Chapter 10: The Fury of a Goddess
The Smuggler's Port was not so much a space station as a scar upon the void. Built within the hollowed-out bowels of an asteroid, it was a labyrinth of industrial tunnels and cavernous dens where the law was a suggestion and morality, a currency of low value. The air was a thick, metallic cocktail that smelled of ozone from overloaded ships, cheap fuel spilled on metal grates, and the collective sweat of a thousand species who preferred not to ask questions. Flickering neon lights, advertising seedy bars and clandestine repair shops in a dozen languages, cast a sickly glow on the metal walkways, creating shadows that moved like predators in waiting.
When the small, second-hand ship Kara had "borrowed" docked at one of the louder berths, the sound of the opening airlocks was like a sigh of relief amid the industrial din. Kara Zor-El descended the ramp, her heavy boots echoing on the metal. At her side, one hand on the hilt of her father's sword, walked Ruthye. Both of them had changed.
The Kara who had arrived on Pyrr months ago, a broken young woman seeking oblivion at the bottom of a glass, was gone. In her place stood a woman of glacial calm. Her confession on Comet's back had not weakened her; it had forged her. The pain, once an open, festering wound, had solidified into the steel of an unshakeable purpose. She was no longer adrift in a sea of sorrow. She was in the final phase of a hunt, and her blue eyes, which once reflected the sadness of a lost world, now burned with the cold light of a star about to go supernova.
Ruthye had also changed. The frightened farm girl had been hardened by the journey. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach, but it was now wrapped in layers of determination and an absolute faith in the Kryptonian who walked beside her. She was no longer a mere protégée; she was a partner in the mission, her sharp eyes scanning the crowd, acting as Kara's moral compass and earthly anchor.
They delved into the chaotic marketplace. It was a symphony of anarchy. Reptilian-skinned merchants sold blaster weapons next to stalls offering exotic fruits that pulsed with an internal light. Kara moved with a predatory grace, her body a contradiction of contained power. Her super-hearing, once a tool of cacophonous pain, was now an instrument of precision. She filtered through the thousands of conversations, the whispered deals, the clinking of credits, searching for a single word, a single name: Krem.
Ruthye, too small to draw attention, slipped through the crowd, her ears keen for rumors, her eyes searching for any sign of the men who had murdered her father.
(Kara POV)
'There,' Kara thought, the sound reaching her with crystalline clarity through the chaos. 'Two walkways down. An Ithlorian complaining about a late payment. He mentions the Outlaws. Says they're in cargo hangar 9.'
She didn't quicken her pace. She showed no sign of having found her target. She simply adjusted her course, guiding Ruthye with a hand on her shoulder. The self-control she had learned through pain had become her greatest weapon. Patience. Waiting. The perfect moment to strike.
(Third Person)
Cargo hangar 9 was at the end of a poorly lit corridor, isolated from the main hustle. The door was guarded by two burly mercenaries playing cards on a hovering crate. They had no time to react. Two blurs of speed, two dull thuds, and both fell to the floor, unconscious, before their cards hit the surface.
Kara pushed the door open. The hangar's interior was vast, filled with shipping containers and the smell of heavy machinery. In the center, a group of brutal, well-armed mercenaries—the Outlaws—were checking their weapons and loading crates onto a fast-looking ship. And overseeing it all, a self-satisfied smirk on his face, was Krem of the Yellow Hills.
Silence fell like a guillotine as Kara and Ruthye entered the hangar. The mercenaries turned, their hands instinctively going to their weapons. Krem, upon seeing them, let out a laugh, an ugly sound full of arrogance.
"Well, well," he said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "The little orphan and her Kryptonian lapdog. I must admit, you're more persistent than I expected. Took you long enough to find me."
Ruthye drew her sword, the sound of steel sliding free a deadly whisper in the silence. Kara didn't move. She stood, hands at her sides, her face a mask of impassive calm.
The leader of the Outlaws, a hulking man with a cybernetic scar over his eye, stepped forward. "I don't know who you think you are, pretty girl, but you've picked the worst day to play hero. Finish them."
