INTERMISSION 2
"I still don't understand why I cannot just fly up or down the ladder," Addy tried, clearing the last step, her feet settling firmly on polished hardwood floors. Her expression, murky though it might be, stared right back at her: brows furrowed, lips pursed ever-so-much. She hadn't even intended to contort her face into such a combination, but lately her body had started doing these things all on their own to reflect her emotional state. She would have to remedy that, considering the variety of benefits of having an unreadable expression.
"Okay, now
that one isn't my fault," Kara said a few paces behind her, drawing Addy's attention. She was pointing at herself, likely for emphasis. "The ban on indoors flight happened when I put my head through the..."
Addy stared.
Kara stared.
"Alright," she conceded weakly, brushing a hand over her right leg so as to try to dislodge some lint that likely wasn't there. Another nervous tic, by Addy's estimate. "It might be my fault, but not my rule! Just Eliza's."
"And we don't break Eliza's rules," Addy recited dutifully, trekking a few steps forward, away from the ladder. Her eyes caught on the wall, where a variety of pictures had been pinned into place. Most of them were of Eliza herself and a man - a bit round, but soft-looking and nice, with a broad smile pulled across his features - at varying ages. She was working under the assumption that the other man was Jeremiah, a fact that was rather supported by the fact the photos went on to include what was obviously a very young Alex. Despite the massive age difference and the fact that Alex at two years old looked almost indistinguishable from most infantile humans Addy had catalogued, the toddler's screwed-up expression and look of utter annoyance made it easy to identify who she exactly was.
"
And we don't break Eliza's rules," Kara echoed knowingly, voice pitched in that way she tended to get when she wanted to get a point across. "Unless it's really important,
then we can break Eliza's rules."
A pause.
"Don't tell her I told you that."
Glancing back towards her, Addy avoided her eyes directly, but kept her focus at or around her face, watching Kara cant her head back around, looking towards the stairwell landing. Even a floor up, she could now hear the voices down below in much better quality; not quite to the point where she could make out individual words, but enough that she could identify Clark's own voice among many, and the inclusion of a new voice she had yet to hear yet. It was all rather exciting, truthfully.
Still, she would not be a dutiful individual if she did not at least prep herself for the upcoming encounter. "What is Lois like?"
Kara began to step forward, towards the stairs, and Addy carefully followed. For a moment, it was largely silent; pockmarked by the sound of discussion down below and the steady footfalls of socked feet against hardwood. For a time, she even assumed she'd asked something wrong or insensitive again, as despite Taylor's rather large variety of social experiences, it had begun to turn out a portion of those were not actually considered normal or generally adroit among the vast majority of people. She wasn't really sure
why, considering Taylor had done perfectly well when it came to rallying people and being a leader, but then humans tended to emphasize the oddest things.
"Well," Kara said eventually, her pace kept slow as they walked down the hallway, walls littered with photos, each one depicting a scene closer and closer to the present. She could even spot Kara beginning to appear in them, tucked away behind Jeremiah's leg in one, and in another with her arm interlaced with Alex's, broad smiles on both of them as they carried a surfboard over their heads. "She's very smart and very stubborn. That combination alone got her a Pulitzer." Kara paused, turned to stare at her, as if for emphasis.
Addy, honestly, did not know what a Pulitzer was.
Shaking her head a little, Kara started walking again. "She uh—the first time I met her?" Kara's head tilted, a bit like a curious dog's. "She was telling me about how she did investigative journalism, and told me that 'when you get kidnapped, you're on the right track'. I think you can infer a lot about the type of person she is from that, and why, despite alien genetics, I'm relatively sure Ka—Clark is going to go gray sometime soon."
Addy
could, admittedly. A lot could be implied from the notion that being kidnapped was a stop on the track to figuring something out, or finding something otherwise. Among those included a profound lack of intelligence, but considering that Kara had stressed she was 'smart and very stubborn', Addy was willing to concede most of that might just come from an utter lack of situational intelligence, an overabundance of stubborn behavioural patterns, or just that she was simply
very good at pretending to be intelligent. There was even a possibility of a combination of all three.
Lois was actually starting to sound quite exciting.
