Rip Hunter: Worlds Apart

Rip Hunter: Worlds Apart

• In an alternate universe, pandemonium erupts. A furious battle is already in motion. Buildings shudder beneath the weight of seismic pulses as the Justice Society of America, this world’s independent and liberated flagship heroes, duel a dangerously unstable variant of Atomic Skull. His body, stretched with grotesque, skeletal limbs and flaring with wild surges of crackling atomic energy, thrashes against the city’s skyline like a living bomb set to burst. The JSA holds the line with seasoned resolve: Powergirl, this world’s Kara Zor-El, older, hardened, and wise, leads the charge with sharp commands and sharper strikes. Hawkman soars in sweeping arcs above, swinging his mace with brutal precision. Jay Garrick, the Flash, blurs across rooftops in streaks of silver. Captain Atom hovers with quiet intensity, his glowing form flaring against the nuclear threat. Below, S.T.R.I.P.E., piloted by Courtney Whitmore, stomps through wreckage with Red Tornado at her side, whose synthetic frame houses the digitized consciousness of none other than Lois Lane. The team is completed by Superman, Kal-El, young and new to the openness of their world, recently freed from a clandestine government facility where he’d been held since his arrival in Kansas. Still unsure of his powers, Kal stumbles through the fight, clumsy in the air and wide-eyed at the chaos. Powergirl hovers beside him in the fray, offering gentle but firm guidance. She corrects his flight path with a steady hand, matches his punches with finesse, and protects his blind spots from Atomic Skull’s attacks. She’s taken on the mantle of mentor with quiet devotion, this boy, so unfamiliar after countless years of not knowing him to have survived, yet so deeply hers to protect. The fight crescendos as Atomic Skull begins to shake violently, his atomic signature spiking past critical. He’s not just losing control, he’s about to erupt. The team closes ranks. Hawkman flies in to shield bystanders, S.T.R.I.P.E. braces against the shockwave, and Red Tornado spins up a cyclone to contain the blast radius. Powergirl grabs Kal’s hand, reminding him to focus, to feel the world around him. As Atomic Skull reaches detonation, Captain Atom steps forward without hesitation. A white-hot burst erupts, and then vanishes, funneled into Atom’s core like a sinkhole swallowing a supernova. The threat is neutralized. The city still stands. The JSA exhales in collective relief, still on edge but victorious. And Kal, shaken but safe, looks to Powergirl, his older cousin, his compass. She nods with pride. This world has endured another crisis. However, a much bigger one lies beyond their horizon, the one still unseen.

• In Washington D.C., the grand white spires of the Hall of Justice gleam under the late afternoon sun. This universe’s seat of the Justice Society of America is more than a headquarters, it’s a monument, a public space of reverence, pride, and optimism. Tourists linger on the perimeter, hoping to catch a glimpse of the heroes inside. Children play on the steps. Statues of legendary JSA members past and present line the courtyard, each figure standing tall in homage to the ideals they upheld. Inside, the atmosphere is quieter. More solemn. Members of the JSA move about the command center, debriefing from the Metropolis battle. Hawkman grumbles over logistics. Courtney, no longer inside her armor, reviews damage assessments. Jay Garrick leans back in a chair, his helmet off and his legs crossed as he sips tea from a mug labeled Fastest Goofball Alive. Elsewhere in the sprawling complex, in a room draped in soft light, Kal-El finds himself alone with Red Tornado. The glow of monitors reflects off her sleek crimson plating, but the voice that comes from her is warm, Lois Lane’s voice. Kal sits close, elbows on his knees, eyes heavy with a softness he rarely shows around the others. She speaks first, not in circuits and code, but with the trembling cadence of a soul rediscovered. They talk about what it means to be alive when you were never supposed to be. She tells him about the accident, the transfer, how her father, General Sam Lane, couldn't bear to lose his daughter. How he signed off on the impossible. She was meant to be buried, but instead, she was uploaded. A consciousness trapped in machinery. Kal, in turn, confesses what remembers of his containment. How cold the lab was. How General Lane tested his limits like a caged animal. They talk about phantom pains, hers in limbs she no longer has, his in a childhood he never lived. The cruelty of it. Two ghosts, she calls them, “We shouldn’t be here,” Lois says. “And yet, here we are.” The moment lingers. She reaches out, mechanical fingers brushing his hand with surprising tenderness. Kal doesn’t flinch. Instead, he gently takes hold of it, a strange sense of humanity shared between a boy from the stars and a woman made of wires. But for now, none of that matters. They sit together in the hush between storms, finding something fragile and rare, understanding, connection.

