Chapter Text
"What are these guys called again?"
"Zoltams!"
Supergirl gave a small, involuntary grunt as she smashed her fist into the side of the spaceship, causing the alien metal to bend and twist and give off sparks while also destroying the on-board computer.
"Right, right, Zoltams start with a z, z's are for sleeping, the z's stop when they wake us up with sound," Kara recanted as she dropped alien metal scraps and wiring onto the warehouse floor.
"More specifically sonic based technologies," Alex explained, per the briefing, as she took one alien criminal down with two gunshots to the shoulder and a second behind her with a kick to the neck. "They're way ahead of Earth techology. They even found a way to turn certain vibrational frequencies into energy that they use to power entire cities."
"I'm pretty sure we did that too. It's called Broadway." Kara giggled a bit before zipping off after three straggling Zoltams.
"Supergirl, please be very careful. This race was not found in any Kryptonian databases, they're an almost unknown threat." J'onn explained calmly over the com. "Everything we know comes from information we gathered from seized Cadmus databases. We don't know what kind of effect they might have on your physiology."
J'onn had more to say but Kara could barely hear him as she focused her heat vision. The strange weapons that the escaping Zoltams were carrying melted in seconds, causing them to drop the melted bits in pain. Kara then super sped around them in a cyclone before wrapping all three of them together in some bent rebar that she worked like rope. Afterwards she dusted her hands off for a job well-done.
"These guys aren't much stronger than humans," Kara responded as she brushed the hair out of her face. "You worry too much J'onn. You probably could have handled this yourself no problem."
All of a sudden Kara heard a loud scream behind her and she turned to see Alex, standing over an unconscious Zoltam that had had a weapon in its hand.
"Whoops, guess I missed that one," Kara said with an apologetic shrug. Alex only responded with a shake of her head.
"J'onn is still recovering. Even though mom was able to purge all of the White Martian cells from his body, his shapeshifting physiology is still recovering." Alex explained. "Besides, it leaves more bad guys for us."
"Sister team-up!" Kara shouted with a laugh. "It's been too long."
"The spaceship is secure thanks to Supergirl," Alex reported to J'onn, professional and straight to the point, though she was giving Kara a warm smile. "Agents outside are making sure none of the Zoltams escape into the general populace, and we have all of the leaders wrapped up. I think we're good here."
"Hold on!" Winn suddenly shouted over the com. "I have one last heat signature coming from an underground bunker near the south entrance of the warehouse. They thought they could sneak by me but they can't sneak by the dungeon master that easily!"
"I'm on it."
Kara took off a second later, scanning with her x-ray vision until she saw the alien. It was underground, bent over something that looked similar to all of the other alien weapons she had seen today. Rather than spend time looking for the entrance, Kara began to spin at super speed as she flew headfirst toward the ground, digging through a few feet of concrete and earth before crashing down behind the Zoltam. She stood up shaking off the dust and debris before brushing her hair out of her face again.
"It's over. We've already captured the rest of your crew. Surrender now, for your own safety."
She thought she sounded very professional, very strong, maybe even a little intimidating, but the Zoltam ignored her completely as it continued fiddling with its alien device. For a moment Kara thought to speed over and take the alien down, but she decided on the diplomatic approach for at least one more try.
"You're under arrest by order of the DEO, for the crimes of stealing secret government technology and endangering the lives of civilians with your sonic power experiments."
"The planet of Zoltam does not recognize the authority of your DEO," A robotic voice responded. The alien turned around to look at her and Kara saw now that this one was older than the other crew members. The Zoltams were basically humanoid in appearance, the main differences being their slightly larger heads, blue pupil-less eyes, and the yellow hue to their skin.
This Zoltam though had some sort of technology around his neck and Kara realized then that the voice was coming from that device.
The robotic voice continued. "We escaped our planet to free ourselves from the yoke of the arrogant Guardians. We will not let some immaterial and backwards Terran shock troops cause us to flee again."
"You don't have to flee, you just have to stop your illegal activities," Kara explained carefully as she watched this strange Zoltam hold up a small device. It was similar to the other weapons she saw earlier, but somehow smaller and shaped differently. It almost looked like a horn. The resemblance grew when the Zoltam put the device up to its voicebox, aiming one end at her.
She sped forward to neutralize the alien but all of sudden she felt something, like a shudder go through her body. It was gentle and warm at first, and then all of a sudden it was not.
"AGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!" Kara screamed as she felt every part of her body suddenly pull away from her, like her organs wanted to leave her body but were being stopped by all her pesky skin and bones. Then the skin and bones wanted to leave too. "ARRRGGGGHHHHHNNNNOOOOOOOOAAAHHHHH!!!!"
