Our Marvellous Adventures (MAWS/MCU)

[Firewillreign]

My Adventures With Superman / MCU

I tried, guys.

I really, really tried not to start a new fic, but the new Superman show killed me with it's season 2 finale.

If it makes my case better, this is just supposed to be a prototype kind of chapter. Basically to see how the idea of Kara and Kal-el - one of whom is an SI - messing about in the MCU and having adventures there takes.

I might write more or I might not - Tell me what you think!

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Morag - M31V J00443799+4129236

Once, millennia ago, Morag had been the sole habitable planet in its solar system. There'd been a thriving population, an advanced technological society and culture to go around.

Until there wasn't.

At a certain point in the planet's history, after its climate patterns underwent massive catastrophic shifts - because of meteorological change, radioactive fallout, an attack by a more advanced species, what have you - the oceans rose to cover most of its crust and the atmosphere became a perpetual thunderstorm that had never broken so much as waned, slightly, and only for a few months every three hundred years or so.

Only in that brief stretch of time did the seas recede and parts of the submerged ruins beneath the surface become accessible again - not that there was all that much to access.

No, what little was left of ancient Morag after thousands of years of decay beneath acidic waves attracted scavengers or intergalactic travelers in desperate need of an emergency pit stop or something else along those lines if it did at all, and not very often at that.

Or, as Kara Zor-El was being forced to discover at the very moment, it could also occasionally attract thick-headed cousins who dreamed of the future and refused to take no for an answer.

"This sucks." She said as the two of them descended through the roiling cloud cover, glaring at the back of said cousin's head "This totally sucks."

"So you've said, Kara. Repeatedly. At length."

Kal sounded bored as they glided down towards the exposed and weathered bedrock below, the scanners wired into their holo-displays locking in on what was likely the one - albeit very heavily cloaked - artificial energy signal on Morag excepting the two of them and the jump ship still in orbit.

"Well, it's true." She insisted, putting on a burst of speed to fly side by side with him - not that it was necessary. An inch apart or a mile, he'd still be able to hear her just fine. "Uncle Jor finally let us off the ship unsupervised for the first time in our entire lives, and where do we go first?"

She gestured around right as their feet hit the ground and they finally made landfall.

"A dead planet!"

Kara had wanted to visit a civilization. A real, thriving civilization - and any of them would have done.

Sixteen years living on a ship with nothing but her cousin - the one other living member of her kind left - and the digital imprint of her long-dead uncle hadn't left her with much pickiness to go around.

The Last Hope may have been a repurposed Kryptonian carrier-class star-vessel the size of a large mountain, but it was all she had ever known. There was no part of it she and Kal hadn't explored a hundred times over throughout their lives, and there was only so much the repositories of Kryptonian knowledge onboard and the lessons they'd been taught from birth could do to stave off the urge to get off the damn ship and finally experience something new.

Kryptonians handled isolation better than most sentient species their people had ever come across, both in their home universe and this new reality they'd found themselves in so long ago - and that was a whole other mess she wasn't even going to pretend she understood when even her uncle hadn't - but there were still limits.

Kal finally turned away from his holo-screen to give her a long-suffering look, his suit's translucent faceplate melting away and retracting into his collar automatically as it confirmed that the air was clear of respiratory contaminants.

"Kara, we were just on Xandar."

Yes, they had been, but like hell was she going to concede that technicality.

"That doesn't count! We barely stayed there long enough to enjoy it!"

The two of them had visited the capital of the Nova Empire, and the trip had been both exhilarating and petrifying - the planet had a population in the billions, people of every race and creed from across an empire spanning the better part of the Andromeda galaxy.

For all the training in diplomacy and the lessons she'd gone through her entire life in dealing with aliens, Kara had still been struck dumb by just how much there was on the planet.

Things to do, places to go, and so, so many new people to meet.

Except, she hadn't had the chance. They'd spent just a few days there, long enough for Kal to link up a sunstone drive to the nearest publically available database, and the second he'd gotten his hands on the star charts they needed to traverse the greater part of the known universe he'd dragged them both off here instead.

So, yes.

Kara was just a tad ticked off.

It wasn't that she didn't understand why Kal wanted them to come to Morag - in theory - but they'd finally been given free rein to do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted... and Kal had chosen Morag.