• Back on our main Earth, the skies stretch wide over the golden fields of Smallville, where Kara Zor-El helps Ma Kent string up clothes on a line in the back pasture. Sunlight catches the linen as it flaps gently in the breeze, and Kara, still unused to regulating her strength, nearly yanks the linepost out of the ground. She groans and corrects herself, apologizing sheepishly. Ma Kent offers a knowing smile, the kind she’s had years of practice giving to another alien who tried to fit in here once upon a time. Kara’s not angry, she’s just tired of it. Tired of trying to hold back, to fit in, to live in a place that feels so much more crude than the stars she came from. She stares out over the farmland, eyes distant, “It’s just so… quiet,” she says, “Back home, everything was alive. The towers sang, the sky pulsed with color, and the people.. Were like me.” Ma Kent gently folds a dishcloth and places it in the basket. “Sweetheart, you know you’ve always still got your cousin,” she says, with that calm optimism Kara admires but can’t always relate to. Kara huffs a soft laugh. “Yeah. My “little” cousin. Who somehow became Earth’s greatest hero while I was asleep. It’s not the same. He grew up here. This place raised him. It didn’t raise me.” Ma leans on the clothesline pole and raises an eyebrow. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right people yet.” Kara shoots her a skeptical look. “Like who? Who on this planet could ever really get me?” Ma Kent doesn’t miss a beat, her tone just a little too casual, “Maybe someone special. Maybe a boy.” Kara groans, “Ugh, please don’t even start. Gosh, especially not about Jimmy Olsen.” Ma chuckles, “He’s so sweet.” “He’s a dweeb,” Kara counters, rolling her eyes, “And way too excited about literally everything. I mean, he tried to ask me out last week when I went to visit Clark, and he got so flustered he dropped his camera into a fountain. During a press conference.” Ma laughs warmly, shaking her head as she turns toward the farmhouse. Kara is about to follow her when the TV inside, which was quietly running a news broadcast, suddenly catches her attention. A reporter’s voice rises in urgency, “We go now live to Metropolis, where Superman is currently engaged in battle with a new threat, currently only identified only as Atomic Skull.” Kara steps inside and stares at the screen. There he is. Clark, in full Superman mode, handling the situation with calm precision. While still a threat, Atomic Skull on this world looks almost elementary in comparison to what the heroes of the JSA were fighting on their world. Still, in watching Superman work, watching HER cousin, gives Kara a strange feeling of homesickness and admiration all at once.

• Elsewhere outside of time and space, everywhere and nowhere, all at once, Rip Hunter floats alone in the vast temporal sea inside his shimmering, brass-and-chrome time sphere. Screens pulse and flicker around him with ghostly images of histories both known and forgotten, while glowing glyphs scroll across the console in patterns no human eye could follow. Suddenly, one of the monitors blares red, and the entire sphere gives a low, resonant chime. Rip leans in, talking to himself, as he always does in an attempt to remain sane. “Another one, huh? Looks like a pruning’s underway.” He taps a few commands, pulling up a wide-angle view of the multiversal latticework of branches. The fractal-like network of infinite timelines that hum with fragile balance. One branch, faint and flickering, encroaching just a little too close on the edges of another one. Most of the time, prunings are over quick. HE acts as a self-correcting nature of reality that usually handles the overgrown branches on HIS own. But every so often, a being acting on their innate free will will tend to deviate. Unpredictably. Dangerously. That’s when Rip Hunter steps in. Rip Hunter sighs, zips up his uniform, and pushes a lever forward, “Let’s make sure the big guy doesn’t cause too much of a ruckus before it’s over.” The time sphere pulses once, then vanishes into the temporal stream.

