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After the destruction of Krypton, the Kryptonian baby Kara Zor-El was captured by the advanced AI Brainiac, and raised to become his enforcer. Living away from the red sun of Krypton, Kara gained incredible powers, such as strength, flight, enhanced senses, and more, making her a perfect soldier for Brainiac, who sent her all over the galaxy to conquer new worlds. And Kara enjoyed all this. She enjoyed her great power, enjoyed wreaking destruction against a helpless planet, seeing its people flee from her screaming in terror.
On this day, Kara was sent to conquer another planet for him—a young planet called “Earth” by its people, the “humans”. They were a weak and underdeveloped lot, with such backwards technology that Brainiac had little interest in conquering their world. Instead he had sent Kara there to destroy it all, and make an example of it for any other worlds which dared to oppose him. And so it is that she first appeared in the sky above Freeland, looking across that city.
Freeland by this point was no stranger to weird occurrences. It was a city of superpowered heroes and villains, and as its people looked at the blue and red figure floating above them, they wondered which of the two she would be.
Even from half a mile above ground, Kara heard their worried whispers and saw the fretful looks on their faces, and she smiled, anticipating what fun she would have with them. First, though, it was time to test the new gift that her “father” Brainiac had given her.
The gift was a small red band around the end of her left arm, a highly advanced device whose technology was based on what Brainiac used to shrink and capture the great cities of his conquered worlds. As Kara pressed a button on the edge of the band, she began to grow, slowly swelling bigger and bigger. From being the same size as the lowly, powerless humans below, she went to being twice their size, then five, ten, twenty, and more. Her whole body tingled with power the likes of which she'd never felt before. She threw back her head and moaned with the blissful sensation, all while the people of Earth watched on in growing fear.
At around a hundred feet tall and still growing bigger, Kara began to float closer to the ground. Thousands of people turned to flee with whatever means they had, and almost everyone made it out of the way by the time she settled on the earth at a height of one thousand feet tall.
Kara's red boots settled on the rows of houses with such a delightful crunch. With her height at its maximum, she peered down at the swarms of pitiful insects scurrying away from her might. Yes, insects; what better name was there for beings so small and pathetic as these? No one now thought to defend themselves, nor to ask her why she'd come, nor even beg for her mercy; they just ran mindlessly away like the puny little bugs they were. Still, they stopped when Kara raised her voice, effortlessly making herself heard across the whole city and beyond. “Humans of Earth! My name is Kara Zor-El of Krypton. I come to you in service of my father, Brainiac. He has taken note of your world, and your pathetic level of development, and sent me here to grant you all a great honor: to be destroyed as an example to all who would resist his empire.”
No one in Freeland understood a lick of that stuff about Krypton, Brainiac, or an empire, but the bit about destroying their world was crystal clear to them. People panicked all over the city. They ran for their cars, or to their neighbors begging to be let in their cars, often neglecting to take anything with them in their hurry to escape before this alien giantess killed them in cold blood.
Their reaction was everything Kara had hoped for, and once everyone was running, the game was on. “Do you really think you'll get to live by running away from me?” Kara took a step forward, putting such power into it that the whole city felt the impact. “I've destroyed worlds bigger and more advanced than yours when I was no bigger than you humans. If I wanted to, I could clear out your world in minutes. All you get by running away is a few more moments to live. Oh, but don't let that stop you! The more you pathetic little bugs fight to survive, the more fun it will be to kill you all!”
With just one more step, she had already caught up to the fleeing masses, crushing something like a hundred humans beneath her boot. Step, step, step—even at a casual pace, Kara more than kept up with the bugs below, ending more and more of them no matter where or how quickly they ran. They were no match for her even without her powers, and with her powers they had no hope of survival. With her X-ray vision she could see the humans hiding inside, and with her heat vision she could burn their homes and workplaces to ask and dust. With her super-breath she sent hurricane-force winds tearing through the city, toppling buildings and sending the puny humans flying into the air. With her flight and super speed she made a lap of the city's perimeter, tearing a deep gash in the earth all around it so that no one would make it out of this killing field. And this was all still going easy on them; if she got serious about destroying the world, it would be gone far too quickly for her to have any fun with it. Way better to draw it out until she had her fill of it.
Kara had received an absolutely laughable amount of resistance so far. She knew she could handle anything these insects might throw at her, that fighting against her was a lost cause, but still she'd assumed the humans would try something. So far all they'd done was run and hide. If that's all they were capable of then they truly deserved what was coming to them.
