13575/What fate, Argo City

What fate, Argo City
Date of Scene:	14 December 2022
Location:	Palace - Themyscira City
Synopsis:	Donna helps Alura with learning the local languages, but they delve deeply in to Alura's trauma - not quite resolving it but presenting her with new thoughts and options she never considered; but also she is made aware that Argo City is gone and quite likely so too is her husband Zor-El.
Cast of Characters:	Alura In-Ze, Donna Troy

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    There's very little about this new world that is not puzzling to Alura. It's a planet full of contradictions. Technologically it seems both significantly more advanced and yet at the same time less advanced than the reports from Jor-El had suggested. The presence of the two space ships clearly a lot more advanced than the crude chemical rockets Jor-El had talked of was not a vast puzzle -- it's easy to understand that a race taking its first steps into galactic society might move surprisingly quickly. However the other ship, the one Alura had not ridden here on, with the strangely shifting outlines hinted at a technology beyond that, and Alura has been told that there is an instantaneous teleportation system bridging the city where Kara lives and this place, though it's currently off-line due to a potential security breach. /Teleportation/ from a barely space-going civilization?

    And yet it gets odder, because this city shows no signs of mass manufacture. Everything Alura has seen seems to have been individually crafted, which raises questions as to how exactly they manage the manpower for production. There is minimal signs that the place even has electricity, yet there are lights everywhere who's functioning eludes Alura entirely. She has seen warriors practicing with some kind of projectile weaponry that appears to be entirely mechanical in nature. None of it makes sense.

    Then there's the contradiction of the society itself. It appears to be some form of feudal monarchy, and Alura has been given rooms in a rather grand palace, but beyond that there's little indication of any social stratification -- everyone seems happy and well-off. It's a remarkably peaceful place and it's very obvious that it's a culture that takes the arts extremely seriously, yet it's also almost absurdly martial, with people doing weapons drills with a regularity that would surely imply they are expecting to be at war at any moment. There's no signs the people have any fear of that actually happening though.

    All in all, it's thoroughly confusing, and probably a relief that it has been indicated to Alura that this island is far from representative of the planet. Clearly something unusual has happened here that makes it just... not normal.

    It's all very relaxing though. Alura has been given a very comfortable, even lavish room to stay in. She has been assured that Kryptonian physiology has a high degree of compatibility with Earth foodstuffs, and she has been provided with a wealth of food and drink. There's a whole wardrobe of exquisite new clothes for her.

    And there's a knock on the door from one of the humans who speaks Kryptonian and claimed to be a close friend of Kara's, Donna. "Alura? It's Donna. I've brought you something to help out over the next few days while you get to grips with our language," she calls in through the door in that oddly-accented but quite acceptable Kryptonian.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura's mind has been in overdrive since she got here. Plans upon plans going out the window as she tries to process everything that this world is offering her. It is now forever linked with the future of Kryptonians and her family and that makes her both excited and extremely nervous. They sent their children here to be safe, but it's not quite what Jor promised.

Sitting on a table of carved marble is her Kryptonian bracer. It's been recharging itself from the radiation of Sol. Very high efficiency, she had to slow down the trickle input so it didn't burn itself out. It's active now with projections of high level science upon the white adobe wall of her room covering it with Kryptonian symbols in vivid gold and red.

The object to which this display of scientific prowess? the simple lamp in this room that seems to impossibly give off light without any obvious form of power source; sympathetic or otherwise. Alura is, for want of a better word, trying to theorised a new kind of science to explain this magical phenomenon.

It would not be unfair to suggest that perhaps Alura's mind has been affected by the sun's light; but so has her strength. Two bowls, a dish, three cups, all shattered so far. She apologised each time but the Amazons didn't seem to mind - Alura was gravely concerned about this since they all seemed to be made, uniquely, by some kind of artisan and she suspects that means it took a lot of time and effort.

With Monet here before she pushed some of the language in to her mind. A lot of it has faded, a lot of it was missing important gaps in the way she prefers to communicate; so she's been trying to learn the old fashioned way - rote.

Dressed in a linen gown dyed dark blue; she has rescued the only part of her clothing to truly survive the phantom zone for some reason, a golden belt with a metallic like red shield upon it with the symbol of El carved to its surface with golden lettering. That combined with the sandals - she fits right in. Her blonde hair is braided back out of the way and she seems far healthier now than when she arrived on Earth.

