Author's Note :- In this crossover fic, Superman (and possibly Supergirl) will be the only import(s) from DC.

I readily admit to having been inspired by both Agent-G's SpiderX (id s/1898532/1/SpiderX ) and The Writer with No Name's Last Son series (id s/3228742/1/The-Last-Son-Book-One-Gatherings ). Note that TWWNN can do far better massively-multi-character epics than I can while Agent-G does better characterisations. Both stories are highly recommended and undoubtably far better than I can create, so regardless of whether or not you like this story, check out both of the others.

As always (and this applies to this chapter and all future ones) all rights are held by Marvel and DC.

Be warned, there may be significant gaps between updates. Sorry in advance.

And now – on with the story!

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Prologue

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"Damn them! Damn them all!"

Lara Lor-Van turned to face her life-mate, a frown on her face.

"Jor-El, I've just managed to get Kal to sleep. If you wake him…"

Jor-El took in a deep breath, holding it, then releasing it in a sigh of disgust.

"Sorry, beloved. It's just… the council. They won't listen."

Lara's eyes widened slightly.

"They're… you mean…?"

Jor-El nodded. "They're refusing to stop using the graviton power plants. They don't care about the effects they're having. They refuse to listen!"

"But… the shield… the Kree/Skrull war…"

Jor-El snorted. "Powering the defences would be a problem without the graviton plants, I admit. But if we keep using the plants… Lara, the instability of the core has risen by just over six-tenths of a percent in the last Orbit."

Lara's eyes widened in shock. Anyone else would have scoffed at the idea that a barely more than a half-percent change could be a problem, but Lara was an accomplished geophysicist in addition to her household role and other abilities.

"Six-tenths…" she repeated, her voice quavering. "What… what's the current reading…"

"Three point two six." Jor-El sighed, his gaze meeting hers. "And the instability seems to be rising faster. Even with my best projections, we have less than an orbit left. Worst-case scenario… a quarter-orbit, if that. Maybe even less if they go and bring that new plant online."

Lara nodded jerkily. Jor-El walked over and caught her hands.

"I know, beloved. I know it's not enough time, but we can still save our son. On the way back, I did some thinking."

Jor-El led Lara over to a window-seat and sat her down. Turning, he pulled a control-circlet from his belt-pouch and donned it, allowing him to link with the main computer of the building. A split-second later, several images appeared, hovering in the middle of the room.

"I've arranged for a recon-probe to be delivered here tonight. With your help, beloved, we can reconfigure it, transforming it."

Lara nodded, her eyes on the morphing schematic floating as it reconfigured in response to her husband's thoughts.

"You mean…"

"We'll fling a light into the darkness." Jor-El confirmed. "I've already secured a pair of FTL drives and we can install one, along with a stasis-pod for Kal. If I can, I'll get a explorer-module…"

"I'll do that." Lara interrupted. "We both know the Council will be watching you, whileI still have… contacts. I think I can get a full Embassy-module if I try. You build the pod."

Jor-El smiled lovingly at his life-mate.

"A full Embassy… As always, you think bigger than I do. Very well, one Embassy-module… will you handle the download as well, my love?"

"Of course." Lara replied with a sad smile. "How long will you need to…"

"It'll be done." Jor-El said firmly as the morphing blueprints seemed to halt and solidify. "Within two-tenths of an Orbit, the pod will be complete."

"Make sure it has enough storage." Lara said, kissing Jor-El on the cheek. "I intend to ensure that our son has a full library."

Jor-El nodded as he turned to stare out of the window, forlorn pride evident in his eyes.

"My love… have you decided where he will go?"

The question shook Jor-El out from his reverie and he nodded, turning back and motioning to another image.

"Yes. It is a planet like Krypton used to be, with a yellow sun known by the natives as Sol which will grant him great powers. It was one of the last planets discovered by our probes before the War forced us to retreat to our home system. The natives, Humans, have an appearance incredibly similar to our own, although their genetic spiral has only two strands rather than four, and turns the other way. The atmosphere is breathable and the planet itself has not been contacted by either the Skrull or Kree as far as we could tell.

"It will be a good place for our son to grow up."

Lara nodded. "Then let us begin, my love. Maybe we'll have time to build another pod, this one for ourselves."

"I shall work as fast as I can,my beloved."

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"How is it going?"

"Better than expected." Jor-El said from underneath the partially-rebuilt pod, his concentration fixed on the crystalline array that he was carefully manipulating. "How did your mission go?"

Lara unslung the oversized bag that she had been carrying and placed it on the ground with a triumphant smirk, opening it to reveal its contents. Jor-El glanced across, then sat up so fast that his head bashed against the hull of the pod.