• Earth 2 burned. The skies above Metropolis were choked with ash and static, turned black by antimatter fire and streaks of dying starlight. From her vantage point among the crumbling towers, Powergirl could see the battle unravel in real time. The air crackled with screams of terror from the citizens below. And the JSA had been caught in the middle of a massacre. And they were losing. Hawkman was the first to fall, wings ablaze, diving headfirst into the impossible. He didn’t make it halfway. One swipe from the Anti-Monitor turned him into something less than dust. Jay Garrick followed soon after, blurring through shadows and screams, trying to evacuate civilians, only to be caught mid-stride,no out running death today. Captain Atom, the team’s walking warhead, made his stand next. Kara could feel the hum in her bones before the surge hit. He unleashed everything, an eruption of cosmic energy so immense it split the clouds like curtains and painted the sky with ultraviolet fire. But the Anti-Monitor didn’t even stagger. He extended one gauntleted hand, and the quantum shell that held Scott together cracked like thin glass. In one moment of blinding silence, he vanished. Courtney watched the obliteration with wide, horrified eyes. She whispered in her suit,“He eats nukes for breakfast,” stunned, “And that thing just… blinked.” There was no time to process. No time to mourn. Just Powergirl, Red Tornado, Superman, and Courtney were left of the JSA, grasping at fleeting seconds as their world fell apart around them. Then the Anti-Monitor turned his gaze toward Courtney. Kara didn’t even see the attack. One moment her teammate was there, breathing, trembling, and the next she wasn’t. There was no impact. No explosion. Just empty space where a hero once stood. Red Tornado stiffened, “We cannot let their deaths mean nothing,” she said, voice trembling through synthetic chords, “We still have a choice. We fight.” Kal, young and brave, met her gaze, the power thrumming beneath his skin. There was no fear in his eyes anymore, just a quiet resolve. Two beings who never got to live the lives they were meant to, together, launched upward, toward HIM. But it was over in an instant. The Anti-Monitor didn’t raise a hand. He didn’t have to. Their bodies unraveled mid-air, undone by the sheer proximity to his being. Kara watched it all, helpless, Red Tornado and Kal-El’s eyes locked on to each other, a final spark between them as they reached for each other one last time. And then… gone.

• Kara’s knees hit the fractured concrete as ash fell like snow around her. She was choking on disbelief, her heart pounding in a rhythm too fast for even a Kryptonian to regulate. Red Tornado. Kal. Gone. The silence was worse than the screams. She clutched her head, eyes darting through the smoke where her friends once stood. Her body trembled with rage, with helplessness. “What do I do?” she thought helplessly. “What am I supposed to do?” There was no answer. Just the ever-looming silhouette of HIM, standing amid the death of her world like a monument to inevitability. But she refused to die on her knees. And then, something caught her eye. Hovering above the devastation, untouched by the fire or ruin, was a strange sleek brass vessel gleaning with golden energy, almost seeming out of phase with reality. Inside was a man. One she didn’t recognize, determined and tapping at controls, eyes locked not on her, but on the Anti-Monitor. Was he causing this? She thought. That was all Kara needed to know.  With a furious scream, she took to the sky like a missile, “You watching us die?” she hissed, voice cracking, “You orchestrating this?” The last daughter of Krypton, a streak of white and red cutting through smoke and flame, hurled herself at the stranger in the sphere. Inside, Rip Hunter’s eyes went wide as his readings spiked, “So close, dammit, not now.” He yanked the lever to shoot the time sphere into the adjacent timeline, the next closest leaf on a different branch. The temporal shell lit up, humming as it phased out of this dying world. But Kara held on. Her fingers dug into the sphere’s outer plating just as it vanished, her rage latching onto it with the strength of fury-fueled Kryptonian muscle. She held on through the temporal cascade, refusing to let go, even as reality blurred around her into blinding streams of color. 