The sound of Donna's voice is immediately recognised - there aren't many Kryptonian speakers who talk like that after all - and Alura rises up with an energy she's not had since she was in her twenties.

The door opens and the handle both crumples in her palm but also snaps away from the frame. Her eyes widen and despite her best attempts to avoid showing how much these changes are upsetting her, a touch of colour comes to her cheeks.

"Donna..." she says and places the broken door part down on the table top ever so gently. "Come in. I'd appreciate any help. Culturally, my charades are very different to Amazonian charades. There's more than one kind of language game it seems."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna laughs off the broken handle. "I'll get someone to replace it. Don't worry. You're not the first person here to find themselves sometimes applying a little more force than they intended." She picks the metal handle up from the table top, studies it a few moments, then bends it double in her hands and drops it back down onto the table top with a shrug. "I broke doors and worse while I was growing up here."

    Donna's another contradiction, or perhaps a microcosm of the contradictions Alura has seen so many of. She seems just as comfortable with space ships as she does with the more simple hand-made marvels of this place. There's also the oddity that the locals all call her 'Troia' rather than 'Donna'. Perhaps thats something to do with these 'secret identity' things that haven't been properly explained yet.

    Donna reaches into a pocket and holds out a small pendant necklace. "There aren't many here who can speak Kryptonian and I can't be a full-time language instructor. So I've brought this for you to borrow while our instructors teach you. It's a universal translator device." She grins wide. "We don't have many, so please do try not to break this one."

    Ahh, borrowed alien technology then. Suspicions confirmed. If only those strange lights could submit to Alura's analysis...

    "I would suggest you spend some time with our combat instructors, too. They will help you get used to the physical changes. With the kind of strength you are likely to develop, it's vital to have control. Kal has fewer problems having been raised here, but Kara struggled with that a bit. It's also possible you may be served by having a better understanding of fighting technique, though... that's entirely up to you. Kal and Kara have both chosen to use their strength to help defend this world, but you are free to make whatever decisions you choose, of course."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura watches as Donna shrugs off the damage just like the other Amazons did. At least they understand what she's going through. "I'll try to avoid the 'whole lot worse' if I can manage it," she says with a small smile. Stepping out of the way she lets Donna in to the room.

Alura hasn't touched or changed much. It's like she doesn't want to settle in to the space too much which suggests she intends to move on. Putting down roots is the opposite of her motives right now. She looks to the necklace and raises her eyebrows a little.

Instantly curious she nods her head, "I'll do my very best." She brings it over to her gauntlet and hovers it in place fora. moment. All the work on the light shrinks away to a jumble in the corner almost like an icon, almost like a Kryptonian glyph, giving some insight in to the way they create their language.

A scan of the device displays a few symbols, one which Donna hasn't seen before. But Alura has. She tilts her head with surprise and then places the necklace over her head to settle upon her neck. "Ra-An," she asks and looks to Donna, "Raan? They are allies of Earth?"

Martial arts. It does seem to be an integral part of life here in Themyscira. "I did wonder.. I've never done much of it myself though Kara loved it as a child. She learnt two different martial arts and was pretty good at them. The way Kal and Kara talk of this world it's surprised me that they have each chosen the warriors path."

The glyphs turn off and her bracer goes dormant. "I'm getting very mixed messages about what Earth can and cannot do with its technology. Do you have superluminal communications? I would like to try and contact Argo, even if they are unhappy to see me - I need to let Zor know our daughter is safe, that I am safe, and where we are."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Not exactly allies of Earth," Donna replies. "It's complicated. Some of them are, but it's a world undergoing a civil war at the moment. We have made some good friends there, but we have not as yet decided how much involvement we should have in their civil war."

    She studies Alura with a faint frown for a few moments, and her shoulders rise and fall with a silent sigh. She takes a seat in the sunshine streaming through the largest window of the room, and gestures to Alura to take a seat by her.

    "You find Earth surprising," she states. "This is a common experience for people visiting here. It's clear we have followed a path that is unusual by galactic standards. We have only been able to leave our own atmosphere for less than a hundred years. We have only been travelling further than our own moon for a couple of decades. Technological developments happen far faster than they can become normalized. So while only a few hundred humans have ever left Earth's atmosphere, perhaps twenty or thirty of us have visited visited other worlds. There are people from quite a few other civilizations living here amongst us."