"Couldn't this stone you're looking for have waited?" She huffed and crossed her arms, kicking her foot impatiently. She ignored the way the ground heaved and splintered around her foot, just slightly. "Just a bit longer?"

Kal opened his mouth to answer and then visibly hesitated, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Could it have?"

She wasn't above punching him in the face - repeatedly - if this turned out to be even more of a waste of time and opportunity than she'd first thought.

"...Possibly. But-!" he raised his hands in leaned back when she balled up her fist "I wasn't about to run that risk, Kara. I've told you how dangerous this thing could be, and I'd sleep a lot easier knowing that no one could get their hands on it."

...

Damn it.

"And if someone already has?" She asked, but it was weak, and just for the sake of arguing.

"Then at least we'd know." He caught the beaten look on her face and winced. "Tell you what. As soon as we're done with this mission-"

Kara almost snorted - Mission? What was this? An episode of Kandor Tales?

"-We'll take a few months and go anywhere you like - We have the star charts for it now. Xandar, Hala... hell, we can even go to damned Knowhere."

Kara blinked.

That... sounded pretty good, actually.

"Promise?"

Kal pressed up a hand across his chest. "As Rao is my witness."

"Fine. But Kal?"

"Yes?"

"If we don't head back to Xandar the second this is done?" She smiled brightly. "I'm going to throw you over the horizon."

Literally.

There was a pause as her cousin seemed to consider that.

Then he sighed and let his shoulders slump in resigned defeat.

"Fair."

...​

The caverns they had to traverse to get to the origin of the signal they were tracking were a mess. gargantuan, oppressive stone caverns, long-winding and water-logged and absolutely crawling with amphibious rodents that alternated between scattering at their every other footstep or swarming them.

"Absolutely no survival instincts," Kal muttered in disgust as he floated up over the screeching little beasts, looking like he was sorely considering the benefits of scouring the wave of them with a burst of heat vision if only it wouldn't be a waste of time and power. "None at all."

Kara giggled at the look on his face.

"You can't blame them for it. They've never seen anything like us before."

"Watch me." He muttered, and then he stopped talking together when they crossed a sharp ravine and found themselves standing just below a pair of twin-sealed doors three times as tall and twice as wide as they were side by side, engraved with glyphs and symbols whose meaning was likely lost to time forever.

"It's behind here."

She didn't doubt that. The signal was pinging off just ahead of them, and she could faintly hear and feel the thrum of something pulsing behind the doors.

"Finally."

Kal's eyes widened and his voice rose an octave. "Uh, Kara, don't-!"

She punched her fist through the door with a shower of rubble, ready to finally get this over with... and then what felt like lightning and crackled just the same lanced up her arm and blasted her back and clear off her feet.

She hit the ground twenty feet away and on her back, not remotely hurt but still stunned enough that she ended up splayed flat against the ground.

There was a beat.

And then Kal started laughing.

Kara felt her face flush in mortification.

"Shut up!"

"That was perfect!" He tipped his head back and cackled like a lunatic. "Suit, save that!"

"Command Accepted."

Kara paled.

Oh, Rao. Enviromental replay - she was never living this down. And if Uncle Jor saw it - and he would, Kal was a snitch like that - she'd never hear the end of it either.

"Delete that footage!"

"Not even if you gave me another Infinity Stone for it!"

"Kal!"

"Not a chance. This, sweet cousin, is why we punch only when we need to." He paused, considering. "Or when someone asks for it."

She glared at him as she floated up to her feet

"Like you are right now, you mean?"

He grinned and turned away from her, still chuckling under his breath. He extended his arm towards the doors, fist first, and a strobe of light pulsed out of his armguard as the reading array began to scan along the walls.

"Clever. There's a force field running through the entire chamber behind this." He tipped his head to the side. "Stronger than I would have thought, too."

"Then how do we get past it?"

"Well, we could try to punch through it again." She grumbled sourly "It wouldn't take too long if we put our backs into it, but it would sting. Or-"

He tapped something away into his armguard and pressed the flat of his palm against the stonework.

"We can do this the smart way. And a one. Two-"

There was a loud snap, and the doors swung apart. A rush of air burst past them as the chamber depressurized for the first time in what had to have been thousands of years.

"-Three."

