Chapter One: A Warm Reunion.

Kara Zor-El was a woman on a mission, the second she found her way out of stasis on her ship. It took a few hours for her to shake off the effects of her long slumber.

She didn't know how she was out. She knew one thing, she had to find the only other Kryptonian that she knew survived the destruction of the planet.

Kal-El, she needed to find Kal-El. She wished her powers were at more of a quarter capacity because it annoyed her how weak that she felt.

'I'm not having a very good day,' Kara admitted with an exasperated sigh.

Her day started by her Point of View with the destruction of her planet. The Council was warned that it was going to happen. They didn't listen to their top scientific minds ,only to the yes-men and women, the so called scientific experts who they paid to tell the Council precisely what they wanted.

She needed to think logically about this. Earth was primitive, generations beyond Krypton. They weren't used to the advance science. Stone age technology on Krypton was high level technology today.

She needed to approach this smart, and she needed to track down Kal-El.

Kara knew enough about Earth where she could blend in for a little while. She deluded herself to think that she knew everything. Krypton did get Earth television signals so there was that.

She recalled Lara's plans to send him to this family that she picked out the Kents. Kara always feared the worse, which was one of the reasons why she tried to trail Kal to Earth. She would have took Kal along on her ship but Jor-El would have refused because of who she was.

Jor-El never got along that well with his adopted brother. Mostly because Kara's grandfather put pressure on both of them and Zor-El lashed out in resentment. There was also the fact that Jor-El got the woman that Zor-El wanted.

Kara sighed, wondering how petty resentment lead to two of the more brilliant minds on Krypton being at odds with each other. Should they work together, they might have been able to get the Council to listen to reason.

"Kal-El, you should be at the Kents," Kara said and she tried to recall where she was.

She knew that she was extremely close.

Kara sensed something was amiss. She didn't quite know what it was.

Kal was such a cute little baby, she'd look forward to seeing him again.

She honestly did wonder how much time passed. Kara never quite got the hang of Earth time telling, but she could guess the passage of time well enough by how old Kal-El was.

Clark Kent paced around in the living room of the Kent home. He had to get a reign of himself before he wore a hole in the carpet.

The last year that was flashed back through his mind. Clark went through many trials and tribulations.

The release of the Phantoms from the Phantom Zone put a new element of danger. Brainiac might have been gone and Zod was returned to his place in the Phantom Zone, but Clark was not reassured all that much. That was only half of the battle.

Clark was glad that he was left alone with his own thoughts. He had a lot to do.

Maybe it was time for him to take that first step out of Smallville and towards a greater destiny. Jor-El was heavy handed in what he did. The man made a fair amount of sense sometimes and this could have been one of the reasons.

The Fortress didn't even work anymore so that point was moot. Clark had to stand alone.

A knock on the door brought him out of his stupor and he wondered who could be calling there.

He opened the door and he saw an interesting sight. A beautiful tall blonde stood in front of him. Her hair was clipped back to show her radiant blue eyes, which shined brightly when she faced him. She wore a tight red tank top and a pair of blue jean shorts, along with a pair of boots.

"Hello," the blonde commented in an anxious voice. "I was hoping that you could help me find someone who lives here, or at least I think lives here."

Clark frowned, when an attractive blonde showed up at your doorstep and started talking, you couldn't help and get a little bit suspicious.

"Who are you looking for?" Clark questioned her, his curiosity getting the better of him.

The blonde smiled. "This is kind of complicated to talk about…..can I come in?"

She didn't even wait for an answer, she nudged him out of the way. Clark paused, he normally didn't budge for anyone like that.

She moved him when she touched him.

"Who are you?" Clark asked her.

"My name is Kara," she said to him.

Kara took a moment to look over the man who let her in. He looked extremely healthy. She didn't know that humans were quite built like this.

"Oh, I'm Clark, Clark Kent," Clark replied to her, and he was only a tad bit suspicious of this girl.

"Good, I've got the right place, thank R….thank god," Kara said, reminding herself thank thanking a deity of a dead planet might raise some questions. "So….I was wondering…is Jonathan and Martha Kent home?"

"Martha Kent is out, she won't be back for the next week," Clark said, and he grimaced at a painful reminder. "And Jonathan Kent…..he passed away last year."

That was a painful trip down memory lane because Clark held himself personally responsible.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Kara said, she could tell that this was a bad topic. "I suppose that I'll just cut to what I had to ask you."

This conversation kind of got awkward.

"I'm looking for someone…..who might have gotten taken in by the Kents years ago, but I'm not sure how long," Kara said, nervously.

Clark frowned in response, he wasn't sure that he liked where this conversation was going. Who was this Kara girl anyway?

"I'm looking for someone who was named Kal-El," Kara said, throwing all caction to the wind.

"What…?" Clark asked, alarm bells ringing in his head.

Kara spoke slowly and more clearly. "I'm looking for a baby who was sent to Earth…..from a doomed planet called Krypton, by his parents Jor-El and Lara. His name was Kal, Kal-El."

Kara really hoped that they took him in, otherwise she was going to really feel kind of stupid.

Clark was on a hair trigger from the Phantoms. "You're one of them, aren't you?"

"I'm one of what?" Kara asked, confused about what he's saying.

"You're one of the escaped Phantoms, from the Phantom Zone," Clark said, and he was enraged that one of them tried to trick him in his own house.

This news was really distressing to Kara. "Wait a minute, what do you mean I'm one of the escaped Phantoms from the Phantom Zone…..there are escaped Phantoms from the Phantom Zone, here on Earth?"

Kara thought she couldn't be faulted. She freaked out just a bit that some potential dangerous criminals ran loose on Earth.