"She's... well, a lot, too," Kara continued, their pace shortening the distance between themselves and the stairs by the second. Addy could even make out some words now—it sounded like Clark was arguing with someone about the logistics of... luggage? No, she'd get context later. "Just, she isn't being mean or anything, okay? Her personality is just a lot. She says things that are on her mind, and is pretty straightforward about it. She also swears, a lot, but I think Eliza being around might curtail some of that?"
Going from the description Kara had just afforded her, Addy was having sincere doubts about that last part.
"...No, that's, that's just wishful thinking," Kara conceded under her breath, echoing Addy's thoughts, almost to a second.
They finally arrived at the landing, and Kara wasted no time in descending. Addy kept alongside her, fingers tracing down the spiral, polished wood handrail connected to the stairs. Each one down brought with it increasing clarity to the conversation below, and now that she
was close enough to hear it, she could tell it was, definitely, an argument about the logistics of the luggage. Or rather, Lois' - and she was assuming that the unidentified voice was Lois, as it was the only new one in the house - impassioned plea as to why Clark packed too much and now it was his job to carry everything.
"Look," Lois was saying, still out of sight, but not far. "You can fly, you can shoot
lasers out of your eyes, you have super strength, and you overpacked for what is otherwise a small stay in a rinky-dinky town made up of mostly rich, boring, thoroughly conservative retirees—no offence, Eliza."
"None taken," Eliza responded in turn, voice droll.
Descending the last few steps, Addy finally got her first sight of Lois Lane, sister of Lucy Lane, daughter of Sam Lane and one unspecified woman.
She was sincerely going to have to recalibrate her simulations for human biology, because she looked next to nothing like what she had expected.
Lois was short, and that was one of the very few things she shared with Lucy. She stood at around Kara's shoulder level, by Addy's estimate. Her skin wasn't the golden, yellow tone of Lucy's, but rather a paler, pinker toned sort of thing that made the veins around her exposed wrists stand out. Her hair was another passing familiarity to Lucy's, but only barely; rather than the loose waves Lucy's fell in, Lois had significantly straighter hair, and it was notably darker than her sister's by a few shades, though from the way the light caught the edges it made it clear it was just a dark brown, rather than a black. She was outfitted rather casually, with a brown leather jacket thrown over a white t-shirt and multi-coloured scarf, slightly worn jeans, and brown leather boot-like-shoes - Addy sincerely had to find out what the name of all of those shoes were at some point, Taylor's memories were woefully lacking - with a slight heel.
Her features, too, were different. Where Lucy had an oval, soft face without much in the way of harsh definition, Lois' cheekbones were so defined - whether by makeup or genetics, Addy could not tell - that it made her look almost gaunt when in the right lighting. Her mouth was a bit on the wider side, painted a slight red, and her nose was thin and narrow, giving her an altogether very striking appearance. Pretty, yes, but more so striking than anything else.
Clearing the last step, Addy watched Lois' head twist around to look at them. Her face softened when she saw Kara, lips beginning to split into a bit of a broad smile, before her eyes flicked over to Addy herself.
There was another pause as the rest of the amassed group - Alex up on her feet, looking longingly at the fridge, dressed and ready to go, Eliza standing off to the corner with a fond look on her face, Clark awkwardly hovering near the front door - turned to them as well.
"Good
fucking lord you are tall!"
Clark yelped. "Lois!"
"What do they feed you?" Lois demanded, sounding rather excited about the notion. Addy's height was nearly equal to Clark's, to be fair, and he was considered a rather tall person. There was likely less than a few inches between them, and she knew for a fact that Taylor's height had reached six foot in the later months of her life, though whether or not she'd grown any since then was not something Addy had particularly pursued.
Still, it would not do to be impolite. "A balanced diet," Addy echoed sagely, drawing from the small list of responses Kara had given her to respond with when questioned about something related to her biology, such as when someone accidentally observes you lifting something you shouldn't be. Other answers had included 'I work out every day of the week. For hours. Do you?' and 'Genetic disorder, I am actually in a lot of pain, it just isn't obvious'.
"You and I both know that's a lie," Lois said just as fast, glancing towards Kara. "Sunshine over there can barely tolerate the appearance of a vegetable that hasn't first been deep-fried. I'll eat my own ass if she's turned a new leaf on basic nutrients the
rest of us mortals have to eat."