• And just like that, she was no longer on her Earth. She had crossed into somewhere else entirely. A different branch of the multiverse. Now above a different Metropolis, the time sphere crash-landed with a groan of bending metal in the middle of Centennial Park, tearing a shallow crater into the lawn. Civilians screamed and scattered, thinking it must be yet another alien attack. They weren’t entirely wrong. The scorched hull opened and Powergirl, face wild with grief and eyes glowing with heat vision held just barely in check, hovered above the crater like a goddess of vengeance. Every muscle in her body begged to unleash the fury boiling inside her. “You ran,” she seethed, turning on Rip as he climbed out of the sphere, “You watched my world die and you ran.” Rip didn’t answer. He didn’t have time. He yanked his sidearm from his belt, high-frequency photon laser and fired three precision shots into her center mass. They fizzled against her suit like sparks off a stovetop. Kara barely flinched. Her face contorted now beyond anger, she was pissed. Rip backed up fast, stammering to hit any button in the time sphere that could save his skin. But he didn’t have to. Powergirl blurred forward, fists outstretched, ready to crush the man who let everything burn. But just as she was about to reach him, something slammed into her side with the force of a meteor. A streak of red and blue. Powergirl was tackled midair, knocked sideways and into the side of a parked news van, which crumpled like foil under the impact. She rolled out of the wreckage in a snarl, already flying again, only to come face-to-face with another Kryptonian, Superman. But not hers. 

• This one was older. Confident. Steady. And standing directly between her and Rip, eyes narrowed, cape fluttering in the wind. “That’s enough,” he said. Powergirl froze for a moment, stunned. Not by his presence, but by the face. Her cousin? No. Not quite. He looked like him. But he wasn’t her Kal. This world was wrong. Everything was wrong. Powergirl stared at him and her lips parted, but no words came. It couldn’t be. “Kal...?” she said finally, her voice catching like a splinter in her throat, “You’re alive?” Superman tensed, acknowledging the face of his cousin, but older and harder. This isn’t her, “What are you?” he said, worried for the answer. Her eyes still darted, searching his face. Same jawline. Same eyes. But older, sharper. He didn’t have the frightened wonder of her Kal. The boy she’d pulled out of a nightmare just months ago. No, this one carried himself with authority. With control. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she muttered, looking around, “Where am I? What world is this?” Rip, still groaning behind them, answered hoarsely, “You’re in another world.” Powergirl’s eyes flared, “You brought me to a different planet?!” Her voice was fire now, hurt curdling into rage, “Why didn’t you just leave me to die with the rest of them?!” Superman stepped forward cautiously, “You need to calm down. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but this isn’t the way to fix it.” “Don’t you talk to me like you know me!” she shouted, and flew at him with a full-powered punch. The fight was immediate. Clark caught her strike but skidded across the grass, digging trenches in the ground beneath him. Superman tried to restrain her, tried to talk her down between punches, but she wasn’t listening. Not with the screams of her Earth still ringing in her head. “You’re not him,” she growled, slamming into him again and again, “You’re not Kal!” Superman struggled to keep up. She was more experienced, more desperate. Her grief made her unpredictable. Unrelenting. Just when it seemed Superman might actually go down, her fist cocked back with deadly intent but a sudden burst of motion sliced between them. A streak of blonde with red. Supergirl, “Don’t!” Kara threw herself into Powergirl’s side, disrupting the momentum of her strike and knocking her off course.  The two versions of Krypton’s daughter tumbled through the sky before crashing into the side of a building, which groaned and partially collapsed under the impact. Supergirl pushed herself up, coughing in the dust, “What the hell is going on?!” Powergirl froze for just a moment, gazing at her counterpart with shocked, disbelieving eyes, “You... You’re me.” Before anyone could answer, the building they’d hit began to teeter. A support beam snapped. Rubble rained. People screamed below. Supergirl reacted on instinct, flying to catch the top half of the building before it could collapse further, but in her rush, she knocked loose a billboard, which smashed into a nearby rooftop water tower and sent a cascade of water and debris into the streets. Powergirl launched forward to stabilize what Kara couldn’t, catching a crashing bus just before it crushed a family taking shelter behind it. The intensity finally paused. Superman rose slowly, watching the two Karas. Rip, now slumped beside the time sphere, groaned again, “Multiverse counterparts,” he muttered. “Always with the dramatic entrances...”