Clark didn't answer, he tried to grab onto Kara. He rushed at her at super speed.

Kara was caught off guard so much that he knocked her onto the couch, overturning it. He was on top of her. Which wasn't the worst position in the world to be in but she hated to be vunerable in any way so she squirmed.

"Wait a minute, there was no way that you should have overpowered me," Kara said, squirming underneath Clark.

"I guess you thought that you could get the jump on me, but it won't work."

"You're Kal-El," Kara whispered and she grew rigid. The blonde thought about attacking him.

She knew that would be a bad idea because that could total the entire house.

"I'm not here to fight you…I found you, oh Rao, how long was I out?" Kara asked and she tried to break free of Kal's iron grip.

Could she overpower her? Maybe she could, it had to do with the theory that females could retain solar energy in a quick manner than males could. Although, she wondered if someone retarded his strength and development because as long as he had been on Earth; he should have been stronger than this.

"You need to trust me, Kal-El, I'm just like you, I'm a Kryptonian, I don't want to hurt you," Kara said.

"So was Zod," Kal said in agitation.

"Yes, and he was rightfully banished to the Phantom Zone," Kara said and she wondered how he could be so stubborn.

He got it from his mother. Maybe from his father as well but from his mother as well.

"Kal, I'm really sorry," Kara said, and she broke free of his grip and uppercutted him in the jaw.

It was a bit of a cheap punch, and she effortlessly hoisted him up by the scruff of his neck.

'Please tell me I can fly,' Kara thought to herself.

Good she did retain a sufficient amount of yellow sunlight, she was almost worried about that. Her ship blocked out the vast majority of all radiation, including the solar radiation. It was a double edged sword.

Kara hurled Kal into the middle of a field.

"You attacked me!" Kal yelled at her.

"Yes, Kal, I did, but you gave me no choice," Kara said through gritted teeth, her eyes glowing and her temper rising. She managed to calm herself down by counting to thirty in her head. "You've had a really bad day, haven't you?"

Kal snorted. Try several days over several years. Understatement much.

"I thought so,' Kara said. "Kal….."

"It's Clark, Clark Kent," he told her.

"Fine," Kara said in exasperation. "It's Clark, okay Clark….I was looking forward to meeting one of the last of my kind. And I wanted to apologize."

Clark sized up because the last time she apologized, she socked him one in the jaw.

"For real this time," Kara said and she felt a bit guilty at what she did. She just didn't want the house to get trashed or any innocent people to get hurt. "I was to come after you, to make sure you got to the Kents okay. I wasn't going to interfere in your life too much, unless you really needed help. And then at fourteen, I was going to show myself to you, and explain your heritage."

"You're about six years late on that one," Clark said curtly.

"Yes, I'm sorry," Kara said. "And I'm really sorry about you having to deal with Jor-El alone, or rather his flawed AI program. He used a fundamentally flawed process to remove all emotion and he may have left a bug or two."

"Just a bug or two," Clark said. "If you asked me, his programming was buggier than Windows ME."

Clark couldn't take full credit for that one. That was all on Chloe.

"Well, there was a reason why that AI process was disabled," Kara said, her eyes flooding over. "So, are we friends? Do you believe I'm not a Phantom coming to eat your soul?"

Kara hoped that she lightened the mood a little bit. Kal, Clark, was all that she had left from back home.

"Wait, they do that?" Clark asked.

"Maybe," Kara said, shrugging her shoulders. "It has some of the worst criminals in the known universe."

"Just who are you really?" Clark asked her.

"I told you, my name is Kara, Kara Zor-El," Kara told him.

"Zor-El, that means…."

"Jor-El's brother, his adopted brother," Kara said with a frown.

"So, that means we're cousins?" Clark asked her.

"In a sense," Kara commented in a wary manner. She knew all about Earth taboos, but the genetic structure of Kryptonians was different from that of humans. The only way they resembled each other was skin deep. "But, that shouldn't really matter; we're the last survivors of Krypton. The legacy of our race rests on both of us."

Kara gave him a smile.

"We're different than them, then both of them, humans and most Kryptonians as well," Kara told him.

"Why are we different?" Clark asked.

Kara wondered how much he knew and how much he didn't know. He had some of his abilities, but he seemed woefully ignorant about where he came from. Kara thought that was unfair, because you need to know where you came from to know where you could go in the future.

"Jor-El never gave you the talk, did he?"

"No, my parents gave me that," Clark said, and he felt extremely uncomfortable where this one was going.

Kara was utterly confused at first because of his discomfort. Then she got it.

"The human one maybe, but not the Kryptonian one," Kara amended. That could wait until later. "But we've got a bigger problem, you talked about Phantoms escaping."

"I don't know what to do," Clark said.

Kara had a good idea of what she wanted to do. "The knowledge of the collective universe might be the only thing that can help us, did Jor-El have you find the stones yet?"

"Yes, been there, done that," Clark said.

Kara frowned, she was kind of disappointed. That would have been a good bonding experience.

"So, they're now the crystal of knowledge, and you have your…..Fortress of Solitude, for lack of a better term, I guess," Kara said and Clark nodded.

"The Fortress is dead, Jor-El has gone silent," Clark told her.

"Maybe, Jor-El is dead, but the collective knowledge that has been cataloged through the ages of Krypton could still be encoded," Kara said and she gave him a warm smile. "Come on, let's see if we can salvage anything."

Kara grabbed him by the hand. She hoped he understood necessity, the future of their race, depended on it.

Clark was taken off guard by this girl's arrival. He didn't quite know what to make of her, but he would need all of the help he could dealing with the escapees from the Phantom Zone.

To Be Continued.