...She didn't have a response to any of that, not ones Kara had coached her on when it came to discussing similar lines of argument. Instead, she relied on the tried and true method of answering things: being very honest. "Carrots are crunchy," she explained, trying to get her point across. That it was crunchy was integral to its appeal. She believed they called it 'mouthfeel'. "So are most vegetables. I like them more than anything else."
"But Sunshine doesn't?"
Addy spared a look at Kara, who appeared as though she was trying to retreat into a corner, her face screwed up in something roughly approximating defensiveness.
"She doesn't."
"Guess that means ass eating is off the table, Clark!" Lois crowed, glancing back at him with a cackle.
Clark winced, pulling into himself just like Kara had, looking woefully unprepared for any of this. Kara made a muted groan somewhere to her left. Alex, again, was staring longingly at a 6-pack on the kitchen counter. Eliza just looked on with placid eyes, unmoored by the entire conversation.
Addy, personally, was more than a little confused. About a lot of things. "What's a Pulitzer?"
Lois' van was one of those family-sized things, but shaped more like the type of van you'd see in a procession of secret service agents. It was pitch black in colour, had that jeep-like front end to it, and with wheels just a little too thick to be commercial grade. Everything had the vague sense that it was reinforced, likely for different reasons.
In the end, Lois was driving, with Eliza in shotgun. On the row behind that, Clark and Kara were seated side-by-side, a free space between them that, had Addy felt like being squished between two people with high-grade durability, she would've taken. Alex, meanwhile, had taken up the leftmost seat of the last row, behind Clark. Finally, Addy had found her own seat, specifically the one behind Kara's chair. Every seat in the van was black leather, with a surprising amount of legroom between each row.
Of course, all of this was dampened somewhat by the fact that radio was currently tuned to a band called
The Barenaked Ladies, of which there were, as far as Addy could tell, no ladies involved, nor was there any nakedness. The current song playing was about five days of reconciliation between a couple, or rather the failure thereof, she supposed.
Kara and Clark were arguing in hushed whispers, quiet enough that Addy couldn't quite make them out over the music. Alex herself had her head back, eyes shut, head bobbing back and forth, a bit like the smooth step of a pigeon, but playing to the rhythm of the song. Eliza hadn't said a word since they'd started driving, and Lois was busy flipping off the red Camaro that had cut them off an intersection ago.
"Alex?" Addy queried, keeping her voice a little quiet.
Alex pried an eyelid open to stare at her, looking not particularly impressed with the interruption.
"Are you okay?" Because she was rather worried about it. Alex had tuned out the world the second they'd arrived in the car, but even then over time she'd become increasingly pale and had started gripping various parts of the upholstery like a lifeline.
Alex shut her eye again and made what could arguably be called a shrug. "I get car sick when tipsy or drunk," she explained, voice a bit thick. "Trying not to think about how the world is moving right now, thanks."
Out of the corner of her eye, Addy watched Clark force a white-paper package into Kara's hands about the size of a basketball, despite Kara's protests.
She ignored it. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't her problem.
"Then why did you drink if you knew we were going to go to a diner?" she asked instead, because Alex was usually smarter than that.
"The answer, as with most things, is my self-destructive tendencies," Alex explained, voice still rough, but with a certain laziness to it that implied she wasn't all that bothered about the notion of getting sick in an extremely expensive van owned by a family friend.
There was a muffled
smack, Addy witnessing the very same white package slap harmlessly into Clark's face, thrown back like a hot potato.
"Kara!" he shrieked, sounding more shocked than outraged.
Kara fumbled for a moment, pulling herself up to her full height, before glaring at him without much heat, but with more than a little annoyance. "You listen to your elders!"
Lois started laughing.
"You—I am older than you!" Clark yelped.
"Not if you count the time I spent in the Phantom Zone!" Kara cut back, chin tilted up. "I changed your nappies,
Kal-El, and when I tell you to keep this very important thing
we can't talk about right now—"
As obvious as a sun going supernova, Kara's eyes flicked towards Addy during her ramble.
Okay, so the package was probably her problem. Or at least, part of it.
"—and we can handle it later so don't just hand it over to me! Be responsible!"