Kara didn't respond to the taunts. Her blue eyes, cold as the void of space, were fixed on Krem, completely ignoring the thugs surrounding her. Her silence was heavier, more threatening than any battle cry. It was the calm in the eye of a hurricane, the moment of stillness before the storm unleashes its full fury. And everyone in that room, from the dumbest thug to Krem himself, felt a shiver of primal fear as they realized the girl before them hadn't come to negotiate. She had come to end a story.
The leader of the Outlaws smirked, a cybernetic scar over his eye blinking with a reddish light. "Finish them," he ordered, his voice a growl of contempt. To him, they were just two girls, one of them a Kryptonian far from home, probably more of a name than a real threat. It was the last miscalculation he would ever make.
The order was the catalyst. The air in the hangar, previously tense and still, erupted into an inferno of noise and light. Dozens of blaster rifles, of every shape and caliber imaginable, opened fire. A wall of red and green plasma and kinetic projectiles rushed toward Kara and Ruthye, a storm designed to disintegrate a small army.
But the target was no longer there.
In the infinitesimal instant between the order and the first shot, Kara moved. To the mercenaries' eyes, it was as if she had simply vanished. There was no blur of speed, no sonic boom. One moment she was standing there, a figure of glacial calm, and the next, the space she occupied was empty.
The first sign that something was terribly wrong was the sound. Not of a fight, but a dull impact, like a forge hammer striking a metal bell, followed by a choked cry. One of the Outlaws in the rear, a four-armed giant, was thrown backward, his chest plate caved inward, and crashed against a cargo container with enough force to leave a crater-sized dent.
Before his comrades could turn, two more fell. Kara moved among them, a golden Reaper in a silent, brutal dance. There was no hesitation. No restraint. The Kara who fought to control her strength, who worried about accidentally breaking a wall, had been left on Earth. This was the Kara who had survived the death of a world, and her fury, suppressed for a decade of loss, was a weapon of terrifying precision.
Her blows were not mere punches; they were localized shockwaves. Her super-breath was not a simple puff; it was a controlled vortex that ripped weapons from the mercenaries' hands and threw them through the air like rag dolls. Her eyes, once pools of sadness, were now two lances of pure solar energy. A beam of heat vision, thin as a scalpel, sliced a dozen blaster rifles in two. Another, wider and more devastating, melted an automated turret mounted on the ceiling, turning it into a cascade of molten metal.
She fought with the fury of her trauma, but with the precision of a trained warrior, a legacy of lessons absorbed almost by osmosis from her cousin. It was the perfect, terrifying fusion of grief and power.
(Ruthye POV)
Ruthye had thrown herself behind a stack of cargo crates the moment the shooting started, her heart hammering against her ribs. Fear was a cold beast in her stomach, but curiosity, a force almost as powerful as her determination, made her peek through a gap.
What she saw took her breath away.
It wasn't a fight. It was a harvest.
The blonde girl, the one who snored on the ship and had taught her how to wash her hands, was gone. In her place was an avenging angel, a force of nature wrapped in a barely perceptible golden aura. She moved through the battle not like a person, but like an idea, a concept of speed and strength that defied comprehension. She saw the plasma bolts move toward her with the slowness of molasses, dodging them with a simple turn of her head. She saw men twice her size lifted off the ground and thrown across the hangar as if they weighed nothing.
It was terrifying. And it was majestic.
This was not the tired girl from the bar on Pyrr, nor the patient older sister at the washbasin. This was a god. A god of war with the face of a sad girl. And for the first time, Ruthye understood the true scale of the power with which she had made a pact. The fear in her stomach didn't leave, but it transformed. It mixed with an awe so profound it almost made her cry.
The battle inside the hangar lasted less than a minute. The Outlaws, outmatched and terrified, broke ranks. Those who could still move ran for their fighter ships, a flotilla of fast and lethal-looking craft. The engines roared to life, and the ships launched toward the open mouth of the hangar, fleeing into the relative safety of the asteroid field surrounding the station.
Kara stopped in the center of the hangar, surrounded by the unconscious bodies and smoking wreckage of the battle. She watched the ships flee. It wasn't over. Krem was on one of them.
Without a word, she rose from the floor and shot through the hangar opening, chasing them into the void.
The battle moved to the silence of space. The Outlaws, now in their element, regrouped, their ships forming an attack arc. The plasma cannons opened fire, filling the darkness with a deadly web of green light.