    "We have both superluminal communications and superluminal travel, but only in very limited amounts. On the other hand we have capabilities that would seem inexplicable to many far more advanced species." Perhaps she's talking about the lights? "I personally have twice visited alien worlds not using superluminal ships, but through instantaneous travel. When Kara discovered that you were trapped in the Phantom Zone, we had no way of helping her to locate you within that place, but had we known where you were, we could easily have reached in and plucked you out. It's.... complicated."

    She sighs and leans back in her seat, fingers gripping the arm rests, and lowers her gaze. "Alura... I'm sorry. Argo City didn't make it. Kara, Kal and Powergirl managed to find it, but..." she shakes her head. "Perhaps some of them got away. Perhaps some escaped to somewhere else. They couldn't be sure. The end must have come quickly."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura sits down on the edge of the bed and nods her head as she learns about a world in civil war. That combined with Earth's ongoing wars - she'd say that Krypton was better but in its last days it was in civil war too thanks to Zod.

"I do find Earth surprising. But not because of comparison to other worlds. I only know Krypton. We ... didn't go out in to space. In our past we did, but those historical records are mostly sealed away considered irrelevant in all but the briefest notions of education."

"Secrets are pointless now - Jor-El, Kal's father, secretly flew away from Krypton in a ship he and my husband made. He was, as far as we know, the first Kryptonian to visit an alien world in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years."

"I think when it comes to an alien world, alien technologies, and alien societies - everything is complicated and surprising. I can't imagine it would have been easy if you'd landed on Krypton. A lot of people were very xenophobic and many serious people would have wanted to know how you got past the solar system defences."

But then the news of Argo is spoken and her face drops. Her nose tingles as tears start to well up in her eyes. There are no words as her eyes flit about the room. Her voice is low when she does speak, "I doubt there were resources enough to leave...."

Her hand rests to her heart and she looks up at the ceiling a moment as the tears roll down her cheeks, "Which means Zor is most likely dead." She gulps it down a little bit and wipes at the tears with the back of her hand, "It's.... my fault."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna reaches out to rest her hand on Alura's forearm. "I won't lie to you Alura, it's most likely. Kara has already mourned for him. Perhaps he found a way to escape. If it was possible for them to send you to the Phantom Zone, it is possible that some escaped with modifications of that technology. If so though, they did not leave any message saying so to survivors."

    She gives Alura's arm a gentle squeeze. "It's not your fault though. Alura, there is evidence that the tragedy that befell Krypton was no accident. Those historical records -- we have had hints that in the distant past Krypton had an empire among the stars and its people had many enemies. We can't be sure, but one of those enemies may have caused Krypton's destruction. Pure speculation, but I can't help wondering if in those sealed records there were reports of a time when all Kryptonians benefitted from abilities similar to those your people develop here. Perhaps someone did something to your sun to stop your people developing those powers."

    She gives Alura a sad smile. "Tell me, Alura. Do you believe in /Rao/? Not just in the abstract, not just in the teachings of the faith -- do you believe there is, or was, such an actual being? Not metaphor, but a god of great and inexplicable powers who guided your people in the earliest days?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura rests her hand a top Donna's but takes in a deep breath, "Please. Donna. It's.. you don't understand." She is barely hearing the words but they are filtering in slowly. As Donna tries to talk about faith though, Alura shakes her head.

"I'm a scientist, Donna. I am a high ranking member of the thinkers guild. I believe that there is no evidence, nor is none necessary to explain our world, our people, our evolution. We're sun worshippers, which is hardly surprising considering how important the sun is to society."

She looks to Donna and her lip is wobbling a little still as she talks, "Sunstone is manufactured, once you know how - that's just inevitable scientific advancement." The translator is working heavily as Alura uses words and grammars so thick and deep that Donna would likely have trouble keeping up otherwise. It's clear the translator is missing nuances of what she's saying though.

She wipes at her tears again and reaches out to her bracer. With a motion in the air it shows a holographic replay, viewing number 21,717. It's possible Alura has been rewatching this assortment of memories again and again since she was exiled.

Krypton -5 days:
    "Alura," says Zor-El pleadingly, "I need you. I can't get this done without your help."
    Alura shakes her head, "I'm sorry Zor. I have to do this. Dru has lost his mind but I know I can get through to him."
    Zor frowns intensely, "And what about me? and Kara? And all of Argo City?"
    Alura shakes her head, "If Dru isn't stopped, there'll be no Argo City to save..."