Clark spluttered, Lois' laughter turned borderline hysterical.
Alex sighed, shut her eyes tighter.
"If you're done,
children," Eliza interrupted, voice cutting through the argument like a whip-crack. "We're almost at Belle's, so please, handle the suspicious package all of us have pretended not to notice
quietly before we have to be out in public."
Honestly, it sounded as though Eliza was not just exasperated by the entire situation, but also more than a little used to it. Huh. Maybe she should go asking about Kara's childhood, there might be some interesting anecdotes if Eliza thought this was normal conduct for a short, less than 10-minute trip to a locally owned diner.
Kara and Clark simultaneously deflated, like some sort of instinctive response. Clark nodded blearily along, while Kara almost seemed to pout, turning towards the windows.
Lois' laughter, meanwhile, had turned croaky and rough.
Eliza remedied that with a sharp pinch to the woman's cheek. "You too," she said blandly.
Lois' laughter died a quick, sudden death, and much like the other three, she was nodding along.
The rest of the drive was quiet, the dulcet tones of
The Barenaked Ladies shuffled out for a band by the name of
Weezer, something she was thankfully relatively aware of. Of course, due to the variance in history, precisely not a single song that played over the next four minutes of silence was anything Taylor had listened to, but at least the type of music they made was remotely familiar.
Much like before, Addy decided to dutifully ignore the sight of Clark quietly stuffing the white package underneath the car seat, and made no attempt to ask about what it was. At this point, she was relatively sure bringing attention to it would result in it being thrown around like a football again, and despite everything, she was not particularly fond of the idea of being hit with objects, no matter how little damage they might do.
Lois smoothly pulled them into one of the many open spots in the parking lot, and the second the car had stopped moving, Kara and Clark both were throwing themselves out of the vehicles like it might unexpectedly explode on them. Eliza, sighing quietly, was the next to leave, while Lois had to fiddle with her keys a little to get the car to sputter off before pushing her way out of the door. Addy followed next, with Alex close behind, though spending a few moments pawing at the featureless side of the door, looking for a turn-handle that wasn't there before figuring out she had to hook her fingers beneath one of the panels to open it.
Midvale proper didn't look all too much different from the suburbs. It was, in a word, small; and dominated by a single shopping complex in its center that had all of the American staples. Walmart, McDonald's, whatever a
Five Guys was, and numerous other smaller retailers. The rest of the commercial district took shape around it, roads situated like spokes around the roundabout that circled the mall, with various buildings tucked away inside. Some were residential, but the bulk majority were more stores of varying types.
It was, honestly, a little odd seeing a town so purposefully designed, as generally smaller towns didn't work that way, but then the fact that this was primarily known for its wealthy, elderly population might point to certain reasons.
The diner itself looked a bit out of time. It bore a strong resemblance to what one might think of when the words '50s diner' popped up. Checkered tiles, red-leather seating booths, big windows, and other fixtures common of the era. Above the door leading into the diner was, in big blocky letters, 'BELLE'S WALK-IN DINER'.
Maybe the oddest thing was that something was nagging at her. Addy wasn't really sure what it was, but it had been sitting in the back of her skull since the place had come into view in the first place. It was just a
feeling, something she was only vaguely aware of, but whose awareness had grown increasingly over time. She wasn't really sure what it was, though the feeling had become more and more intense as they grew closer.
It was starting to get distracting enough that she wasn't really processing what other people were saying. The group slowly meandered their way towards the door, Addy keeping pace behind them, trying to parse the ongoing muttered argument between Kara and Clark, trying to hear Eliza talking to Lois about something-or-other. But she just... couldn't, she was focused on something she could not see or understand.
There was a low droning ring in the back of her ears, a keening. They pushed through the main glass doors, stepping into the lobby, right up to the 'please wait' sign up against a small desk. The ringing grew louder, bigger in her ears.
A woman with black hair - with odd white roots - appeared around the corner, dressed in uniform - black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black apron - fitting for a server or a cook.
"Livewire!" Kara's voice cut in through the din, breaking the static.
Something connected in the back of her mind. Addy was already reaching out to her protocols, running the diagnostic scan. The tug in her stomach grew stronger.
