Of Knights and Aliens

Chapter 70

Kara and Alex head off to the DEO archives, Kara because she knows exactly what they're looking for and Alex because she knows her way around the archives. J'onn has put her in charge of labeling the artifacts and alien technology they receive a couple of times.

The DEO archives is the most guarded storage place in the entirety of the Danvers Kingdom. The things in here range from harmless alien farming tools to weapons that could destroy a kingdom with one press of a button. The guards all are highly trained and understand the dangers of letting just anyone in. So aside from a very select group of people, everyone that enters must have a handwritten note from J'onn himself.

Kara and Alex, being the princesses of the Kingdom, are of course in that select group of people who can walk in at any time. Though they both know J'onn has the power to revoke that privilege if he thinks something is wrong. Like when Alex was in the midst of her worst days. Not that they use the privilege very often, they don't usually come here.

It takes them a couple of hours of wandering down the maze-like archives in order to find what they're looking for. After that, Kara cheats a little and uses her X-ray vision in order to figure out how to get out of there. Otherwise, they'd be there for another hour.

"Did you find it?" Vasquez asks when they get back to Alex's main lab. "I heard it's a mess in the archives."

"It is. We nearly got lost." Alex admits, sitting back down next to Maggie. "But we did find it! It just took a while."

Alex pretends not to see Lena greeting her sister with a kiss out of the corner of her eye and instead kisses Maggie's cheek. Maggie's answering smile makes Alex's heart melt into a pile of gay goo in her chest. Alex wraps an arm around her and doesn't really care if the others can see. She's missed being around Maggie.

"It did." Kara groans when she pulls back from kissing Lena. "I'm so hungry now. It took hours!"

Lena wordlessly hands Kara a plate of food, everything on it is something that won't spoil at room temperature so luckily no one has to worry about Kara eating nasty three hour old food. Not that it would affect her, Alex tested that once. Kara did comment on the weird taste and how odd it was to eat at room temperature, but she was otherwise fine.

Kara gasps happily at the sight of a plate piled with some of her favorite foods and gives Lena a quick kiss again.

"You're my favorite person." Kara declares before starting to shovel food into her mouth at an alarming rate.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Alex teases and laughs at her sister's wide-eyed expression. "I'm kidding, Kara. So... What exactly is that?"

"She didn't tell you?" Lena asks, sounding more amused than surprised. "I guess no one here but the starving Kryptonian knows."

Kara pauses her eating to give Lena an unimpressed look before resuming eating like she hasn't eaten in a week. Once Kara's done, she sets down the plate and sits next to Lena, cuddling up to her.

"Okay, so that." She points at the small device Alex has set on the lab table in front of her. "That is... It blocks things. I don't know how to explain it well, it wasn't in my area of expertise. But I'll try. It can block radiation, and can be tuned to block specific radiation. I don't know how it does it, but I do know how to program it. My dad taught me. He was a scientist."

Lena places a hand on Kara's back, rubbing her thumb in soothing circles. Kara leans back into the touch and smiles gratefully at her girlfriend.

Kara takes off her glasses and reaches for the device her and Alex got. Alex hands it to her and Kara thanks her, already focused on the device. Kara uses her X-ray vision to make sure everything is in place in the device. If it's broken, she wants to know beforehand so she can go somewhere remote in case it blows up in her face. Literally. But luckily, it seems good.

Kara runs over the memory of her father teaching her how to use this "just in case." It took her a while after she landed on Earth to realize that he wanted to make sure that she could protect herself from the radiation and harmful things they had been putting in the air and letting seep into the ground.

She twists it slightly in her hand and presses a couple of buttons. It's small, and the buttons are smaller, so she's very careful about what she presses.

When she presses the final button, the little black and metallic silver device glows a light blue color before it spits out a hologram. Kara purses her lips, refusing to cry when she needs to do this. She just hasn't seen technology like this in so long, seen Kryptonian writing in so long. The hologram is like a typewriter keyboard, only with Kryptonian lettering and projected into the air like a hologram.

Kara reads the words at the top it uses to tell the user what it wants them to type in. Kara squints at the screen. She knows this, knows what it wants. She just has to find it in her memory and translate it into Kryptonian math and science.

Luckily for her, Kara has a great memory. She would like to think it's a Kryptonian thing, but Lois once told her that Kal once forgot his own birthday (or rather the day the Kents found him). And she's always had a good memory, so it isn't an extra power she has but her cousin doesn't.

Kara grabs a nearby blank piece of paper an writes down her calculations in Kryptonian numerals, checking it twice to make sure she got it right. The science is quicker, though translating what she needs into Kryptonian isn't as easy as she would like. She murmurs to herself in Kryptonian, something she hasn't done in a while. She has missed the feeling of her language rolling off of her tongue.

Once she's satisfied with her work, she types it in and presses one last button to confirm that yes, that is what she wanted to type (after rereading it twice). The hologram disappears and the device hums for a couple of seconds before making a familiar dinging noise. It garbles out in Kryptonian that it's done what Kara wanted and Kara nearly cries again. With everything that's been going on, she hasn't heard her own language for a while. Not to mention perfectly accented Kryptonese. Alex has an accent, which amuses Kara to no end ("of course it's funny Alex, you have a human accent").

"Are we good?" Alex asks.

Kara huffs out a breath. "Only one way to gun out. Put it in the thingy and wear it in the training room."

"Very descriptive." Alex teases as she hands Kara the headgear resembling Wonder Woman's.

Kara maturely sticks out her tongue at her sister and then carefully fits the device into the headpiece. It attaches easily and it looks kind of weird, the black and metallic silver standing out against the gold of the headpiece.

"I have an idea, Kara." Alex says hesitantly. "If you want and if you think it won't disrupt that device, um. I thought of a way to make it look cooler and give you a little piece of home wherever you go."

"What is it?" Kara asks.

"You know we have your pod, right? If you want to, you could melt a little bit off with your heat vision to cover that in it." Alex suggests. Kara blinks and Alex panics. "Obvious you don't have to, we can leave it as it is or find some paint or-"

"I would love that." Kara remarks softly.

"You would?" Alex asks for confirmation.

"Yeah. So how do we do it?"

***

Kara has taken a small chunk of metal that isn't necessary for the function of the ship and is holding it above the headpiece (in her other hand, she doesn't want to burn anyone). Underneath the headpiece is an alien bucket (yeah, an alien bucket. It can take up to 50 times the amount of heat the best Earth bucket can) to collect what doesn't hit the headpiece.

Kara takes a deep breath and uses her heat vision on the metal. It drips down onto the headpiece and Kara moves the headpiece around, trying to evenly cover it. It works rather well, better than Kara expected. The metal rehardens quickly and Kara has to admit it looks really cool. Instead of it being similar to Wonder Woman's pretty golden color, now it's a metallic, shiny gray that seems almost otherworldly.

Okay, next chapter is more focused on Supercorp and Sanvers! Both pairings will talk (and kiss) as they prepare for battle! But first they need to make sure the headpiece works :) Which should be quick! Thank you all for reading and for your amazing comments! Stay awesome!