Krypton -2 days:
    "Dru. Put down the weapon. We have you surrounded," comes the order from Alura
    Dru-Zod's features are stern, fixed, deliberate. He turns around slowly and drops the weapon to the ground. "Alura. You've been blinded by authority and purpose. They've been lying to us, the high council, this is all their fault. They've allowed us to be destroyed - aliens have attacked us and if we had been told the truth we could have defended this world!"
    Alura feels her finger slip from the trigger, "Dru... Dru even if that's true, we need to unify right now. The world is ending and instead of helping save people you're tearing us apart."
    Slowly Zod kneels to the ground and places his hands to his head, "All resources need to be put in to the military. It's your husband who is breaking us apart right now Alura."

Argo City +4 months, 13 days:
    Unidentified council woman, "The rationing system will work and we will make it to our destination, but we cannot expect the people to be obedient. We must introduce the stems gently."
    Alura's light turns on and she says, "In the last days of Krypton we had civil war because the high council kept the truth from people that could have been helping save us. We cannot afford to make that same mistake again. We should tell everybody the whole truth, upfront, right now."
    Another light turns on and a man says, "You cannot expect the people to understand the sacrifices and willingly do so. That is naive."
    The head of the council thumps an orb against their chair arm, "It shall be voted upon."
    The vote is taken, Alura's motion passes.

Alura stares with slightly dead eyes at the recollection of those events replayed for Donna to see as the bracer shuts off again. "Krypton wasn't my fault - but Argo was. If I had helped Zor then there would have been enough resources. If I had agreed with my colleagues on the council of Argo we could have rationed gently, not caused a panic all at once. The death of Argo City is on my head."

This is the Phantom Zone. This is what it does to a person. It eats at them, not just their body but their mind. It has allowed Alura to see this myopic viewpoint of events and reinforced itself in her mind.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna listens to Alura's words and the replay quietly, without comment, letting her finish her point before she says anything. Even after the recounting is done, she sits quietly, thoughtfully. "Perhaps if you had lived a long time ago and your suggestion that the people of your world be told the truth of things long before Argo City ever thought to make its desperate escape, there would never have been a need for that desperate attempt to find safety from a dying world. Perhaps Krypton itself would still stand."

    "I suspect General Zod learned at least some of what was in those sealed histories before the end, but I do not think he learned the right lessons from it. My people -- the people you see here on this island, who you must thing of as being like your military caste -- yes, it is our purpose to be strong, to be able to defend this world from threats. But strength without compassion is dangerous to the wielder as it is to those they face. Your people made enemies. Perhaps long ago your people decided that it was necessary to hide that truth from people to stop them from making the mistakes they had made in the past. Yet those who hide from the truth cannot learn from it, either."

    "Your decision was correct. It was the only way your people could have any chance to survive. If you did not learn from the mistakes of your ancestors, then the people who destroyed your world would have come for Argo City, too. You gave your people a chance. It may not have worked, but it was the only chance they had."

    She takes her hand away gently, and takes the coil of rope she always seems to have hanging from her belt into her hands, where it starts to glow with a warm golden glow. "There are things we do not understand, Alura. Your people, or my people. If yours understand the physical world far better than we do, we perhaps understand better the limitations of our knowledge. Do you know what the source of this light is? Use your device to scan this rope. You will find no physical source for its light. This is what we on Earth call 'magic'. The power of certain individuals to impose their will on reality, apparently against all the laws of physics. There are hints of it, to be sure, in the way the universe works on the sub-atomic level. Implications that consciousness may effect reality. This is an example of the way that it can happen on a greater scale. This is the kind of power that the gods wield, that /Rao/ must have wielded in his day. I believe the story of ancient Krypton cannot be understood without understanding the story of your gods. There's much about your world that none of us understand. There are ancient forces at work that were hidden from you. You were right that your people needed to know the truth, needed to be able to make decisions based on the information that had been withheld from them. You were too late, that is all. You can't be blamed for not having been born thousands of years earlier."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura buries her face in her hands a moment to wipe away the tears. She laughs abruptly and looks at Donna. "Now you sound like my sister. Time travel is apparently always the answer to every problem according to her," she says with a small but still drowned in sadness smile.