The woman in front of them let go of the four menus in her hand, all of them dropping and hitting the ground at once. She stared at the lot of them, her head tilting to one side.
Kara reached for the buttons on her top, pulled to try to get to her suit, only for Alex to reach over and cover it when, as expected, Kara pulled her outfit open to reveal no suit whatsoever, but rather the top fringe of her bra.
There was a moment of what Addy was now starting to understand was the sort of deep, visceral shame that came with embarrassing oneself. The entire diner was silent for a long, long moment.
'Livewire' - apparently - turned towards one of the other staffers, who had come to see what the fuss was about. "Hey, Cathy? I need to take a break now."
The diagnostic returned, blinking into her awareness. The connection was open, she wanted to delve her awareness into the shard dimension to check, just to see, but couldn't. She needed to be here, in the now, but she knew: for whatever reason, Livewire
had a shard.
And going by the returning signal, it was one of her buds.
"Well, uh," Cathy fumbled after another moment, glancing at the group. Her eyes tracked from Kara, rapidly rebuttoning her shirt, face the colour of a tomato, to Clark, who was staring at 'Livewire' warily, and Lois, whose face was stretched into a cat-like smile. Finally, they ended on Alex and Addy herself, the former was pawing at about where Addy remembered her gun holster would be, whereas she was just sort of standing there, trying to decode the mess of half-fragmented nonsense she'd gotten from what should be ostensibly a fork of her that she neither remembered creating nor particularly understood why she was only connecting now. "...Sure? Just uhm, do you need me to call the police?"
Kara opened her mouth to say something—
Livewire sighed, rubbing at her eyes. "Please don't. Just, give us ten? I promise I'll be back."
"Okaaaay then, be uh..." Cathy trailed off nervously. "Safe? Or whatever."
Livewire turned her attention on to them finally, staring with a sort of tired look on her face. "Look, can we just go outside and talk?" She asked.
"I think she should," Addy interrupted before Kara could say anything. Everyone turned to her, and she shrugged. "She has something important, I need to study it."
Livewire squinted in her direction. "That's fuckin' creepy."
"I have been called worse."
"That's not a good thin—wait, who are you even?"
Kara made a noise in the back of her throat, throwing her hands up. "No, no, let's go outside," she said, forestalling the argument. "Eliza, can you uhm, are you okay with waiting here?"
Eliza stared flatly at her adoptive daughter. "Is this going to end in violence?"
Kara and Livewire glanced at one another.
"No."
"It shouldn't."
"Then fine, I will find our booth," Eliza said, stepping further into the diner. "But so help me—"
"We won't, we won't," Kara was quick to soothe, hands upraised, palms out. "If
Leslie keeps her head on, anyway."
"Rich coming from you," Leslie, now, apparently, muttered. Kara shot her a glare, Leslie returned one, chin tilted up.
Eliza just
sighed, sounding rather put-off, before walking over to Cathy, belatedly asking about seating arrangements.
"Okay,
explain!" Kara exploded, wheeling on Leslie, pointing one finger harshly towards her chest.
Leslie, leaning up against the back of the diner, shot her a look. "What's to explain?" She asked, ignoring the heated glare Alex was also sending her. Clark and Lois had at some point retreated back to the corner of the building and were talking among each other.
Addy was staying nearby, occasionally sending a ping to the erstwhile shard to get diagnostic responses. None of them were working, because at this point she was relatively sure the bud didn't even have basic information transfer resources. Which meant she would have to rectify that.
"You—did you figure out my identity somehow?" Kara bit out, taking another step forward. She was taller than Leslie by a few inches, but the sheer breadth of her shoulders made her loom more. Leslie, to her credit, didn't even flinch, looking at Kara with lidded eyes. "Came here to hold my
adoptive mother hostage so I won't—"
"Fuck off for a sec," Leslie interrupted, ignoring Kara's spluttering. "For starters, I moved here because it's on the other side of the
continent to California," she began, arms folding tightly across her chest. Her face was screwed up in annoyance, marring what were otherwise relatively pretty features, but nothing to exactly call home about. She reached up to comb fingers through her hair, glaring impotently at the ground. "The only reason I know your
secret identity is because you yelled at me with your goddamn
hero voice, using my name! I mean, for god's sake, I just wanted to be fucking
left alone after being stored in a black-ops site for six months next to an omnicidal xenophobic puritan!"