For Kara, it was like coming home.
In space, there was nothing to break, no one to hurt by accident. She could let herself go.
She became a golden comet of destruction. She dodged the plasma shots not by moving around them, but by flying through the tiny gaps between them. The dance was one of lethal beauty. She closed in on the first ship, her fists striking the hull. The metal, designed to withstand micrometeoroid impacts, crumpled like aluminum foil. She tore off one of the cannons and threw it at another ship, causing a silent explosion that illuminated the nearby asteroids.
Her heat vision swept across the formation, slicing the wings off one fighter, overloading the shields of another. She wasn't trying to kill the pilots. She was disarming them. Dismantling them. She was breaking their toys, one by one, with a cold, methodical efficiency.
The battle became a chase through the labyrinth of floating rocks. Kara, with an agility that defied physics, used the asteroids themselves as weapons, striking them with her fists and sending them hurtling toward her pursuers.
It was a symphony of silent violence, a dance of divine power on the universe's grandest stage. And every move, every blow, every explosion, brought her closer to her true target: the ship on which Krem of the Yellow Hills was desperately trying to escape.
The battle in the asteroid field had become a hunt. The Outlaws, once a squadron of predators, were now the prey, scattering in disorganized panic as the golden comet that was Kara Zor-El decimated them one by one. But she was not alone in her fury. At her side, like a shooting star of pure white, flew Comet.
The star-steed did not fight with Kara's brutality; it fought with a supernatural grace. Its wings, which seemed woven from the light of nebulae, did not beat the vacuum but bent it, allowing it to move with a fluidity that defied physics. It rammed one of the Outlaw ships, its horn of starlight piercing the hull as if it were paper, not with the intent to destroy, but to disable. Its loyalty to Kara was a tangible force, a beacon of pure magic in the cold darkness of space.
Kara felt its presence beside her, an empathic connection that anchored her, preventing her fury from consuming her completely. Together, they were a symphony of destruction and grace, two halves of the same Kryptonian legend.
The leader of the Outlaws, watching his squadron crumble, felt the cold embrace of fear for the first time in years. He was cornered. The Kryptonian was too fast, too strong. His conventional weapons were useless. But he hadn't become the leader of the most feared gang in the sector without having an ace up his sleeve.
"Bring out the 'Peacemaker'!" he roared over his ship's communicator.
From a hidden hatch on his fighter's underbelly, a sinister-looking weapon emerged. It was not a plasma cannon. It was a magnetic mass driver, designed for a single purpose. In its chamber, a single bullet, no larger than a thumb, began to glow with a sickly, green light. Kryptonite. Pure, refined, and deadly. A weapon not used to disable. It was used to execute gods.
He took aim, his ship's computer locking onto the Kryptonian's burning heart. He couldn't miss.
Comet felt the change before Kara did. It wasn't a sound, nor a sight. It was a wave of pure malice, a murderous intent so cold and sharp it cut through the chaos of the battle. Its empathic connection to Kara allowed it to feel the danger not as an external threat, but as its own pain. It saw the bullet's trajectory before it was fired. It saw the intent of the man behind the trigger. And it made a decision.
There was no hesitation. No risk analysis. There was only an act of pure, unconditional loyalty.
In the instant the Outlaw leader pulled the trigger, in the nanosecond the Kryptonite bullet shot forth, a white blur materialized directly in its path.
The impact was devastating and silent.
The Kryptonite, a radioactive poison to Kara's biology, proved to be a potent disruptor to Comet's pure magic. The bullet didn't pass through it. It disintegrated on contact with its starlight body. But the burst of energy it released was cataclysmic. The steed's immaculate glow flickered and died, replaced by a sickening pulse of agonizing green that shot through it like lightning. Its form, once majestic and solid, became unstable for a moment, flickering like a distorted image on a broken screen.
With a silent cry that resonated directly in Kara's mind, a sound that was more pain and confusion than anything she had ever heard, Comet fell. Its body, now dull and lightless, tumbled through the void, its inert trajectory carrying it to crash violently onto the gray, dusty surface of a nearby asteroid. It lay there, motionless, a splash of pure white in the desolation of space.
Kara witnessed it all.
The sacrifice. The fall. The echo of her friend's pain in her mind.