• Smoke still curled in lazy spirals from the wreckage, but the worst of the chaos had settled. The two Karas, the younger one, still trembling with adrenaline, the older one battle-worn and hollowed by grief, floated down in tandem. Touched by the same yellow sun but carrying very different shadows. Superman stood his ground beside Rip Hunter, arms folded, jaw set with the kind of calm forged from years of impossible moments. But his patience had frayed, “Alright,” eyes narrowing at Rip, “We’ve let this go on long enough. Start talking.” Rip dusted himself off, straightened his suit, and adjusted a cracked gauge on his silver forearm panel, “You’re right. You deserve an explanation. Both of you.” He stepped forward, motioning to the sky above them. “What I’m about to say may sound like science fiction, but I assure you, everything you know about time and space is only part of a much bigger... much more delicate picture.” “You’re Rip Hunter,” Powergirl said flatly, still catching her breath. “I’ve heard the name float like a rumor through our world before. Time traveler.” “Among other things,” Rip said with a faint shrug, “Think of me as a custodian of sorts. One of the few trying to keep the branches of the multiverse from strangling each other to death.” Supergirl furrowed her brow, “Multiverse?” Rip reached back in the time sphere to hit a button and a glowing, holographic projection bloomed into existence. It looked like a tree, gnarled and vast. Its branches spiraling and forking into a fractal lattice. Each glowing leaf pulsed with life. “This,” Rip said, “is the true structure of everything. Every choice made, every outcome diverged, every path followed or not, it all forms branches. Universes. Timelines. Realities. All alive, all growing. Like a great tree.” Superman glanced at it with cautious fascination. “And what happened today was...?” Rip gestured to Powergirl, “A leaf was about to crash into another. Two timelines intersecting with one another should’ve touched. She followed me,” he added, nodding to Kara, “When I tried to blink away to what I thought might be a safe branch, she tore through the edge of the time sphere. You shouldn’t be able to do that, by the way.” Powergirl looked away, jaw clenched. Rip continued, “The Anti-Monitor, HE, is the multiverse’s gardener. When two branches grow too close, intersecting or poisoning each other, HE... prunes.” Supergirl’s eyes widened, “You mean destroys.” *Rip inhales* “Yes,” Rip confirmed, somber, “Erases entire universes before the sickness can spread.” Powergirl’s voice cracked, “And my world...?” Rip’s face grew an apathetic darkness, “I’m sorry.” No one said anything for a long moment. The glowing tree hummed softly in the air between them, a quiet reminder of just how fragile existence really was. Superman broke the silence, “So what now?” Rip turned to him, serious again, “Now? We make sure this breach ends here. I figure out why her world was targeted... and we try to make sure yours doesn’t become the next leaf to fall.”