"And now you're telling me that Dru might have been right all along. That the council kept the truth from us, that we were under attack, and that the entire destruction of my home could have been avoided if only we'd trusted ourselves more."

She shakes out her body a little bit and places her hands to her thighs, "But the workers guild jumped on anything and everything unsatisfactory to their needs and desires simply because they didn't have representation on the council. As if that would have changed anything at all... no. It is a mess but I can take responsibility for my choices."

She shakes her head slowly. It's clear that this is severe survivors guilt. First Krypton and then Argo. Her hands wring each other as she looks at the sudden glow of that rope. Upon the offer she picks up her bracer and slides it on to her arm. It seems to conform to it, fitting itself to her skin and then it sits where it is not to move again until released.

She motions over it and scans the rope. It's just rope. "Magic is... unusual," she says trying to get her head around this new topic. "But like all things, I hope, inevitably explainable."

She quiets down for a bit as Donna expresses her belief in the old gods of Krypton. She injects a little humour in to the moment with quiet words, "You're still suggesting time travel as the solution to the problem." In this case of knowing the truth of things.

But for now, at least, she seems to accept that may be her gambit to tell the truth was neither right nor wrong; if they had lied the rebellion would have happened because of the lies. Instead they told the truth and that lit the spark. The kindling for revolution had already been there and likely stoked.

"I'm only joking about the time travel. My sister tried to do it and was arrested for it. Astra is --" she shakes her head slowly, "-- a force of nature unto herself. Was."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Time travel is probably not the right answer to anything," Donna says with a wry smile. "Too easy to break things. I have a couple of friends who are from the future, and they are forever stuck between the desire to fix problems they know are coming, and the worry that changing their past could have unforeseen consequences far worse than the solution."

    "You didn't really answer my question about your belief in Rao," Donna says, coiling the rope back up and slinging it from her belt. "Here on Earth, it is common that people look at belief in the gods as being something that belongs to a more primitive era. Even many who follow a religion suspect it is more metaphor than reality, or they believe only in gods that are very abstract, gods that never walked the world as humans do. Of course as humans come to understand magic better, it tends to undermine that theory. Here on Themyscira, things are a little different. Magic is a fundamental part of our society, and always has been. And we know the source of much of that is our gods. The storm clouds we passed through coming here, remember how they seemed to vanish? They are part of the protection of this island. Those who we do not wish to come here find it virtually impossible to discover the route. Those clouds dissuade them, or appear impassible. And strangely they do not think enough about them to realize that they have turned aside. Our island does not appear on satellite images. This is magic, a gift of the gods who granted us this island to live upon."

    "That's not faith, Alura. Not primitive superstition. It's a truth given to us by the gods themselves. Our gods are not something in the distant past, they are part of our every day lives. I have met several myself, personally."

    "There is a surprising amount of similarity between what I have learned from Kara of your religion, and what I know of ours. I cannot help but believe there is some connection. Perhaps you will find that the peacefulness of this island will help you find some unique insights. Perhaps our priestesses here could help you. Perhaps our gods could be persuaded to tell us something of /Rao/. It may sound like a strange suggestion, Alura -- but perhaps even here, far from your home and all you have known, you can find the time to think, to pray even, and without the pressures that have weighed on your shoulders for so long, search for some real truths."

    "It's all too easy to blame oneself for a tragedy we know with hindsight might have been avoided if we took some different path. I have struggled with that myself. But that hindsight does not tell us what would have happened if we did take that path. This too is a kind of time travel. We travel back in time through our memories, imagining that by some change to the timestream we could undo what was done. Just like time travel it's a poor solution, because we tend to ignore the fact that the changes we would make would have unforeseen consequences of their own."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura is quiet for a bit as Donna talks. She contemplates her belief in magic as a gift from gods. Beings of a different plane that intersect with our own. "You know, this kind of talk about gods if you are not part of the mediators guild is considered blasphemy."

She looks a little amused at the idea that now there are no guilds at all. No thinkers guild, no warriors guild, no mediators guild, no workers guild, no artisans guild. They're all gone. At least with Argo she could hold on to a final strand of her peoples existence but now, now she is an extinct species.

She shakes her head to Donna. "No. I do not believe in Rao. It was not my place to believe in Rao. It was not my job, nor my purpose. I understand how multimodal people seem to be here on Earth, but on Krypton when you devote yourself to a guild you go in with whole purpose."