It was Krypto again, wounded by an arrow on a distant beach. It was Argo City again, a jewel of hope poisoned by the same green rock. It was her father again, sacrificing himself so she could live. It was loss. Always loss. The story of her life, told over and over with different actors but with the same, heartbreaking ending: every loyal being that got close to her, every friend she loved, ended up broken or dead at her feet.
The fury that had driven her, a hot and cathartic force, was extinguished in an instant. In its place, a cold, absolute emptiness took hold. Her control, barely maintained by the adrenaline of combat, shattered. She didn't scream. The scene, from her perspective, became completely silent. The roar of engines, the hiss of blasters, everything faded away. The only thing that existed was the image of her friend, her steed, her companion, lying motionless on a dead rock. Her face, once a storm of emotions, became a mask of ice, and her eyes, once blue as Earth's sky, became as dark and empty as the space that surrounded her.
The vacuum of space has no sound, but in the mind of Kara Zor-El, the silence was deafening. The hot, cathartic fury that had driven her, the righteous rage of a protector, had been extinguished the moment Comet fell. In its place, a cold, absolute emptiness took hold. Her control, barely maintained by the adrenaline of combat, didn't shatter; it solidified into something new and terrible.
She floated in the blackness, motionless for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the white, inert speck of her friend on the asteroid's surface. The storm of emotions on her face had calmed, replaced by a mask of ice. Her eyes, once blue as Earth's sky, became as dark and empty as the space that surrounded her. There was no pain. There was no anger. There was only purpose, distilled to its purest, most lethal form.
The leader of the Outlaws, watching from his ship's cockpit, let out a nervous, triumphant laugh. "Ha! We got her pet!" he yelled over the comms to the remnants of his squadron. "Now we've got her! Finish her off!"
But his men did not respond with cheers. They responded with a terrified silence. Because the Kryptonian was no longer fighting. She was no longer defending herself.
Now, she was hunting.
Her first target was the leader's ship. She didn't move with the explosive speed of before. She moved with a silent, terrifying efficiency. She disappeared from the sensors' view and reappeared directly on the hull of the main ship, her magnetic boots anchoring to the metal without a sound. The leader, inside, felt a dull thud, like a rock hitting the hull, and looked up, his face paling in horror as he saw the silhouette of the girl standing on his cockpit.
Kara didn't punch the glass. That would be too quick. Instead, she reached out a hand and placed it on the joint of the ship's right wing. She didn't rip it off. With a deliberate calm, she began to apply pressure. The metal, an alloy designed to withstand the stresses of atmospheric reentry, groaned, buckled, and then, with a silent crunch that resonated through the ship's frame, it tore free. The wing, now a piece of useless scrap, floated slowly into the void.
She repeated the process on the other side. Then, she moved to the rear of the ship. Her eyes glowed an intense red. A beam of heat vision, not a torrent, but a needle of light as fine as a hair, shot from her eyes. With a surgeon's precision, she traced a perfect line around the base of the ship's engines. There was no explosion. The engines simply detached and drifted away, dead.
The leader's ship was now a metal coffin, helpless, spinning slowly in the darkness.
The rest of the Outlaws, witnessing the clinical dismantling of their leader, panicked. They broke ranks, their ships turning desperately, trying to flee in any direction. But there was no escape.
Kara moved among them like a Reaper. She caught up to the first ship, ignoring its plasma fire, which crashed harmlessly against her skin. She didn't destroy it. She simply tore off its blaster cannons and crushed them into a ball of metal before moving on to the next. From the second, she ripped out the navigation system, leaving it blind and adrift. On the third, she froze the cockpit controls with her super-breath, turning the ship into a prison of ice.
She wasn't killing them. She was incapacitating them in brutal, permanent ways. She was taking away their weapons, their ships, their ability to be a threat. She was taking everything they had, leaving them broken and helpless in the void. The mercenaries' description of the battle would be that of a silent phantom, a vengeful god who appeared, dismantled their world, and disappeared, leaving only terror and silence in its wake.
Finally, only two ships remained. The leader's, now useless, and Krem's. Kara moved to Krem's ship, which had been desperately trying to restart its engines to flee. She didn't bother to disarm it. She landed on the hull, gripped the metal with both hands, and with a silent scream of pure strength, brought the ship to a dead stop. Then, with the same ease, she dragged it through space, bringing it alongside the leader's ship.
