow might redirect back into the buildup. There was nowehere for her to plant her feet that would be solid enough, and she'd have to move it at least a few miles anyway just to relieve the pressure. At this point, it was just the manipulation of the gravitational fields around her.

Once she managed to stabilize the area, she began to spin, boring a massive tunnel away from the rift. It was working.

The GDA sensors registered a Long-Wave Harmonic. It wasn't an earthquake; it was a groan of relief from the Earth's very bones. She shifted the plates with a surgeon’s precision, sliding them into a perfect, balanced lock.

"Seismic tension in the Mid-Atlantic Sector... is zeroing out... sir," an analyst reported, his voice low and shaking. "Director, she didn't just stop the quake. She... she smoothed it out. The data suggests those plates won't move again in any significant way... for at least a hundred thousand years. She just put the Atlantic to sleep." a quiet hum descended on the room.

"Fuck me sideways and call me Billy Crystal." Donald uttered in disbelief.