• Powergirl’s fists were trembling, her shoulders heaving with a grief she didn’t know how to carry. For the SECOND time in her life, her ENTIRE world was destroyed. The flickering projection of the multiverse tree was still hanging in the air behind Rip Hunter, and all she could do was stare at the blank space where her world, her home, used to be. “You can fix this,” she said, voice tight and low, “You have a damn time machine. Go back. Stop it. Change it!” Rip didn’t flinch. He’d heard that plea before, too many times, “I can’t.” “You won’t!” she roared, lunging forward with a hand clenched in suppressed power. Superman swiftly stepped between them, arm outstretched. “Don’t,” he said gently, “That’s not the answer.” Powergirl’s glare could have melted titanium, “Then what is? Sitting here while HE wipes us out one at a time?” Rip sighed. Not in irritation, but something closer to exhaustion, “I’m sorry. But what happened to your world? It’s done. That branch was pruned. There’s no going back once HE gets involved.” “The Anti-Monitor?” Superman clarified. Rip nodded. “HE isn’t a villain in the way you’re used to. HE’s more like gravity. A force of cosmic correction. When the multiverse grows tangled, too many branches too close together, overlapping leaves, HE steps in. He cleans it.” Powergirl backed up a step, chest rising and falling, “So I’m… what? A weed?” “No,” Rip said carefully, “You’re a survivor. Clearly, it’s who you are. But you can’t stay here.” Supergirl looked between them, “Why not?” Rip’s voice turned grim, “Two Kara Zor-Els. One Earth. That’s not sustainable. It creates instability, too much overlap. HE will notice. And when HE does… this Earth is next.” Superman’s face hardened, “Immediate next steps, then. What do we do?” Supergirl’s voice cut through, sharp and hopeful, “Maybe we let HIM come. We fight. Together.” Rip actually laughed. It wasn’t mocking, just hollow and disbelieving. Truly catching him off guard, “You don’t get it. None of you do.” He stepped closer, voice low, “You think HE’s some kind of final boss. That this is an invasion, another threat to punch into the sun. But HE isn’t something you fight. HE is inevitable. HE’s not a monster with a weakness or a plan you can outsmart. HE’s the end. You try to fight HIM? You die. You all die.” Silence followed. Supergirl and Superman both stared at him, the weight of what he said sinking in. Rip turned toward Powergirl, this time with sympathy, “I know you’ve already lost everything. But if you stay, this Earth joins yours in the ash heap. You have to go.” Powergirl looked down, her entire body shaking from the agony of power without control. Rip didn’t want to press her. He knew what came next would be her choice.

• Powergirl took a step back from Rip Hunter and squared up in fury, “I’m not just going to lay down and vanish. I refuse to die. If that means I have to fight every one of you, then so be it.” But before anyone could move, Kara, our main Kara, stepped forward, “Wait.” Her voice was small but firm. She looked not at Rip, nor Clark, but directly into the eyes of her older, more hardened counterpart, “Maybe…” she said, swallowing the knot forming in her throat, “maybe you can take my spot.” Powergirl blinked, confused, “What?” Kara’s lip trembled, but she steadied herself, “I mean… maybe you’re the one who’s supposed to be here. You’ve already lived through the pain. You know how to protect this world. And I…” She hesitated, “I’ve never felt like I fit here. Not really. I keep trying to find my place, but it always feels like I’m just orbiting the lives of others. Clark’s, the League’s, Earth’s.” The weight of her words hit Clark like a meteor, “Kara,” he said, stepping toward her with an almost imperceivable tremble, “No. Don’t say that. You do belong here. This is your home.” She looked at him, a sad smile behind her eyes. “Is it? Or was it just convenient? I’ve been holding onto the idea that I’m meant to protect you… that it’s my purpose. But here, that’s a joke. You’re older. Stronger. You don’t need me.” Clark turned to Rip, searching for a reason to stop this before it got worse, “Rip, this wouldn’t work anyway, right?” Rip shook his head, “Even if they switched places, it will just delay the inevitable. Instead of HIM taking weeks to realize the redundancy, it’ll just take a couple years. The multiverse doesn’t tolerate things that are somewhere they aren’t supposed to be for too long. Eventually, HE will notice. And when HE does…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The image of Earth-2 still burned behind Powergirl’s eyes. “And besides,” Rip added, “if you leave, Supergirl… where do you even go?” That question hung in the air like a funeral bell. Kara’s expression didn’t waver, “I don’t know. But maybe somewhere out there… there’s a world that I fit in. Where I could be usedful and learn in my own way.” Powergirl stared at her, something shifting in her posture, “You’d really give up your world? For me?” Kara gave a sad nod, “Maybe it’s not about giving it up. Maybe it’s about giving it to someone who has a lot to fight for.” Clark stepped between them, placing a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “No. I won’t let you just disappear.” Kara looked at him, and for the first time, he saw not the girl who crash-landed in his world, but the woman she was becoming. Supergirl spoke, “I’m not asking for your permission, Kal. I’m asking you to trust me.”