"You tried to kill Cat Grant," Alex less said, more slurred out, her glare having been replaced by a bit of a dizzy tiredness.
Leslie threw her hands up. "So has four other people and they usually ended up in normal prisons with, like, still no fucking legal rights because our constitution is absolutely horrible and—wait, this isn't even the damn point!" She wheeled on Kara, staring daggers. "I moved here to
get away from this shit. Midvale is far away from you or Miss Grant but it's close enough to Metropolis that, in the event there's another apocalypse, I won't be stranded in some bumfuck nowhere hick town while the world burns down!"
Lois snorted from somewhere behind them, but made no comment.
"And you!" Leslie wheeled towards her. "You're the creepiest out of the lot! Six feet and skinny like a fucking pole, what did you mean by
I have something important, and what the fuck does studying even mean to you?!"
"Well, you have a shard," Addy replied simply.
A loud chorus of 'what?!'s erupted from Kara, Alex and Clark, leaving Lois and Leslie thoroughly out of the loop.
"It's one of mine," she explained belatedly. "I think it was created when I was compromised. I had listed 'power saving' as one of my current most goals, and when the kryptonite diffuser ripped all of that energy out of me, I would've likely attempted to offload it into a format that could be retrieved later. Thus, a bud. Though, that does raise the question, who exactly are you? And may I have roughly ten minutes of your time to ensure my bud isn't corrupting itself due to incorrect formatting?"
"...Addy," Kara began, sounding rather tired. "Leslie—she's, uhm, Livewire. A supervillain. She used to work for CatCo, and gained the ability to, well, control, absorb and become energy. Lightning, specifically."
"Wait, that was you?" Leslie broke in, staring rather bewilderedly at Addy. "The only reason I got out, as far as I can figure, is that a similar sort of energy to myself was made. Magnetically drew me in from across the city, in other words."
"It was very painful," Addy admitted, matter-of-factly. "I will endeavour not to let it happen again, but I must check the bud sometime soon, one way or another."
"Having a child generally is," Alex said.
Addy refused to comment on that botched misunderstanding of the budding process.
"No, none of this is—" Kara faltered, visibly twitching in place, hands coming up to comb restlessly through her hair. "Why are you even here? You're—you're criminally insane,
obsessed with Cat Grant. What's your ploy?"
Leslie turned towards Kara again, leaning more thoroughly against the metal siding of the building. "I have enough energy in me to glass this entire town," she admitted blithely, which, going by Addy's calculations, was true. "My powers are more... refined, whether that's due to high concentrations of energy or something else. Don't know, don't care. Point is, I... saw how petty it was, you know? I have godlike powers, I could
fight you—"
"I doubt it," Kara responded mulishly, but without any heat.
"I'm just going to ignore that," Leslie interjected, rolling her bright, bright-blue eyes. "I could fight you to a standstill, easily. I am extremely destructive, I have the force of
multiple nuclear bombs tucked away in me and... I just didn't
care anymore. 'Great power comes with great responsibility' is one-hundred percent a sham that a traumatized teenager built his superheroic career on, sure, but it's kinda true as well? I just didn't care anymore. I mean it might feel nice to nuke Cat Grant from orbit, but then it'd be done. One brief moment of catharsis and exactly fucking nothing for the rest of my future besides being hunted down by, well, what now is obviously her assistant."
Kara just stared at her, mouth slightly agape, looking utterly blindsided.
"I know it's hard for you to parse, considering that I'm still
fuckin' me and I'm not a twee little girl scout like you, but... I just. There's bigger shit to flush, you know?" Leslie shrugged her shoulders. "What's the point, with all of this power? Time is fleeting when you've got enough juice to put a dent in the world."
A funny look passed over Leslie's face for a moment, her head tilting in a considering fashion. "Kinda funny, now that I think about it," she mused. "You didn't defeat me, an existential crisis did."
Kara spluttered, throwing her hands up in... well, it obviously wasn't defeat anymore. Exasperation seemed more likely. "You're still wanted for your crimes! You have to do your time!'
