Primer for the prime (The origin of Powergirl Prime)

[Muezick]

(I suck at writing histories, my true forte is in action adventure and romance writing. Hehe, so bare with it if its boring! Sorry!))



Fresh coffee with are hint of hazelnut permeates the olfactory as the night rolls on. Calm dark skies over head. Karen Starr sits in her study, lined with books at a large glass desk in the center. Her short sexy hair is messy in a manor you'd expect from a person that just had a tumble in bed with a friend, passionate but not committed, purely just for fun. A cab carries away a dark haired woman as Karen laments, in the back of her mind, the sudden chill brought on by being suddenly alone. She wonders if she'll ever find a wife, some one she can love.

The cab carries this woman away down a long drive past trees and carefully manicured lawn shrubs and decorations. Large statues of fantasy creatures, tall trees and beautiful landscaping. The cab carries her past tall walls and through large iron gates. The Starr estate is famous for its landscaping among the rich and famous. The house itself is gigantic, a hundred thousand square feet for one woman. A testament to her wealth and nothing else. Mostly it's filled with air, art and nothing else. Starrware is rivaled only by lexcorp, with Lionel fighting her at every turn for the one up. Twenty years ago the name Starrware was replaced by Wayne Enterprises, but the alcoholic owner finally offed himself a few years ago in a bought of depression, the investors had already considered liquidating. The death of Bruce Wayne was timely, and Karen took advantage and bought the company out. She'd attended the funeral, the eulogy had been beautiful, but the purchase launched her company to the global level.

She takes a sip off her coffee. Her robe hangs open, she is curled up in a lavish office chair, feeling dejected and in desperate need of comforting. But there's no one there at the top with her and she's beginning to wonder why. No family, barely any real friends and no love, foster parents passed away years ago. She'd fought furiously to get here with nothing but her gorgeous good looks and genius intellect and now that she's at the top, she isn't sure she wants to be there any more. See, this Karen Starr is not super powered, because this is earth prime, and no one is.

When washed with grief, the things we think about are as random as life itself. She finds herself thinking about her mysterious past. No parents, no childhood. She can recall at best things that would have others calling her crazy. Another planet called krypton, a crisis there. Her parents teleporting her away at the cusp of it's end. But there was no end, the crisis was averted and now she's simply lost to the stars. But that doesn't make any sense at all, since her earliest memories at present are from the age of 15 and onward, the memories she has of this 'Krypton' were from the perspective of a very young child, a toddler even. Non-sense.

That night, Karen Starr's life would change for ever.

The orbit of the earth passes dangerously close to a certain comet. Astronomy nuts are crazy about it, they flock and gather to the countryside to view it come so close to earth without the light pollution from the city. It's well documented as the closest a comet has ever come.

As the comet passes the Zenith above the Starr estate, Karen's eyes begin to glow. Energy surges through her. She begins to panick, her heart rate increases. She screams, her butler comes running. A mid-30's man, Kalvin Vance with about as much charm and good looks as Tony Stark, he's as gay as Karen is though, good thing to, otherwise the awkwardness would be off the charts. This way, they can both walk around without pants and not care.

"Miss Starr, are you okay?!"

He slams the door to the study open, books rumble and bounce off shelves as the energy collecting inside Karen is expelled violently. Kalvin's knocked off his feet, he lands with an oof and a thud across the hall way, eyes wide as he watches light fill the room. After it's all said and done, things simmer down, the room is destroyed but no one was hurt. Kalvin rushes to Karen's side.

Karen may have moments of doubt and despair but they are only that, moments. She is no stranger to the strange, and this has given her an extremely open mind. Combined with her extremely potent intellect, it takes her no time at all to discover these new powers. It's all very jarring but the way she came into this world makes this seem like a gift from the gods. The powers are very liberating. She develops a secret identity, Power Girl. She designs a costume that functions as both liberating and identity concealing. People are to busy looking at her body to notice that she's none other than the infamous Karen Starr, richest woman in the world, arguably the smartest as well. Honestly, she keeps a low profile though. She fights crime and helps out, but she usually moves so fast, nobody can take pictures, and film only captures blurs. She wears a black unitard with a hole in the chest. A hole for an emblem she meant to create but never did. It was silly, but Karen's creative genius is in technological innovation, not artistic design. After awhile she gave up and left the hole. Red belt, blue gloves and boots, no pants. For Karen the rush of being able to show off is a dirty secret. She's a very private woman, but deep down, she's a huge extravert and exhibitionist. Her life of wealth and little family has left her alone at the top though. She begins to feel as if her life as Karen Starr is a shadow, and Powergirl is the real her because of how alive she feels while she's Powergirl and how restricted she feels as Karen Starr.

Over the next several years until her 34th year, ten years as Powergirl, she has many ups and downs. She juggles her secret identity, her company, her fortune. She cries, she laughs. The world turns upside down for her as crisis after crisis comes and goes. Emotional strife, emotional peace. Passion and heart ache. Powergirl remains a rumor through these years as a super hero, though it costs her a small fortune, paying people to be quiet, to forget what they saw. She doesn't need or want the attention on a huge scale, so she goes out of her way to avoid it. Adventure after adventure until it's all changed again.

