"Kal-El, twenty years ago your ship's signal vanished between Sectors 2813 and 2814."
"You have no idea how happy I was a few days ago when I saw you appear on this Earth!
"I've been in this star system for nearly twenty years—lurking in the shadows, manipulating their politics and technology, clearing countless obstacles for the Kryptonian forces that are about to arrive."
"But I never expected you to suddenly interfere. The final obstacle preventing me from taking control of Earth… turned out to be you."
Kara's pitch-black metal armor fully deployed and fused into a single seamless form. Layer upon layer of scale-like metallic components interlocked and recombined until not a single gap remained. Under the sunlight, the originally black outer shell shimmered with an almost counterintuitive silver-white sheen.
For Kara, this armor fit her as if it were part of her own body.
Another lead-lined construct—Joey couldn't see through it, but he could tell this armor was far more than decorative.
Because her bio-field output was now surging.
Joey had once thought of stealing Iron Man's arc reactor to power himself—there was no way other Kryptonians wouldn't think along similar lines.
On the left shoulder of Kara's armor, there was a tiny laser-etched marking. To humans it looked like meaningless code, but in Kryptonian script it read:
"'Rao—no, Sword of Rao', Kryptonian Warrior Guild Unit 1555."
Joey unconsciously read it aloud.
The white-haired 'fake' Kara—or perhaps now, the real Kara—heard him, and the anger beneath her transparent faceplate visibly softened:
"Thank Rao—you can actually read. I thought you could only pronounce words at best!"
Rao was the creator deity in Kryptonian ancient belief—the personification of their red sun.
Saying 'Thank Rao' was essentially the Kryptonian version of 'Thank God.'
Joey now seriously questioned what she thought of him as a Kryptonian raised away from their civilization. To a Kryptonian mind, learning a written language wasn't difficult at all.
Why was his literacy something worth celebrating?
"Of course I can read. What, did you think I was illiterate—ugh!"
Before he could finish, the white-haired Kara suddenly struck, landing a punch squarely on his face, sending blood spraying from his nose.
"Focus, Kal-El!"
At their scale, even thousands of meters was effectively point-blank—and with the armor, Kara's speed had increased by an entire order of magnitude.
Caught off guard, Joey instantly lost whatever advantage he had gained earlier and came to a simple conclusion:
This Kara held grudges.
All he had done was call her a clone—and punch her in the nose once—and she was already retaliating with underhanded sneak attacks.
"Joey Joseph Kent—or just Joey. That's my name!"
Joey counterpunched, but Kara twisted and blocked it with her elbow. Used to his invulnerable body, Joey actually felt sharp pain in his knuckles this time—
Like flesh striking steel.
"Tch—!"
The metal on Kara's armor flowed like a living organism, forming a sharp blade at her wrist. Joey's words clearly irritated her even further:
"Giving yourself the name from a primitive planet doesn't make you human, idiot!"
With a backhand slash, she cut across Joey's chest before he could defend, slicing through his 'S' emblem and the flesh beneath it, the wound deep enough to expose bone.
"And another thing—stop acting like those barbarians on Earth."
"Just because Earth weapons can't hurt you doesn't mean Kryptonian weapons can't!"
Under a yellow sun, Kryptonians are deadly to others—but creations forged under the same conditions are just as deadly to Kryptonians themselves.
The wound on Joey's chest refused to heal. Blood poured out rapidly, and once it left the protection of his bio-field, it quickly froze in the vacuum of space into tiny crimson spheres of ice.
The blade that had just sliced open Joey's chest dissolved back into liquid and flowed into Kara's armor. She reached out and grabbed Joey by the throat, cutting off his breathing.
"Give up that stupid human name, Kal-El. Act like an adult and carry the responsibilities that you're supposed to carry!"
"You're not a child anymore—you can't just spend your life playing around in this primitive world!"
Joey couldn't even speak—being choked like that, even breathing was difficult. Seeing this, Kara softened slightly and loosened her grip just a bit.
"This isn't what I intended. Things were never supposed to go this far. The ship that carried you should have told you everything when you were still a child!"
The 'S' crest of the House of El was, on Krypton, the ultimate symbol of unity and hope.
And yet now, they were forced to turn their weapons on each other.
The ancestors of the House of El had led Krypton from a savage age into the stars.
But Kara herself now had no idea how to turn her 'barbaric' cousin back into someone from a civilized world.
Perhaps carving open his chest with a lethal Kryptonian blade wasn't the best approach.
She could call it 'tough love.'
But she also knew that if Joey's father, Jor-El, found out, he might very well throw her into the Phantom Zone to cool off for a few days.
"Please, Kal-El. You've already tried—you know how easy it is to rule these barbarians. What difference does it make to them whether they're ruled by you or by Krypton?"
"There's one thing you said that's right..."
Joey finally managed to breathe. He reached up and grabbed Kara's wrist that was holding his throat, his eyes bloodshot.
"That I need to act like a real Kryptonian—and take every fight seriously!"
As Joey exerted force with both hands, the active metal around Kara's wrist began to ripple under strain, then broke apart.
Grabbing her forearm directly, Joey spun and hurled her deeper into space, immediately following up with a beam of heat vision bright enough to illuminate half of Earth's night side.
Even with her bio-field, Kara's armor couldn't withstand the blast. It melted into floating globules of liquid metal.
Joey's next punch accelerated her to near-relativistic speed. She smashed through one of Jupiter's moons before slowing slightly as her kinetic energy dissipated.
Then, along with the debris, she was captured by the immense gravity of Jupiter and plunged straight into its atmosphere.
Falling into that vast ocean of hydrogen and methane, Kara's black armor and the white suit beneath it were already in ruins.
Though the armor still tried to repair itself, it had lost too much mass to sustain its function.
Her entire body felt as if it were burning—not from Jupiter's environment, but from the burns inflicted by Joey's heat vision.
Before she could regain her bearings, Joey followed the trail of debris and struck her temple with a punch, driving her deep into the surface.
At that moment, Joey felt like he was back in the night he fought the other 'Superman.' All he wanted now was to tear this Kryptonian apart!
As Kara tried to rise and fight back, Joey grabbed her by the hair and slammed her down again. Her skull collided violently with Jupiter's dense surface, carving out a crater hundreds of meters wide.
Then came the second impact… the third…
Jupiter's dense methane-hydrogen-nitrogen atmosphere blocked most of the sunlight. A battle here would eventually end with one side running out of energy.
And right now, that side was likely Kara.
Seeing Joey about to continue endlessly, Kara finally stopped holding back.
With the little armor she had left, she formed a sharp spike at her elbow and thrust backward. Instantly, she felt it strike something solid.
As the blade withdrew and the sound of blood spraying followed, Joey—who had been pinning her down—finally stopped moving.
Kara seized the chance, breaking free from his hold. Joey collapsed behind her under the force of her push.
Her armor had now completed its final task. It could no longer shift or maintain its form, breaking apart into countless metallic fragments.
Barely any intact clothing or skin remained on her body. Kara tore off her tattered cape and wrapped it around herself, sitting with her back to Joey as she gasped for breath.
After she finally steadied her breathing, she remained sitting there for a long time.
She still couldn't bring herself to turn around and check on her cousin.
Because from the moment her blade struck him…
She could no longer hear Kal-El's heartbeat.