But before Kara could deliver it, she felt a slight tingling on her rump, and looked back to find a slim, black-and-yellow figure standing atop a building, electric sparks shining in its hands.
“Finally someone with the guts to fight back!” Kara walked over to the building, whose top reached up to her hips, while the woman perched on top of it shuffled her feet to keep balanced against the earthquakes of Kara's steps. She looked afraid, but stood her ground nonetheless. Kara liked that. “Who are you, human? A soldier from this planet?”
“You can call me Lightning,” the woman answered. “I'm one of this city's protectors, and I'm here to ask you nicely to leave my city, and my planet, or else make you leave by force if I have to.”
“Ha! Big words for such a small insect. Let's see you back them up.” Kara raised her hand to swat down that little bug, but just as she was bringing it down, Lightning flew out of the way, narrowly dodging that slap. “Not bad! You're pretty fast, for being so small. But not fast enough.” Lightning was zipping around Kara, throwing bolts of electricity at her. They struck Kara's suit, and some of them even hit her face, but no matter where they struck or how powerful they were, Kara felt no more than a tingle from any of them. Lightning, on the other hand, surely felt it when Kara struck back with a lightning-fast swat and knocked her out of the air.
To Kara's delight, Lightning survived. Granted, she'd been holding back with that blow, but none of the other humans she'd seen so far would have survived even that, judging by how they'd fared under her boots. Still, the little woman looked totally out of it after landing in the middle of the street. She couldn't even stand, let alone fly, as Kara stood over her. “Is that all? That's so pathetic. Here I was hoping you'd give me more of a fight. I doubt you could even handle me at my regular size. Oh well. At least you look pretty sturdy. Maybe I can get some use out of you as my toy.”
Kara slipped off her boot as she said this, and slowly lowered her huge, sweaty foot onto Lightning, until the little woman was smothered under the ball of her foot. Smothered but still alive, even as Kara kept upping the pressure. Though she was as small as an ant next to the Kryptonian colossus, she kept bravely fighting against Kara's foot, if you could call that pitiful squirming a fight.
“Keep struggling all you want, bug. Makes it more fun to stomp you flat. In the meantime, I'll be sticking you in my boot so you can follow along with every single step I take to crush this city and its people!” Lightning was still stuck to Kara's sole as the giant foot lifted off the ground and moved back towards the entrance of her boot. It was such a relief to have all that weight off of her again, but Kara's threat to this world weighed more heavily on Lightning than anything else. She couldn't let this invader kill any more people. She would put a stop to the carnage, no matter what it took.
Channeling her powers to their fullest, Lightning made both her own body and this part of Kara's sole negatively charged, causing herself to be flung away from it. She landed quite luckily on some power cables, which was exactly what she needed. Though Lightning knew it would cause trouble for others, she believed she could make up for it. This invader was insanely powerful, maybe more than anything Lightning her ever fought on her own previously. The only way she would stand a chance was by supercharging herself. And so, the young woman pulled on the power surging through those cables, absorbing all of the city's electricity into her body.
Kara saw this, but chose not to intervene as whatever was going on looked very interesting. Lightning's body reacted to the energy, becoming all wrapped up in pure electricity, or maybe turning into it—it was hard even for Kara's super vision to see exactly what was happening. Once finished, she looked like a being of pure energy. But the question was, would she fare any better against Kara now, or was it just a flash in the pan?
The energy was so intense that Lightning found it hard to think of anything but the awesome power filling her. She was slow to act, spending a few seconds looking at the titanic invader who didn't look half as threatening as she had before. Even when Kara tapped her feet, Lightning was unaffected. It was all rather boring, Kara thought, and she prepared to stomp the little bug flat again, but just then she was struck by lightning.
Though there wasn't a cloud in the sky, one bolt after another formed in that deep blue expanse and raced down towards Kara, shocking her full of electricity. Her muscles appeared to tense involuntarily. More than a hundred lightning strikes hit her in the span of a single minute, and many more would have come if Lightning could have made them, but the sky and the earth were exhausted and so was she. With most of the energy gone from her, she was back to her normal self, wondering if her attack had been enough. Please let it be enough.
Kara fell to her knees, eyes wide open and staring straight ahead like she was stunned or... dead? Lightning didn't relish the thought of using her powers to kill, but she couldn't see how there was any other solution to this monster's attack. When she saw Kara coming to, she tried to summon more lightning, but all she could manage was a single half-hearted strike on the Kryptonian.