Then the ultimate crisis occurs, the crisis on infinite earths comes to pass. The entire world is swallowed up by white light. Karen is caught in it, helplessly. Karen's sparred though. She doesn't know how or why, but she is sparred. She wakes up on earth 1, unharmed and lost and confused. But before that, she experiences a wild triple deep hallucination. She floats aimlessly through the all consuming white light. Suddenly it all comes back to her, her previous life. Krypton, her parents, her childhood and the entire history of her krypton! Her memories were as a toddler because that is when her parents had teleported her off krypton. They used a scientific technique that bordered on magic to try and impart her with all the memories of krypton, to embody her as a vessel for it's history and knowledge, fearing the planets destruction, they couldn't bare to have it all lost for ever. But the science was untested, and rather than store the history of krypton in her mind, it warped her. Aged her artificially from the age of a toddler to a young teenager. The memories were preserved but deeply buried. Another side effect was Karen's hyper intellect, making her well beyond genius level intelligence. This provided a disorienting feeling. She was a vessel first and a daughter second. It left her feeling sad that she'd been cast away like that. Still, she isn't so weak of will she wishes she'd died with them on Krypton. It's simply yet another internal mechanism to keep her separated emotionally from others.

And now she's on Earth 1. It's filled with super heroes. She's lost, confused, but this isn't an unfamiliar feeling for her. She experienced the same thing long ago when she first came to earth, except then she had zero context then. And just like then, she's taken in by an elderly couple, but rather than the wealthy couple that quasi adopted her on earth prime as a teenager, this couple is very poor. They own a failing farm in the middle of no where and had come to town to sell their produce. Karen travels with them, and remains hidden. She has her black powergirl outfit, but she decides to keep it hidden. She remains as obscure as she can. She watches, studies. She discovers there is another version of herself here. She watches this earth 1 powergirl, she watches all the heroes.

She fears interacting with them will unmake the fabric of reality, but she tests this, subtly. By bumping into them here and there, engineering a series of carefully plotted experiments. Unlike the Karen of Earth 1, this Karen is as much a scientist as she is a business woman, she uses her incredible intelligence to bob and weave through society unnoticed and when the time is right, she'll make herself known. She studies this earths history and watches, she listens. It's amazing how effective of a spy a kryptonian can be when they can hear every thing. She hacks into batman's computer, the justice league computers, she views those files about the infinite crisis and learns she traveled not only across dimensions, but through time into the future. She learns of the others earths, the multiverse and all the adventures this earth has been through. Though she has no idea why she was preserved when the anti-monitor consumed earth prime, she doesn't dwell on it to much. Perhaps it is a side effect of the science her father used on her. All the while, she uses her powers for stealth only and remains perfectly undetected. There were a few times Batman's paranoid nature gave him a suspicion some one was tampering, he never had any evidence.

She ran into the old man who took her in while he was in town selling crops. He was struggling to unload his truck, so she helped him, they struck up a conversation, one thing lead to another and he invited her to the farm to stay until she was back on her feet. She lived with the elderly couple on the farm for a year, she gets to know them. They ground her, give her something to care about, without them she would have probably spiraled out of control with depression and self loathing. She helps them with their farm triple fold. She does all the work herself for free, so the old man can fire the expensive help he has to hire. She uses the chemistry lab at the local high school to create a strain of his crop that will grow better and faster. it is by no means revolutionary, but it will help the man. All the while, she maintains a certain emotional distance from them. It's what she does best after all. She's extremely adept at keeping her distance. She's able to recenter herself, return to her normally very well adjusted status and when she does, she realizes it's time to leave. She cares deeply for them, but in the end, she realizes there is more out there for her and so she leaves. She refuses to take anything from them, despite their offers. She simply thanks them and leaves in the night wearing nothing but her Powergirl Prime costume. She means to carve a life for herself from truely nothing, it's almost a challenge for her, something to be excited about.

But then Brainiac attacks. This earth already had a multitude of heroes, now it has thousands, millions even. This makes keeping herself hidden even easier and she continues to watch her counterpart. She desperately wants to connect with her, but is also scared of what might happen. It's not scientifically grounded fear though, it's emotional, irrational. She's afraid who ever this Karen Starr is, she might come to think of her as family. If there is any one that could be considered family, it's this woman. A sister. Karen's never had a truly integrated family. Her foster parents were almost ornamental. They couldn't have kids themselves and Karen was bright and beautiful, the perfect heir to their fortune. It was convenient, not loving. When they passed away, Karen did not shed tears.

So now she wonders about the earth, helping where she can. She's simply going with the crowd now, trying to make as few waves as she can. She's her own person and being removed from the throne of her company back on earth Prime has been liberating, though she would like to get back to having some kind of normal life, after all, she's still lonely, and would like to start a family with some lucky girl some day. For that she needs a secret identity, and a job, and money.

One thing at a time.

[Muezick]

OH and uh, feel free to post feedback, i love feedback good or bad

[Cara Lace]

Well written and a very nice job, enjoyed reading it. :-)

[Muezick]

thank you very much!