Kara peered inside and frowned as they crossed the boundary.

It was smaller than she'd imagined, but the walls, the ground beneath their feet and the dome above them were engraved with the same symbols that ran up and down the doors, and the only light was a fragmented purple glow that came from the heart of the chamber.

"Well." Kal's voice was one part awe and three parts pure satisfaction. "What do you know."

There, as though everything else had been built around it, surrounded by a thrumming violet forcefield projected between two pillars emerging into the ceiling and floor both was a small, glinting metal orb.

"Jackpot."

...​

The digital conscience that had once been a mere imprint of Jor of the House of El watched from his projected avatar as his son and his niece argued over the fruit of their hunt.

"Why are we doing this in the jump ship?" Kara groused, floating up over Kal's shoulder to peer down at the display before them.

"Because," His son did not pull his gaze away from the orb hovering above his desk as Jor-El's systems worked on unraveling the sealing encryption built into the containment unit, eyes alert and wary. "In the disturbingly possible event that this thing goes off for any reason, I'd rather it doesn't take out our home with it."

Kara suddenly looked alarmed.

"What were the chances of that happening again?"

"High enough that I don't want to risk it." Kal crossed his arms as the orb finally began to click apart and unravel. "Just, whatever you do? Don't touch-"

His voice failed him the moment the orb split apart and overpowering violet light emanated from the prize within.

"That." Kal finished in a whisper, eyes gone dark in the radiance of the stone. "The Power Stone. The physical representation of the aspect of all energy itself. One of the six Infinity Stones, arguably the greatest collective power in the entire universe... and, in some ways, the least dangerous of them all."

Kara stumbled back, eyes wide with equal awe.

"Least dangerous?"

Jor-El remained silent, but he mirrored his niece's disbelief. The moment the orb had split open, the sensors he had been piloting began to broadcast dire readings.

Radiation, exotic energy wavelengths and particle fluctuations in patterns he'd never seen before were recorded and immediately rendered obsolete as he tried and failed to scan through this 'Infinity Stone' despite previous preparations being well in hand.

His algorithms ran through hundreds of thousands of simulations in a hundredth of a second and came up with nothing. It might as well have been made of Kryptonite - no, not even Kryptonite was this inherently uncooperative.

It might as well not have existed at all for his inability to secure even the barest understanding of what it was composed of - were the data any more inconclusive, he would have assumed it was a glitch in his systems.

Kal did not seem shaken by his cousin's disbelief and nodded once before he took a very deliberate step back, frame relaxing slightly the further he distanced himself from the anomaly.

"If you're not careful, this one can kill you. But it'll just kill you. The other ones can be so much worse - they can destroy you in ways you can't even begin to imagine, and there's no guarantee you'd be lucky enough to die by the end of it."

"Dark." Kara slowly shook herself out of her, before turning to nudge Kal with her elbow "But hey, at least you're not crazy."

Kal shot her a dirty glare with no real heat behind it. "You thought I was crazy?"

"Duh? Well, crazier than normal." She smirked. "Glad I was wrong, 'cause your bad enough as is."

Kal lunged forward "You little-!"

"Before you begin roughhousing like children." Both remaining heirs of El froze at the dry reprimand in his tone, before breaking apart and turning to him rather sheepishly. "Might I ask what you intend to be doing now that you have secured and confirmed the veracity of your visions?"

in the seconds that they paused to consider that, Jor-El found himself reminiscing.

He had been active sixteen Kryptonian cycles, but he still found himself lost at how far beyond his expectations his life - past and present, and the lives of the children of El had spiraled into the unknown.

...​

Once, Jor-El - his original living self - had feared that neither of his charges would survive. That Brainiac - and damn his ancestors a thousand times for breathing life and sentience into that abomination - would discover that Jor knew of his intentions to end the Kryptonian race that he viewed as traitors in all and prevent him from saving Kara and Kal from the fate he had planned for the rest of them.

He'd intended to scatter both infants into opposite ends of the cosmos with the cold hope that at least one would survive - that they would escape beyond the remorseless shadow of Brainiac and the nigh-infinite enemies the Empire had made over a thousand years of conquest and thrive as the remainder of their doomed kin would never be able to.

It was his brother who stopped him.