“Oh, I'm sorry, did you think you were doing anything to me? Sorry to disappoint you, but that was just an act. You should have seen the look on your face just now!” Kara's cruel laughter rang in Lightning's ears. The young hero tried another attack, throwing much of her remaining energy at Kara, but the Kryptonian stood in place and let it hit, thinking nothing of it. “I guess that's all you're capable of, huh? I'll give you some credit: your attacks did manage to sting me a little. If I were at my normal size, it probably would have hurt. There's no way it would have killed me though. You, your people, this entire planet—you're all too pathetic to do a thing to me. And this isn't even as big as I can get! Let me show you some more of my power.”
The Kryptonian reached up to her armband and pressed a button again. Instantly she started swelling up to incredible sizes. The earth rumbled under the strain of holding up that colossal figure, and threw Lightning down on her hands and knees. She watched Kara grow bigger and bigger, and saw the Kryptonian's huge bare foot rushing towards her in its growth. It luckily stopped before she was crushed beneath it, but just the sight of its toes looming before her was enough to make her feel sick to the pit of her stomach. Those monsters were each the size of a house; compared to them, Lightning was nothing but a pathetic little flea.
As Lightning stared at her toes, Kara gathered saliva in her mouth and with perfect aim spat it onto Lightning. It splatted on the young woman, and forced her flat on the ground, holding her down even as she strained to pick herself up.
“Well, it's been fun playing with you, but it's time I wrapped up our game and got serious about destroying your city. Let's see if you survive this!” Kara took to the sky, floating higher and higher, until the mile-tall titan was hardly more than a speck in the middle of all that blue. Other people were relieved, thinking the invader had had enough of their planet for now, but Lightning was terrified. If Kara was taking all this preparation, then whatever she had planned for them must be truly devastating. She broke free of the giant's spit, and began to fly away, but by then Kara had already begun her descent. She fell back to earth, streaking through the sky like a huge, destructive meteor, surrounded by an aura of flames as the atmosphere combusted around her fast-flying figure.
The only use Kara made of her powers was for adjusting her trajectory towards her little playmate. Even as Lightning raced away from where Kara had left her, that meteoric woman followed her every movement. The only thing Lightning could hope to do was lead her away from the city, to give everyone the best chance possible of survival, but she still hadn't reached even halfway to the perimeter when Kara made impact ass-first.
The Kryptonian's landing rippled through the entire city, annihilating everything. What had seemed solid ground now roiled like a stormy sea, rising and falling and splashing outwards, unearthing what had been buried and burying what had stood on the surface, at the same time as an enormous blast wave ravaged the air and added to the destruction. When all was said and done, it was as if the city had been struck by a nuclear bomb. There was hardly so much as a single wall or even a tree left standing anywhere. Even out on the furthest edges, the number of survivors was maybe one in a hundred; for at least a couple miles around the impact crater, no living thing moved. At least not until Kara flew out of the hole, laughing as she surveyed the vast field of destruction.
“Ha! I've been wanting to do that ever since I got Father's gift! What do you say now, Lightning? Do you still think you can stop me after all this? Oh, right, I still need to check if you're alive!” She twisted around to look at the spot on her right cheek where that lightning bug was hopelessly plastered. She was barely moving, but Kara could see she still clung to life if just barely; all it took was a little spank elsewhere on her ass and her jiggling glutes shook the human out of her stupor. “That's a fitting place for you, bug! I might keep you there when I get tired of having you at my feet. But before we do any of that, I want you to have a real good look at what I've done to your city.” With superhuman precision, Kara pinched both of Lightning's arms between a pair of fingertips and peeled the tiny woman off her blue-clad ass, hoisting her up to witness the destruction all around them.
Lightning didn't want to believe that this wasteland really was Freeland. It was utterly unrecognizable. But deep down she knew it was her home. Everything was gone. Everyone was gone. Her friends, her family, everyone who hadn't been blessed to find themselves out of town on this awful day. Millions of lives ended by this... sadistic monster who now held her Lightning between her fingertips.
It all seemed so hopeless. Even if other superheroes showed up, all of them working together, Lightning couldn't see how they would ever be able to stop the invader, especially if this wasn't her limit. They would die. Everyone would die. And she would end up this girl's toy for the rest of her life, however long Kara decided that should be.
No. She couldn't let it come to that. There had to be a way to stop her before anyone else died. There had to... A-ha!
