Supergirl and all related characters and indicia are owned by DC Comics/Warner Bros. This work of fan fiction is written for pleasure, not profit.

The end of this chapter has been slightly rewritten to better flow into the next one.

This is my effort to synthesize my favorite aspects of the Superman mythos. Material and inspiration are taken from Superman Adventures (the animated series): the TV show 'Smallville'; John Byrne's 'Man of Steel' miniseries from the eighties; and issue 21 of the comic book 'Superman Adventures', subtitled 'Supergirl Adventures'. I'm quite taken with the animated Supergirl, because her origin is so much more plausible than the original's. I mean, what are the odds that the only two survivors of Krypton would be first cousins? Really?

Susan Ross turned the corner of Tenth and Eisenhower and picked up her pace. The lithe eighteen year old had three letters in track, and expected to add a fourth in the spring. A brief grin crossed Susan's face. Not withstanding her family's wealth, being a four year letterman in any sport practically guaranteed a full ride scholarship for college. Scouts from every school in the midwest had come to Smallville to watch her run, and even though she was just starting her senior year in high school, Susan Ross had standing offers from both Kansas State University and the University of Kansas. It was nice, she supposed, to have a safe path into the future written out for you. Even if track didn't get her into college, the fact that her oldest brother was a member of Congress held open other avenues. Susan was sure that, if all else failed, Pete could get her into one of the service academies. Her grades wouldn't, that was for sure. Susan's lips quirked into a grin. Unlike Pete, or any of her other siblings, Susan was an indifferent student, barely eking out a C plus average. She wouldn't even have that, if it wasn't for her friend Kara's relentless tutoring. Susan's eyes flicked to the girl pedaling beside her. Kara Kent was as different from Susan as it was possible to be. The most obvious difference was their skin, Kara's white contrasting starkly with Susan's chocolate brown. Kara had long, pale platinum blonde hair (which Susan envied more than anything else) as opposed to Susan's tight black curls, and a perfect 4.33 grade point average. Of course, Susan had the advantage on her friend in some areas. She was a tireless runner, while Kara couldn't run across the street without getting winded. Less obviously, and much more painfully, Susan had two loving parents, a surfeit of aunts, uncles and cousins, and a half dozen brothers and sisters (even if they were all older than she was). Kara was an orphan, and even though her Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Martha loved her dearly, they and her cousin Clark were the only family she had left.

The former was the reason Kara was pedaling a mountain bike alongside Susan as she jogged toward the edge of town. Susan Ross ran five miles every day. During the week she ran with other members of the track team, but on Saturday mornings she and Kara would go by themselves. Not much was said during the actual run, because neither of them could spare the breath, but afterward they would repair to JD's Filling Station for breakfast and gossip. It was their weekly ritual, dating back almost to the beginning of Kara's time in Smallville.

At the south edge of town, Eisenhower Avenue's smooth concrete gave way to the dusty gravel of Lark Road, a light tan ribbon cutting through the green wheat fields of south central Kansas all the way to the horizon. Susan broke from a jog into a kind of loping run. She wasn't sprinting: she didn't have the stamina for that, but she did have a ground eating pace that would carry her miles in times that her fellow runners envied.

The beginning of Kara's time in Smallville. Susan couldn't help but smile as the thought brought back memories of a wide eyed yet painfully shy girl from Boston who stared at everyone and everything around her like she was seeing it for the first time. There had been some awkward moments of course. Kara was so different - her accent, the slang she used, her taste in music, food, and clothes - they all set her apart. But she had acclimated with a vengeance, acquiring a Midwestern accent in a couple of months, and thoroughly immersing herself in local fashions and trends. Susan had been a big help, of course. She and Kara had bonded quickly. Susan felt enough out of place in her family of overachievers that she could empathize with Kara's fish out of water plight and put up with the barrage of questions she asked. Kara had been intensely curious about even the littlest things, which led her to ask some rather strange questions from time to time. Susan had decided at the time that Kara's sometimes odd behavior was a result of her coping with her grief and healing her emotional wounds. After all, having your mother die in a house fire that you barely escape with your own life, losing all but a handful of your personal possessions and having to move halfway across the country to live with people you barely knew had to be a rough experience.