She tore the airlocks off both ships as if they were can lids. The air rushed out in a blast of frost, carrying debris and the panic of their occupants with it. Before they could suffocate, Kara exhaled gently, her super-breath creating a small but stable bubble of breathable atmosphere around the two open cockpits.
With a wave of her hand, she pulled both men from their seats and drew them toward her, floating in the void. The leader of the Outlaws, a warrior who prided himself on his brutality, was now trembling uncontrollably. Krem of the Yellow Hills was catatonic, his eyes fixed on the figure floating before him, his mind unable to process the terror of his situation. They were helpless. At the mercy of a god they had pushed too far.
Kara looked at them, her face a mask of ice. There was no satisfaction in her eyes. No hatred. There was nothing. The entire universe was reflected in her empty pupils, a backdrop of silent stars for the verdict she was about to deliver.
She drew closer, her face inches from Krem's. The man could feel the cold of space emanating from her.
And then, very slowly, her eyes began to glow with the red radiance of her heat vision.
(Urahara POV)
Light-years away, in the unshakeable calm of his pocket dimension, time flowed like a tranquil river. The air in the back of the Urahara Shop smelled of freshly brewed jasmine tea and the soft scent of old wood. Next to the porch that overlooked a cosmos of his own creation, two silk-lined baskets rested side by side. In one, Krypto the Superdog slept a dreamless sleep, enveloped in a soft crimson glow that kept the poison at bay. In the other, the star-steed, Comet, lay equally still, its form now stable but devoid of its usual luster, fine threads of Kidō healing energy stitching together the conceptual cracks that the Kryptonite had left in its magical being.
Urahara Kisuke was not beside them. He stood before his holographic monitors, his usual fan forgotten on a console, his cup of tea untouched and cooling beside him. His face, normally a mask of enigmatic amusement, was devoid of all emotion except for the intense, feverish concentration in his gray eyes. He wasn't observing data or analyzing variables. He was engrossed, completely captivated by the story unfolding before him.
He saw the battle. He saw Kara's fury, a cathartic release of a power she had kept chained for years. But that wasn't what fascinated him. He had seen gods unleash their wrath before. What made him lean forward, what silenced his own analytical thoughts, was the moment of sacrifice.
'Well, now,' he thought to himself, a rare smile of genuine surprise and intellectual delight curving his lips. 'That... that wasn't in any of my projections. Loyalty. One of the most irrational and, therefore, most powerful variables in the universe. A being of pure magic, willing to sacrifice itself for a being of pure biological science. The interaction between Kryptonite and Comet's conceptual energy... fascinating. I'll have to take a sample of that residue later.'
It was not the thought of an experimenter, but of a collector, a connoisseur of unique phenomena. He had witnessed an act of loyalty so pure it transcended logic, and for a being like Urahara, there was nothing more valuable.
His gaze focused on the final image, the one now filling the main screen: Kara, a goddess of ice and fury, floating in the silence of space before a terrified Krem and the leader of the Outlaws. Her eyes, glowing with the latent red of her heat vision, were two abysses.
'And there it is,' he thought, his mind now analyzing, but not as a scientist, but as a literary critic unraveling the climax of a great work. 'The decision point. The crucible of the character. Vengeance for a father. Fury for two wounded friends, one biological and one magical, the last vestiges of her two worlds. Will this storm of pain override her core programming of compassion? Or will the unexpected tragedy, the sacrifice that did not end in death but in a wounded silence, have pushed her to a new level of understanding?'
Urahara watched, holding his breath. He had seen countless stories. He had read the comics from his past life where the heroes always made the "right" decision. But this wasn't a comic. This was real. The girl he had seen crying in a red-sun bar, the one who had taught an orphan girl how to wash her hands, the one who had unleashed the power of a supernova to protect the helpless, now faced the question that defined all beings of great power.
The question wasn't whether she could kill these men. The question was whether she should.
The chapter of her life that had begun with a girl's quest for vengeance now ended with herself holding the power to deliver the final verdict. It was a poetic symmetry that Urahara couldn't help but appreciate.