• Superman stood silent for a long beat, his hand still resting on Kara’s shoulder. The wind caught her hair as she looked at him, eyes unwavering. Finally, his voice came, quiet but raw, “I do,” he said. “I do trust you.” But the hesitation was there. Clear as glass. Powergirl heard it too and she stepped forward, boots crunching the rocks beneath her, “Then prove it,” she said coldly. “If you really trust her, give the girl what she wants.” Clark’s eyes slanted and his grip tightened ever so slightly on his cousin’s shoulder, “You don’t understand—” “No,” Powergirl snapped, her voice hardening, “you don’t. She’s trying to make the hardest choice she’s ever had to make and you’re clinging to her like she’s a child. But she’s not. She’s stronger than you think.” Clark’s jaw tensed, “I’m not losing her. Not like this.” That was the wrong thing to say. Powergirl’s face twisted as only she truly understood the frustration Kara was feeling inside, “Then maybe you need to feel what I felt!” Before anyone could stop her, she lunged forward, tackling Superman with a sonic boom that shook the skyline. The two figures spiraled upward, streaking like comets into the clouds above Metropolis. While they traded blows, Kara and Rip Hunter stood down on the ground in stunned silence.

• Above them, the sky cracked with thunderous blows as Powergirl and Superman continued to clash through the clouds like dueling gods. Kara and Rip stood beneath it all, the roars of the storm barely touching the quiet between them. Rip leaned back slightly, arms crossed, eyes flicking to the sky with a faint smirk, “Leting ’em blow off some steam? Nothing like a little haymaker therapy.” He exhaled through his nose and glanced back to Kara, “You know, people talk about destiny like it’s carved in stone, but it’s not. It’s just the trail we follow when we stop using our own damn feet.” Kara’s gaze didn’t leave the sky, “I don’t want this trail,” she said. “None of it. Not this world. Not this… compromise. I want Krypton. My Krypton. Before it died.” Rip’s mouth tightened, “Can’t do that,” he said quickly, his tone final, “You can’t go backwards on your leaf and start making changes. The past doesn’t grow. It’s already formed.” She looked at him, desperate, “There has to be some way.” Rip stared at her, thinking. For once, his usual smart-aleck composure faded into genuine contemplation. Then, with a small flick of realization, he snapped his fingers, “Okay… maybe. You can’t go to the past, but what if I place you at a cusp?” Kara blinked, “A cusp?” Rip’s grin returned, “A growing edge. The very tip of a fresh branch, where the leaf hasn’t fully grown yet. It’ll be a new world. Unformed but with the same history as this one. Clark will have existed and ity would still be YOUR history. One of the timelines further up THIS branch. The future. It won’t be Krypton, but it could feel close.” Kara’s breath caught, her heart clenching with hope, “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s perfect.” Kara raised an eyebrow, “But what about Powergirl?” Rip smirked, as he came up with an idea that could greatly benefit the both of them in the back of his mind, “Oh, I have an idea. Though, might be a so stupid it just might work.” Kara looked up again, the sky flashing with red heat vision. “She’s angry. She’s hurting. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve a choice.” Her voice grew steadier, “No matter what happens to me, promise me she gets that. A real choice.” Rip gave a slow nod. “Scout’s honor,” he said, “Whatever choice she makes… it’ll be hers.”