They paused when they reached Marlow Ridge. It wasn't much of a ridge, Susan knew, really just a series of low, sandy hills a couple of miles south of town. Kara had said once that it had been dropped by a melting glacier, tens of thousands of years ago. She had called it an esker, or something like that. Susan had to admit she didn't really care. All she knew was that it was the highest point in the area, and that the crest of it was her turn-around point. She paused briefly, sipping water from the bottle Kara offered her and looking around. Green fields rippled to the horizon in all directions. Smallville shimmered in the morning heat. A mile long freight train was tearing alone the Union Pacific right-of-way, approaching town from the west. To the south...to the south was a strange sight. Something had just crested Seven Mile Hill and was barreling along Lark Road at high speed.

"Look at that idiot," Susan snorted. "He's going to get himself killed." Kara was staring at it, saying nothing. Susan regarded the object. She had assumed it was a car, but it was too big for that. It didn't seem to be a semi either, because no one would ever drive a semi that fast on a gravel road. It had already reached the stream at the bottom of Seven Mile Hill, a distance of almost a mile.

"What semi can do a hundred and fifty on gravel?" she wondered aloud.

"That's no semi," Kara said. She turned to Susan. "Get off the road, now!" she said, and guided her bike onto Ridge Road, Susan following at a run. Ridge Road was even less of a road than Marlow Ridge was a ridge. It was little more than a dirt track, used mainly by off-roaders, that more or less followed the crest of the ridge. It went no where, petering out after a few miles, with nothing to see along it but some long abandoned farmsteads. When they had gone perhaps two hundred yards Susan glanced toward the road, and had to stifle a scream. The machine was much closer, and had turned off the road. It was tearing across a wheat field...straight at them.

"Back to the road!" Kara commanded her, and Susan obeyed almost instinctively, even as Kara kept heading away from it. Sprinting now, Susan let out a moan of despair when the machine turned to head for her. Something caught her foot. She stumbled and fell. Even as she picked herself up she knew it was too late. The machine was almost on top of her, and the only thing left to do was wait for death.

Then, somehow, Kara was there, standing between Susan and the machine, her arms and body braced for impact, as if her fragile flesh could stop the onrushing leviathan. Susan felt a pang of affection for her friend. The futile gesture was so like Kara... Unable to look, she closed her eyes. There was a thunderous concussion. Susan felt like something had slammed into her. The thunder was followed by the shrieks and groans of tearing, bending metal. Certain she was dead, but wanting to be sure, Susan opened her eyes. Then opened them fully to stare wide eyed at the sight before her. Kara was still standing where she had been, still in her braced position, leaning into the crumpled front of the machine. Her head was tilted back to watch the back end of the machine as it reared up to tower over her. It halted just short of vertical, paused, then began to fall back, slamming into the ground with a deafening clatter. Only then did Kara's body relax.

"How did you do that?' Susan whispered. Kara turned, the look of satisfaction on her face instantly changing to one of concern. "Are you all right?" she demanded as she knelt beside Susan. Susan just stared back at her. Kara's eyes roamed across Susan's body, then returned to look into Susan's own. "No broken bones or internal injuries," Kara said cheerfully, "Just a few cuts and scrapes. C'mon, I'll help you up." She lifted Susan to her feet with no apparent effort. Part of Susan's mind wondered at the strangeness of that fact, given that Kara had trouble with a single forty pound bag of water softener salt, while another part chided her for finding that odd, in the face of what had just happened. She looked at Kara, then at the machine, then back at Kara. "How did you DO that?" she demanded, gesturing at the ruined machine. Kara gave Susan a very peculiar look. Susan's eyes widened suddenly, as she noticed both the tattered state of Kara's shirt, and what she was wearing under it.

Susan Ross fainted dead away.