"...Look, short-skirt," Leslie said, forcing each word out like pulling teeth. "I think me spending 6 months being harassed by a puritanical, single-sexed species with a genocidal bent is the time for my crime well fucking spent. I just want to be left alone, can't you give me that much?"
Kara flushed and glanced at Alex, who was busy resting her head sluggishly against the wall, one hand brought up to rub soothing circles at her temples. Ah, one of those headaches Addy could faintly remember Taylor enduring. She could empathize with that.
"May I access her shard now?" Addy interrupted without much preamble. "I need to send it data packets to ensure it doesn't get odd ideas into its consciousness. Also to teach it how to speak."
"I still don't know what a
shard is—" Leslie tried.
"I can't see why not," Kara interrupted with... glee? Addy wasn't about to read too much into that.
"Hey—"
Still, permission was permission. She reached out, opened her own link, and sunk into the network for the second time.
The connection was obviously there, now that proximity had been achieved. Where before, the network had been just but her; a floating, red-crystal island among a sea of void, a new star had risen in the distance. It was small, so very dim, but reachable. She accessed her rights as the current head of the network and spent a small amount of energy to ease the connection between herself and the new inhabitant wider, the star growing in the distance, hauled in rapidly over inky-black seas as it consolidated into existence in front of her, connected to her own island by a bridge of shifting, indistinct material.
It was small, very, very small. Roughshod, too, it was an island less than a twelfth the size of her own, made up of similar red crystal veins. The island itself was rudimentary, without much individuality, an exact by-the-books projection for the interdimensional lattice: an upside-down triangle, perfect in all ways, with a flat plateau on the top, where the guardian existed.
Addy watched it through eyes that weren't eyes.
The guardian itself was timid, and new, without much construction to its form. It was a simple long strand of yellow lightning, frozen in the sky, a long, snake-like entity that fizzled with energy. There were no eyes, but the area where the head would've been had unfolded into branch-like fractals, growing wider and wider until it formed a cone-like shape. In the hollow depths of the cone, small orbs of red and blue electricity would swirl and dance before being reabsorbed into the walls.
It was about the size of one of her hands.
It was a newborn in the truest sense of the word, utterly new and foreign, without any of the specifications to let it develop, grow, be.
She would fix that.
Folding the requisite initiation package into her data packet, Addy sent it out at the highest intensity she could muster.
[HANDSHAKE]
Using the fact that she had the highest degree of authority over the network, she forced it to run in the operational systems of the new bud. She watched, for a time, as nothing happened; the snake, still stock-still, floating utterly motionless in the air, the crystal island, so perfectly geometrical it was almost shameful to look at. The network, so patchwork and disconnected, lacking the bridges and possible other influences to inspire and introduce new facets to this new member of her kin.
Then, finally, she got a message in return.
[GREETING]
It was little more than an acknowledgement of higher function, a protocol-induced action that happened in most normal forms of budding. She was effectively finishing an incomplete process. She sent out a ping again, requesting the diagnostic information and current state of affairs, as well as hardware and current firmware.
The reply she got back was... well, less than great. Diagnostics had revealed that the new bud in question was rudimentary in the sense that it was more of a battery than a realized bud. It was acting as a private storage center for Leslie's absorbed energy, and had only come with enough secondary tools to establish a minor intelligence and a method to transfer this energy back and forth. It wasn't even running a unique form of energy transfer; due to some unnatural quality of Leslie's biology - likely due to the nature of being able to turn into energy - it could treat Leslie, the person, like another shard, and simply use the energy relay that shards would commonly use in the network to replenish weakened shards so long as the main intelligence was alive. It was, in other words, nearly a dud.
It was also calling itself 'The Live Wire' which was, frankly, unsurprising. What parts of its personality existed had been heavily informed by Leslie herself, having utilized the protocols used to map the human consciousness during initial trigger events to establish its own behaviour. But it wasn't really smart enough to take too much of it in, the best estimate was that it had the approximate intelligence of a toddler, or maybe a very smart dog. It was smart in ways those species weren't, and could communicate through protocol, but it was... well.
A little stunted.
And it was her fault.
Because it should've never been made. She should've let the energy go, but whatever the compromised version of herself had intended to achieve by trying to forcefully bud during energy loss had clearly not worked. The end result to all of this was a very single-purpose, very dim bud which had cost her half-a-thousand-years of energy for no discernable use other than existing.
