kara_zor_l

Kara Zor-L shakily stomped into the JSA Brownstone early one rainy afternoon. She was soaking wet, water dripping from her hair, her bedraggled cape, and her torn costume. While the cold outside didn’t affect her Kryptonian physiology as much, she didn’t quite relish the idea of placing a slab of steak on what was surely going to be a bruise.

Caused by Ultra-Humanite. Who had brass knuckles inlaid with kryptonite. From Earth-2. And this was possible how?

Kara frowned and yanked the fridge in the kitchen open. It didn’t really matter, considering she’d righteously kicked his ass, but she was hoping – praying, even – that there wasn’t any more where that came from. I like being invulnerable to the kryptonite here, thanks. Kara pulled out the remaining half of one of Ma Hunkle’s cherry pies and, grabbing the nearest eating utensil, dug in. Sugar. Sugar would do a body good. Besides, it’s not as though the bruise – the very quickly forming bruise – would last beyond fifteen minutes.

She shuffled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, shoveling pie into her mouth. At some point, I should get showered and changed. Later. After pie.

Power Girl blinked, trying not to get annoyed, as she tried to make eye contact with the pizza boy that she'd just saved from the wrath of an apparently very hungry and dissatisfied Despero. After all, she should be used to this reaction by now.

"Hey, kiddo, eyes up here," she said, placing a gloved finger underneath his chin and lifting his face until his hazel eyes were staring directly into her exasperated blue ones and away from her more-than-ample bust. "The cleavage-baring hole there is to distract the guys I'm fighting, not the guys I'm saving." Okay, so maybe that was a bit of a lie. There was another reason why there was, as she'd just described it, a large, cleavage-baring hole on the chest area of her costume, but that was something that the people she rescued didn't need to know. It was a personal reason, and not even a lot of the people from the JSA knew why she kept that spot open. It was a part of her that she felt a bit uncomfortable discussing, in spite of the fact that it was the first place most people looked when they met her. Whenever they met her, at that.

"Th-thank you," the kid - whose nametag read Trev-Or - replied. Power Girl rolled her eyes at the nametag. First a supermodel named Jan-Is, and now this. How many more people were going to knock off Kryptonian-style names? Granted, she had been accused of doing the same, but her story was different. She had actually thought she was Kryptonian for awhile...

She smiled at him, a smile which quickly turned into a scowl-hiding smirk when his eyes travelled back down again. "It was no problem. Really." Rolling her eyes again, Power Girl forced her lithe, muscular body off of the gravitational pull of Earth into the more peaceful quiet comfort of the blue, cloud-padded sky. She passed by a few warring birds and a helicopter that was probably there for the traffic report on the five o'clock news. She held Despero easily and decided to drop him off somewhere where he could be watched over before she took another few rounds of Metropolis and headed back home to the apartment she hardly even saw anymore.

Fifteen minutes later found Power Girl leaving the JSA brownstone after having left Despero in the care of Dr. Fate, who had promised to dispose of him properly. She arrived at her small one-bedroom apartment and entered through the window, as she had been prone to do lately, and landed safely next to a bed that she probably hadn't slept in for the past week or so. She pulled off her cape carefully and flung it on the bed. She walked towards the kitchen, taking in the scent of cinnamon apple potpourri and...oh jeez. When was the last time she had changed the litter box?! She picked up her cat and nuzzled him. She set out a fresh bowl of milk and some tuna before hitting the play button on her answering machine. There were a whole bunch of messages from telemarketers, one message from the same movie studio that had wanted to do a Power Girl movie starring Pamela Anderson, and a message from Vicki Vale, who had requested Kara's appearnce on her ensemble chat show "The Scene."

Kara grimaced at that last message as she headed to the bathroom. She had no interest being on a show about women who weren't feminist enough to really get her message. Sighing, Kara started her shower, letting the steam fill up the small bathroom. She stripped off the rest of her costume and kicked off her boots, stepping into the antique-style tub carefully. She'd already slipped in three of them, breaking them all, and she'd had a heck of a time replacing them.

Kara sighed a breath of relief as the water washed over her body, relaxing each tense muscle in her lithe, strong form - even muscles she hadn't realized existed. She picked up a bar of soap and unconciously ran it across her arm, losing herself in her thoughts as she was prone to do. The past few years had been...hard. To put it lightly. It wasn't hard in a professional sense, but moreso on a personal level. She'd started feeling lonelier and lonelier, and seeing friends of hers, people who were in the heroing business like herself, settle down with families or finding out about long-lost family members...well, none of that helped. If anything, she felt like more of an outsider.

Kara had landed on Earth a few years ago in a rocket, and coming out of it, she'd believed that she was Superman's cousin from Krypton. Their powers had been close enough, and hell, those had been the memories that she had been given. But it turned out that they weren't related. At all. She'd met his entire family and...there was no connection there. That had killed Kara inside. Killed her because she genuinely loved these people, and now she couldn't really have anything to do with them because they weren't family in any way, shape, or form. She was glad, then, that she had established a seperate identity from Superman. That she had called herself Power Girl. Because, to be honest, she would have had no right to the Supergirl name, and that would have been another blow that she probably couldn't have dealt with.

So she left their lives, deciding it was better not to live her life as a lie. Sometime later, she discovered that she was granddaughter of an Atlantean sorcerer, and that her powers were magical in nature. She never quite bought that story - too many flaws in it - and so while she had accepted it for the world, deep down inside, she'd known it was wrong. She wasn't magical in nature. She couldn't be. If she was, then her powers would have more closely resembled the powers of the Marvels than Superman's. They obviously didn't.

And so Kara was lost inside of herself. She wasn't Kryptonian. She wasn't Atlantean. She wondered sometimes if she was a clone, somehow, but...she looked nothing like Superman to be a clone. Not like Superboy, who was a clone and who looked almost exactly like Clark, just younger.

The members of the JSA, the people who had been there for her from day one, they had tried to help her find out who she was. None of them, not eveb Dr. Mid-Nite or Dr. Fate could come up with an explanation for who she was, for what she was. She just...she just was. She just existed, and she was a loner for it. Yes, the JSA was family, and yes, a lot of the older members looked down upon her as though she were their daughter, but it was different. It wasn't the same as having an actual family. Hell, not knowing who she was had even effectively killed her dating life. Well, not knowing who she was coupled with the fact that most of the guys who dated her only wanted one specific thing. Okay, two. Three, if she was being really honest.

Kara shut off her shower and grabbed a towel, drying herself off. The steam lazily floated around her like a thick curtain of fog. She walked through it, out of her bathroom and back into her bedroom where she once again slipped on a fresh costume. She hadn't had any civilian clothes in awhile (what was the point when you had no civilian identity?) She plopped down on her bed then and stretched for a moment. She wanted to lay down and rest, but she knew it would do her no good. She'd be plagued again by thoughts of loneliness, and she hated feeling that pathetic. No, she'd be better off at the JSA brownstone, where there would be something to keep her busy. She'd just slipped on her cape and gloves when she heard a scream from help come about four towns over. Something about a giant robot.

Kara grinned. Giant robots. Classic old-school type of villain. Fun. And something to keep her occupied. She was out of the window and in front of the robot within seconds, ready to pummel it down and raise her self-esteem just a little bit. And after that, definitely the JSA brownstone.

Maybe things wouldn't always be as bad as she thought.