She could barely hear shouting from Winn and J'onn on her com. When she looked up, she saw the Zoltam smiling as the device he was holding glowed with a blue light while the space around it shuttered and moved, like the air on a really hot day. Instinctively Kara moved again, trying to get to the device so she could stop the pain, but she only managed to get a few feet before the unbearable agony she felt suddenly found a way to double.
"I would not recommend you get any closer. This device sends out a sound wave that causes every molecule in its vicinity to vibrate at a different frequency. The closer you are to the source, the stronger the wave affects you. Soon you will be out of sync with physical matter and be forced into a liquid form. Approaching me will only make it work faster."
It was like getting a chill up your spine during a creepy movie, except the chill was actually hundreds of small knives, and it wasn't just her spine, it was everywhere. Even as she screamed in agony, Kara felt the noise leaving her mouth suddenly shaking too, as if even her voice was affecting her. Hurting her. Due to her invulnerability, Kara was not used to dealing with this level of pain. She would do anything to make it stop.
Screaming made it worse, moving made it worse... Kara felt close to passing out. She had a thought then, that it would be so easy to just let herself drift off... to let the device do what it needed to do... maybe once she was a puddle of broken matter, the pain would stop...
She thought of Clark then, of her parents sending her from Krypton, living with the Danvers family, her first time stopping the plane and revealing herself to the world. She had saved Alex that day...
"Alex," Kara mumbled to herself, even as forming the words caused that strange, painful feeling again around her mouth and jaw.
Alex wasn't ready for this. Any minute now she would come running in to save Kara, like she always did, and then she would have to feel this, this unbelievable pain! This was the worst pain Kara had ever felt and she feared what this device might do to someone without invulnerability. What it might do to her sister. What it might do to everyone she cared about! James, Winn, J'onn, Cat, Mon-El, hell even mean old Snapper!
It would end here. It would end with her.
Kara stood up then, finding the strength somehow to take a step forward. Immediately the pain tripled, but rather than scream Kara let that feeling of terror and agony propel her forward another step. Then another. Then another. She was sure her eyes would explode and her heart would fall into her gut but Kara kept pushing forward until she could hear the Zoltam speaking again.
"Why do you do this? Your body should have disintegrated by now to its most basic subatomic components. How are you still moving? Stop!"
The only thing that mattered to Kara in that moment was that the robotic voice sounded closer than ever. Pushing through the feeling of shattering glass she felt around her eyelids, Kara opened her eyes to see the the dark pupil-less blue of the Zoltam's. She wasn't sure if she was close enough but she had to try, she knew she was a moment away from collapsing.
Eliza always joked she had long arms.
All of a sudden the pain stopped and Kara heard a crash. As she fell to her knees, Kara saw the Zoltam passed out in a pile of crumbling cement to the left of her, a huge divot in the wall behind him. Her brain had trouble registering what had happened as she focused on how blissful and amazing not-pain felt. Her skin still felt like it had chills all over her entire body, but the ceaseless pulling and breaking and stabbing that enveloped every part of her was a distant memory. Almost like a dream.
"Kara!"
She turned slightly to see Alex dropping her weapons to kneel beside her and hold her hair before giving Kara a hug. The hug felt good but also tingly and almost... distant. Like Alex was hugging Kara through a bunch of layers of really thick sweaters.
"I'm okay, I'm okay..." she mumbled, her voice sounding faint even though it didn't feel weak or anything.
"Oh my god Kara, all I could hear was screaming. You sounded like you were in so much pain." Alex was shaking, and tears were in her eyes but they hadn't quite fallen. Kara reached up to touch Alex's cheek but somehow when her fingers brushed against Alex's skin, she didn't feel anything.
Everything felt faint.
"I'm fine. Some sort of weapon, it caused me to... I don't know, shake. But like, all over. Sonic device maybe?" Kara looked around and saw that there was no damage to the ground or the walls or anything else in the room. She had assumed she was being blasted with the alien/sonic equivalent of a canon but the room looked untouched (barring the hole she herself had created in the ceiling). In fact, if Kara didn't know better, looking around she would have assumed that the Zoltam hadn't attacked her at all.
She stood up then as Alex started saying something but her voice sounded small and grainy, like it was coming from an old broken radio. Kara walked over to the device, having fallen on the ground where the Zoltam was previously standing, and picked it up. She could hold it in her hand but barely. She'd been right before, it was horn shaped, but it wasn't glowing blue anymore. Now it was yellow, like the rest of the Zoltam technology she'd destroyed earlier.
She was about to hold it up and make a little trumpet noise, just to be a little silly and reassure Alex that she was fine, when she noticed that the room was going in and out. Like static. Kara saw then that her sister was trying to grab her, was shouting at her, but Kara couldn't feel or hear any of it. It was all becoming hazy and distorted and blinking in and out of blackness.
Until it was all gone.