Retrieving that energy wouldn't work much either, as its current connection to Leslie would have to be broken and that would likely result in the energy being forced out as a result of an emergency protocol. Addy was relatively sure the only reason Leslie was capable of storing so much energy was because of the shard, and if that energy returned to Leslie in that moment, she would very well detonate like a nuclear bomb and destroy everything, including herself, in a horrific fireball.
She could, in theory, control the growth of the shard. It wouldn't take too much to give it some degree of intelligence and to improve the network node with a sizable portion of energy so as to bring it up to standards with the most conventional bud. It currently lacked the ability to expand or extrapolate on the abilities it was helping facilitate; it was literally
just a battery and was showing no signs of future transition from that status.
But it would be a lot of energy. More than she could afford. She couldn't take it back, as it would cause horrific deaths, she couldn't fix it, as she was already worried about her own energy surplus and how long it would last. She could do nothing but what she just had: repair the general installed firmware, establish the current boundaries of acceptable conduct, and hope nothing went wrong.
Surprisingly, it would seem the botched nature of the shard was part of the reason why it hadn't gone nuclear before she could repair it. The boundaries between Leslie and The Live Wire were razor-thin, narrow at best. They were blurred in a way not unlike she and Taylor had been, but not as severely, and much more naturally. It was more that The Live Wire was a portion of Leslie, inscribed onto shard hardware, emulating her and therefore being able to run on extremely equal wavelengths.
Though, speaking of. She sent out another query, asking about energy loss.
It took a few moments - not unexpected, again, infantile intelligences tended to be like that and Addy had spent more than enough time dealing with infant shards - before she got one back, and it was... well, unimpressive. A massive packet of data, with its own underlying signature, meant to be sent for...
For...
Her name was
not Minnie—she was Addy and, no, this wasn't going to stand.
[DENIAL]
A moment, then—
[APPROVAL]
She—she was not Minnie! She was Addy!
[DENIAL]
[APPROVAL]
[DENIAL]
[APPROVAL]
No, no no no she was—this—this bud was! So. She created her! She could put her right back and! And!
...She was never going to get it to call her Addy, or even Queen Administrator, was she? It... was very stubborn about that, and she had been threatening a lot in some of those data packets.
[DENIAL?] She tried, just to see if maybe a softer approach would get her somewhere.
[MINNIE] The Live Wire sent back, a several-terabyte-sized packet of information consisting entirely of that stupid nickname.
No, she'd figure out a way to rectify that, but she was burning time and she had gotten what she had come for. This wasn't her backing down, she was just... recouping. Plotting. Figuring out a way to get it to call her what she wanted it to.
Addy blinked the spots away from her vision, feeling her nerves settle back into operational mode. She felt a bit woozy - leaving her body like that tended to feel a bit odd - but not as bad as she had when she'd done it to the Coluan. Leslie was standing a distance away, looking off into the middle distance, a blank expression across her face, whereas Kara was just staring concernedly at her.
"I fixed it," Addy said, refusing to even acknowledge the later travesty of that situation.
"...Oookay," Lois said from somewhere behind her, a lot closer now than she had been. Addy swung her head around to check, and there she was, not a few paces away. "So, look, this is all, dramatic and stuff? Fun times, but I have a supreme hunger for a pile of pancakes, and I do not care if I need to be fed by a supervillain—"
"Former," Leslie cut in, distractedly, one hand coming up to paw at her forehead. "Former supervillain, and—and, wow my power's... not talkative, but excited? What did you do?"
"Fixed it," Addy said stubbornly, refusing to extrapolate.
"Right, former, current, ex, whatever. I am
fuckin' hungry, can we go eat now?"
Kara glanced between Leslie and Addy, back-and-forth, an increasingly twisted-up expression on her face. "Alex, what's the current status of the D.E.O.?"
"Run by a," Alex swallowed, voice rough and thick, like she was on the verge of puking. "Fuckin'
prick."
Kara shut her eyes, looking deeply tired. "I swear to Rao, if I find out you're robbing stores or something, I will find you and drag you back there whether or not it's Sam Lane or Gandhi running that place. Clear?"
Leslie just flipped her off.