"Ow!"

Lara darted across and helped her life-mate out from under the pod. Once clear, Jor-El walked over to the large, waist-high crystal and stared at it, dumbstruck, absently rubbing at the bruise forming on his head.

"Is there a problem?" Lara grinned at him and Jor-El shook his head in bewilderment.

"That… that…"

"Is a level-six hostile-zone Embassy with expansion capability." Lara confirmed, a triumphant smirk on her face. "Full working order, fully charged, fully stocked and ready for deployment."

Jor-El stared at it in shock, then his gaze slowly tracked to Lara.

"…how?"

Lara sighed. "The Council seems to have taken the position that our isolation will be forever." She said, her voice filled with weary irony. "They simply placed all the Embassy modules in storage and locked it down, checking the inventory once an Orbit. And guess who volunteered to check the storage areas yesterday?"

Jor'El's expression went from astonished disbelief to flabbergasted admiration.

"I picked up a few other things as well." Lara said. "And I have another level-six Embassy module downstairs for if we manage to finish our Pod and follow Kal."

"Then I'd better get back to work." Jor-El grinned, turning back to the pod. "And I guess I need to expand the cargo bay slightly. Level six… wow."

.

As the ground shook with yet another tremor, Lara ran through the archway, Kal clutched in her arms. Jor-El caught her as she stumbled and together they moved to where the modified pod was resting on the pad. Lara glanced at the second pod on the pad, the larger one which was still several days from completion.

"We need to do it now, we can't risk waiting!" She said, fighting not to cry. Jor-El nodded as he donned the control-circlet and his mind interfaced briefly with the systems of the pod. On the smooth uppr surface, the hull flowed and reconfigured to reveal a fabric-lined receptical.

"Place him in."

Lara lowered their son into the pod, tears flowing down her cheeks as she released Kal. Jor-El joined her, taking what he knew would be their last look at their son.

"My love…"

Lara nodded as she stepped back, grabbing onto a pillar for support. Jor-El joined her and they embraced as they watched the pod rise from the launch cradle, orienting itself before accelerating away and upwards, shrinking as it accelerated away.

Behind them, unseen, the house began to collapse as a great tremor severed its foundation-pillars. The same tremor sent Lara and Jor-El to their knees, but their gazes never wavered.

"My son, live..."

"Live…" Lara breathed. "Live well, my son. Live well in your new home…"

The pod vanished from sight as the ground opened up, swallowing Jor-El and Lara.

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The pod accelerated away from Krypton, its speed increasing as it broke free of the atmosphere and raced away from its home planet. Behind it, Krypton seemed to shudder and shake before its surface started to crack and shatter, the molten rock beneath exploding outwards, swallowing up entire cities without trace and causing the continents to sink below the surface.

As the graviton plants which had caused the disaster were engulfed, the micro-discontinuities that transformed the energy of the gravitational potential into usable energy destabilised and inverted, creating brief points of hyper-gravity acting outwards, sending powerful shockwaves through the core of Krypton while hurling megatons of lava through the skys and blasting the atmosphere away into the vacuum of space.

As the pod's FTL drive opened up a warp-vortex, Krypton exploded, sending solid and molten rock outwards. From the core itself, twisted and compressed into normally-unstable elements and molecules by the shockwaves and variable gravetics, never-before-seen glowing rocks emerged and were propelled by the transformation of matter and energy into a localised inverse-gravitational field, hurling them out so fast that they soo overtook the debris that had once been the surface of the planet.

The energy shields of the pod deflected the glowing rocks that would otherwise have destroyed it, but many more passed by and of those, a small but significant percentage were sucked into the vortex that the pod was traversing. A moment later, the vortex winked out of existence and the only thing left of Krypton was an expanding asteroid field.

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On a distant world, a young bald man looked round, his gaze disturbed.

"Are you all right, Charles? What's wrong?"

"I felt a great disturbance, Eric… as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

For several moments, both men were silent, then the seated one spoke again.

"Eric, whatever happened… it was far away. Far, far away, but I still felt it."

"China?"

"Further." Charles said, slowly. "The distance involved… the thoughts… I could feel their emotions, but their thoughts were so different… I could not understand them. Not at all. Whoever they were, wherever they were… they are gone. Eric, I felt them die… an entire race…"

Eric turned his gaze up to the skies, absently rubbing his left forearm as he did so.

"Charles… if you truly felt a race die… does that mean that we are truly alone in the universe? Would there be others out there?"

"I… don't know, Eric. I just don't know."