Weirdly the notion that she doesn't just have to be defined by the thinkers guild is relaxing her shoulders. What if she were to.. just.. slack off for a bit? play with a sword? pray to a waterfall? paint a nonsense picture?

"You believe in Rao as a god? if he were anything why not just an alien who wanted to help a primitive people out? wouldn't you do the same if you could. After all, you are - are you not? You have gifts the rest of the world lacks."

Alura flops backwards on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. "For the first time in my life I don't know what I'm meant to do next... and though you make good points, I still question whether I am worthy of this third chance. But it doesn't matter if I am or not because I'm a mother and my daugther, even if she is a Supergirl, needs me."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "You ask why not just an alien who wanted to help a primitive people out as if there's any reason to think an alternative," Donna says with a grin that contains more than a hint of mischief. "Gods are beings who wield -- and perhaps are in some way made from -- a power that people can partake in a little part of. Just as we have these lights, I have this rope. I cannot explain to you why they are as they are, but I know they are. It would be very foolish of me to question that."

    "I know there are gods, and that they are as differing in their own beliefs as are any other people. I can't tell you what /Rao/ would think right or proper, but I do believe that there is great value to be had in trying to understand and even communicate with a being who... who has ways to understand the universe that you do not."

    There's a hint of hesitancy in Donna's voice as she tackles this subject, like she's fishing for the right words to use. "I recently had a... a kind of insight into what it must be to be a god. To see the universe in the way they do. With the perspective of seeing a wider picture than we can normally even imagine. It can be useful to have a caste of mediators or priestesses to make this their dedicated purpose and share what they learn with the rest of us, but it cannot truly replace direct communication with the gods. Priests can only provide general lessons."

    "If /Rao/ is real, call him god or advanced alien, if he really went to all that effort and expended all that power to help your people out, why would he turn you away if you reached out to him? Just because you chose to join a different caste? Can those castes have existed when he first reached out to your people? I doubt it."

    She settles back, letting herself relax a little. "Alura, the only way you can answer whether you ware worthy of a third chance is to take it. Being worthy of such is not about what you have done in the past, it's about what you do with that chance that is given to you. Don't ask yourself what you are meant to do, ask what is best for you to do. Perhaps the answer is that you have unfinished works to complete. Perhaps you have simply earned a rest. Or perhaps it's not just Kara who could be happy to have a Supermom around."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura can't help but let her mind wander as Donna talks to her about gods and purpose. She's hearing her but her head is swimming. Not since she was a teenager did she have to make such mind bogglingly big decisions about her life. Today a massive door closed behind her. Get back to Argo City? Gone. Find Zor? Gone. Now it was Earth or nothing else.

It's a splash of light through the window across her body that just feels so nice and warm and what harm could there be in asking Rao why he let their entire world and people die like that. If Rao were real then either he is a monster or as helpless as they are to shift the tide of events.

The words of Donna rattle about her head and she rests her hands over her eyes as if to keep them all in. What if she makes terrible choices again this time around and more people get hurt? what if doing nothing is worse? But choosing her own destiny? that's not the way Kryptonian society ever worked. Fate was a science there.

She pulls her hands away and sits up to speak to Donna but the sun has mostly gone down and Donna is not there any more. She opens and shuts her mouth - did she nap? is she that out of sorts that a nap can come upon her when she's in deep discussion with a friend? She feels the translator hanging from her neck confirming that whole interaction was real.

And yet, she can't stop thinking about this idea of the gods, of finding a way forward. If only she knew how to let go of the past. She touches her bracer and brings up footage from the Phantom Zone and lets the holographic moment play out.

Phantom Zone +3 weeks, 4 days, 17 hours:
    Alura rests upon a rock, hunched over. She's finding it hard to breath in the thick air of this place, if it can be even said to be air. Shelter is rare and she doesn't know where she's going.

Alura catches sight of something out of the corner of her eye in the playback and sits up sharply. There's a person there. A woman whose outline ripples like flames. She is speaking words as if to the recording devices camera, not to the exhausted Alura in the footage.

The translator attempts to pick up the words from her mouth, in Kryptonian, and speaks -- <<"Rise Alura, shelter is this way, the cycle is a new">>. Alura shuts off the video quickly and slaps her hand over the bracer feeling the colour drain from her face. Only one thought comes shattering through her mind at this moment, mostly thanks to Donna. She speaks the name outloud.

"Flamebird..."