Channeling the last of her power, Lightning turned into her form of pure energy and zapped her way out of Kara's grip, flying straight for the wristband that had made her grow. Surprised, Kara failed to react before she touched the device. Everything about it was alien to Lightning, from the power source to he materials it used; would she be able to control it like she could control Earthly electronics? She had to try at least, and with Kara already shouting at her, there was no time to get further acquainted with the device.
Choosing a function at random, Lightning triggered it just as Kara's hand fell on her, and squeezed her in its powerful grip. Even with her superhuman durability, she felt her bones about to shatter and screamed into the hard-as-steel hand which held her. At the same time, the device started beeping. “What do you think you're doing, you little... W-what the!?”
As Kara was speaking, a thick, green gas started seeping out of the wristband. It sapped her energy, made her mind grow fuzzy and her body grow ill. She couldn't move her arm anymore; soon she couldn't move anything else. Her legs faltered and crumpled under her immense body, and she started to fall, seemingly in slow motion. Her last waking thought before she passed out was about Lightning, and getting revenge on the little bug, so even as gravity dragged her down, she made sure she'd fall on the hand that held Lightning and keep her trapped in there.
This impact wasn't nearly as big as her earlier one, but it was still felt for miles around. Lightning was caught up in it, just as Kara planned, and try as she might, she could barely move in the titan's fist. At the same time, she noticed Kara's pulse slow down, and heard the same happen to her breathing. At times it seemed on the point of stopping altogether, and Lightning fervently prayed that's what would happen. But after a while the trends reversed and recovery set in. Kara began to stir once more. She groaned and sighed, moved her hand, and feeling Lightning inside it, she tightened her grip. Oh, she squeezed the hell out of that bug now, until Lightning almost passed out herself. Not that it made much difference; she was all out of energy, and another stunt like her previous one would have been impossible for her now. When Kara opened her hand again, Lightning was too beat to move. All she could do was lie in the Kryptonian's huge palm and tremble under her terrifying scowl.
“Explain yourself, bug. How did you know that kryptonite was my weakness And how did you make it come out of father's gift?” Kara asked.
“K-kryptonite? I... I don't know what that is.”
“Don't you lie to me! That green gas. How did you make my wristband produce it?”
“I don't know. I really don't! I just activated one of its circuits. I didn't have the time to analyze what it would do.”
Kara glared at the insect, but her sight and sound both told her that Lightning wasn't lying. “You're useless to me, then,” she muttered, and flicked the woman down below. Once she landed, Kara dropped a big toe on her, flattening and smothering Lightning until she was stuck to it. Then she sat back and started toying with her catch, squeezing and rolling her between her toes.
The kryptonite was almost out of her system by now, but still it bothered her. There was no reason for it to have come out of her wristband, and yet it had. Kara peeled back the covering on the device, made of a substance which blocked out her x-ray vision. After that, she quickly found the compartment which had held it and the siphons which released it. It must have been there all this time, ever since Brainiac gave it to her. But why? Why would the one who called her Daughter, the one she called Father, put this poison in this gift to her and not warn her of it? She wanted to believe there was a good reason, but try as she might, she could think of nothing—nothing except that her “father” had meant to use this on her if she ever defied him. What else could he do? Could he override it remotely and make it shrink her so she wasn't a threat to him anymore? Kara wanted answers from him, but if any of this was true, Brainiac wouldn't just sit by and let her question him. Unless...
Kara raised her foot and splayed her toes. Lightning was there between them, her puny body plastered there by toe jam. She looked miserable and pathetic; pathetic enough to accept Kara's offer, maybe.
“Hey, you! You want me to spare your planet, don't you? And you'd do anything to make that happen?” Lightning was slow to reply, but at last she gave a small nod. Then Kara explained the situation to her, or as much of it as Lightning needed to know. “This Brainiac, he's the one who asked me to destroy your planet. He doesn't need me to do it; he has other weapons that can wipe out a civilization as backwards as yours, even if it takes him longer. If you help me get rid of him, he won't pose a threat to your world anymore, and neither will I. All you have to do is examine my wristband and destroy any means of controlling it remotely.”
Lightning couldn't believe it. After destroying Freeland, after almost killing her, now this monster was asking her for help?There was nothing Lightning wanted more than to see Kara dead. But that was beyond her powers, maybe beyond anyone's powers. To make peace with the monster was the only way to save everyone's lives. And, as far as she could tell, it sounded like Kara was being honest. “Okay. I'll do it. And once he's gone, you'll never come near this planet again.”