• Kara floated halfway up between the two titans like a lightning rod for calm, arms spread as the tension hung in the air, “Enough!” she shouted, her voice sharp and echoing, “This fight is pointless. We know what we are going to do.” Superman and Powergirl both hesitated, hovering across from each other like a pair of barely-contained tempests. Kara turned first to them, then to Rip. “I’m going with Rip Hunter,” she said, “I’m going to live in an alternate future. One where I can finally figure out who I am.” Powergirl scoffed, brows furrowing, “What, and you think that Anti-Monitor bastard’s just gonna leave you alone out there in some other timeline?” Kara shook her head, resolute, “I’m not leaving my timeline,” she explained, “I’m just moving up it. Staying on the branch, just climbing a little further into the future. He won’t see it as encroachment.” Superman’s face hardened. “Kara… You’d be leaving everything you’ve built here.” She looked at him with those wide, bright eyes, burning not with recklessness, but with a strange, quiet peace, “I am serious. This IS still my past. And it’s not running away, Clark. It’s… I’m choosing to grow.” He opened his mouth again, but nothing came out. He didn’t fully agree or understand but slowly, he accepted, “Kara, if this is what you really want,” he said quietly, “then I’ll support you.” Kara smiled and swung her arms around her big little cousin with a deep hug. Then, they all turned to Powergirl. Powergirl looked from Supergirl, to Rip, to the horizon, anywhere but at her own feelings, “And what about me?” she asked. Her voice cracked slightly, “Where the hell am I supposed to go? ”Rip stepped forward, “You’re a little harder to move easily,” he admitted, “Your whole branch is gone. Wiped clean. Technically, there’s no ‘you’ left to move anywhere from. But… if you’re willing, you can come with me until I find a place that fits you.” He gave her a casual shrug, “And ya know, I could use the muscle.” Powergirl move, but her shoulders softened just a bit. Supergirl chimed in gently, “Or you could stay here a while, if you want. Let Rip take some time to find somewhere else for you. No extreme rush. No pressure. Just… options.” Powergirl looked at Rip again. Her lips parted slightly, then closed, then opened again. “My whole world really is gone, isn’t it?” Rip nodded, “Sure is.” She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and considered hard.

• Powergirl drew in a long breath, so deep it seemed like she was trying to swallow the ache in her chest, soaking up her pain. Her chest fell, steady and sure, “No,” she finally said, voice certain, “I’m staying. At least for now.” She turned to Rip and Kara with a smirk that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “Besides, someone’s gotta keep this place from falling apart while you go gallivanting through time without backup.” Rip raised an eyebrow, then gave a small, knowing smile, “Well then,” he said, “Try not to punch too many small children or puppies.” “No promises,” she replied. Kara and Powergirl locked eyes one last time, mirror images, still separated by loss, but now bonded by choice. They gave each other a nod. It wasn’t a goodbye. Just… a shift in the story. Then came the hard part. Kara turned to Clark. For a moment, they just stood in silence, the weight of everything unsaid thick in the air. Finally, Kara stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, and he didn’t hesitate to hold her tight, “You always looked out for me,” she whispered, “Let me do the same for myself.” Clark’s voice caught. “I just got you back.” Kara pulled back, smiling through her sadness, “And I’ll still be out there. Just… further ahead.” He nodded, reluctant but understanding. With one final look, Kara stepped toward the brass time sphere where Rip was already waiting. She looked back once, waving to the two people who had shaped her so deeply. Then the hatch closed, and the sphere blinked into golden light, vanishing into the stream beyond time. Clark stood still next to his new Kara, his eyes fixed on the spot where she disappeared. A single tear traced down his cheek, catching the morning sun. She was gone. Again. But this time… it was her choice. And she’d left behind someone strong enough to carry her name.