"You cannot separate them, Jor." Zor-El had argued, worn beyond his years and on the very verge of breaking - both brothers knew even then that neither of them would live to see their children grow beyond infancy. "The legacy we leave for them is burden enough - you cannot pull them apart and force them to shoulder it on their own. They'll never survive it."

"There is very little they can't survive." Jor had tried to argue to harden his heart. "They are the last of us, the last generation of Kryptonians - engineered to be inherently superior in every way. They will be greater and more powerful than ever before - as close to gods as we had the hubris to claim we were."

"God or mortal, Jor, it won't matter." Zor was adamant and unmoved. "They will be alone."

"Zor-"

"Have we not had our fill of cruelty and pain, brother, that we must sentence our children to more of it with our dying breaths?"

The accusation had nearly shattered Jor's resolve.

"There is a greater chance for both if we separate them." He'd argued, one final time - though he needn't have bothered. Both of them knew that Zor had won and rightfully so. "Are you willing to chance the risk that neither will survive?"

In response, Zor had laid a hand on his shoulder and raised his free arm to press his palm against his chest.

There, the crest of the House of El stood proud.

"This symbol stands for hope." Zor had declared, so earnest and righteous even in the face of the end. He had always been the more optimistic of the two. "It's about time we honored it."

And so they did.

In the end, they had managed it.

Succeded in spiriting away the last two children of their house before Brainiac unleashed a weapon that should have never been created at all - much like himself, the irony was not lost on Jor - and cast Krypton from the heavens and into hell with all the senseless malice they themselves had been responsible for instilling in him from the very beginning.

And then something went wrong.

The experimental Phantom drive that Jor and Zor had developed to propel their children beyond the reach of Brainiac had malfunctioned in transit, catastrophically so.

Something had occurred, some strange and heretofore unknown phenomena that resulted in the Last Hope's systems blacking out entirely

Jor-El - the digital imprint, that was - had been forced offline for nearly twelve minutes as the vessel's automated repair systems scrambled to put it back into something approaching an operational state.

By the time the ship had been recalibrated and its matrices were operating within acceptable parameters, it was already too late.

Somehow, the Last Hope had transitioned between universes, made immediately clear by the change in the very stars and galaxies they relied on to navigate the nigh-infinite expanse of space.

They, along with every single plan that the now deceased Jor and Zor El had woven together were rendered utterly useless and beyond salvation.

That was when the real troubles began.

...​

"We need to find the rest of the Infinity Stones."

He was drawn from his contemplations when Kal finally pulled away from his argument with Kara, eyes distant with thought.

"They're too dangerous to leave in the wrong hands. Thanos is out there."

"Riiiiight. The genocidal maniac who wants to kill half of everything and everyone because he thinks it's going to magically save the other half... " Kara shook her head slowly, features clouded in doubt. "That still sounds way too stupid to be real."

Jor agreed with the sentiment - in more ways than one.

Kal's... supposed ability had been and still was an unforeseen and - as of yet -unexplained complication.

One of many.

However, Krypton had not been unfamiliar with exotic phenomena that went unexplained - at first - and Jor was not concerned in the short-term. Mere visions were the least of the oddities he'd observed in his son over the years of his life, though none presently warranted as much consideration as they did.

"Tell me about it, but I haven't been wrong so far. We can't let something that horrific and senseless happen - we just can't." Kal turned back to Jor-El "And if we want to be brutally pragmatic about it... considering the fact that the purple nut job intends to erase half of every sentient species in the universe, and there are currently only two Kryptonians in existence..."

There was a pause as they all seemed to consider that, and Kal shrugged with false casualness.

"Preemptively preventing the stones from falling into his hands is in our best interests no matter how you look at it."

"And so you intend to seek out the remaining Stones."

Kal looked up at him. "Eventually."

"Eventually?" Jor raised an eyebrow. "You do not intend to make a priority of it?"

Kal shook his head.

"Not yet. The circumstances aren't right for it, and we have some time to spare. Besides, unless Kara's changed her mind about Xandar-"

"I will hurt you!"

"-Which she clearly hasn't" He finished dryly, rolling his eyes in exasperation "Then we're going to be stuck on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Maybe even months. But after that?"

He turned back to Jor-El, blue eyes set in determination.

"We head for Nidavellir."

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Angry_Crustacean]

I like this very much. Please make more