He leaned forward, his face now inches from the holographic screen, completely captivated. He wasn't observing an experiment. He was reading the best book he
He leaned forward, his face now inches from the holographic screen, completely captivated. He wasn't watching an experiment. He was reading the best book he'd found in centuries, and he'd just reached the most exciting page, without the slightest idea how it would end.
And that... that was wonderful.
"Now, Kara" he whispered to the silent hologram, his voice a mix of scientific curiosity and the genuine interest of a fan. "Show me what kind of history you choose to be."
Omake: The Ruins of a Pocket Dimension
The silence was the worst part.
After the explosion—the failed experiment, the attempt to contain a conceptual variable that had fought back with incalculable violence—only silence remained. And the cold.
Urahara Kisuke lay on the shattered tatami floor of his shop, or what was left of it. The serene pocket dimension that had been his laboratory and sanctuary for centuries was now an open wound bleeding into the nothingness, with chunks of reality flickering and fading at the edges.
He was dying. He knew it with the same clinical certainty with which he knew that tea requires hot water.
'Systemic failure of the soul nexus,' his mind analyzed, a logic machine to the very end. 'Reiatsu containment has fallen below 3%. Irreversible. The structure of my spiritual Gigai is disintegrating. Estimated time until total cessation of consciousness: one hundred and twenty seconds.'
One arm was a stump of flickering light. His left eye saw nothing, the socket a void that swallowed what little light remained. Multiple bones were broken, yes, but that was trivial. The real damage was deeper. His spiritual organs, the ones that anchored his soul to his form, were failing, dissolving like sugar in water.
He tried to summon his Bankai. It was the logical move, the only countermeasure. He whispered the name, "Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame," but only a faint pulse of crimson energy bloomed from his chest before sputtering out. He didn't have enough power left to manifest her. There would be no reconstruction.
It was checkmate.
As the cold of annihilation began to creep up his limbs, as the darkness at the edge of his vision began to close in, his mind did what it always did when faced with an unsolvable problem: it sought a constant. A reference point in the chaos.
And it found her.
The cold, shattered shop vanished. The sharp pain of his wounds dulled, becoming a distant echo. The silence was replaced by the soft murmur of the night wind and the sound of a deep, teasing laugh.
He was back.
He was sitting on the rooftop of the 12th Division barracks in the Seireitei. The night was warm, and the full moon hung in the sky like a perfect pearl. Beside him, legs dangling over the edge, was a young woman with dark skin and piercing golden eyes.
Yoruichi.
She was holding a bottle of sake, from which she had just taken a long drink.
"Admit it, Kisuke," she said, her voice husky and amused. "Your 'Long-Range Soul-Tracking Prototype' was a spectacular failure. I heard it flew off and crashed into the 6th Division's dining hall. Byakuya almost choked on his soup."
The Urahara in the memory, younger, more arrogant, sighed dramatically. "It was a propulsion success. The directional calibration was... preliminary. It's a scientific process."
"It's a process where you nearly scared the most stuck-up noble in the entire Seireitei to death," she laughed, and the sound was the only music that mattered in the universe. She nudged him gently in the ribs. "You look tired. You sure you're not overworking yourself?"
'You always knew,' the dying Urahara thought, watching the memory unfold. 'The only one who could always see past the smile and the fan.'
In the present, on the floor of his broken dimension, his one eye filled with tears. A choked sound, a name, escaped his lips.
"Yoru... ichi..."
In the memory, she looked at him, her smile softening. "What's wrong? Has the great inventor run out of words?"
The dying Urahara tried to answer. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her about Michael, about death, about universes and gods and the unfathomable loneliness of being the only one of his kind. He wanted to tell her that she, a character from a book he read in another life, was the only real thing he had left.
But no words came.
The warmth of the memory began to fade, invaded by the cold of reality. He felt the hard floor beneath his back again. The pain returned with a final fury.
He reached out with his one trembling arm, not toward the shattered ceiling of his shop, but toward the ghost of a woman sitting on a rooftop a universe and a lifetime away.
'I'm sorry,' he thought, and the apology encompassed a million things. 'I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I didn't come back. I'm sorry... for leaving you in a story that was no longer mine.'
The image of Yoruichi's smile was the last thing he saw. The sound of her laughter was the last thing he heard as the final darkness, the true silence he had so often studied, finally claimed him.