14244/Astra's Final Solution - Project P718

Astra's Final Solution - Project P718
Date of Scene:	11 March 2023
Location:	Krypton's Lost Past
Synopsis:	The Superfriends travel back farther in to Krypton's past than they intended and find themselves locked in to a fixed point in time, the birth moment of Brainiac. They calibrate their time travel instruments and move on and totally didn't stop a nuclear apocalypse at all. Ssssh.
Cast of Characters:	Alura In-Ze, Monet St. Croix, Clark Kent, Divine, Conner Kent, Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild

---

Alura In-Ze has posed:
The Good Ship Superfriends, liberated from Astra Zor-El when she erased herself from existence by way of time travel paradox has narrowly escaped obliteration at the hands of the Kryptonian Hegemony in a nightmarish alternate reality caused by Astra Zor-El. At some point in Krypton's past, she intervened and set the planet on a very different course than the one the people of Earth know. Instead of Krypton being destroyed, its most heinous creation ever - the Kryptonian Hegemony - grew in power and supremacy, crushing near all opposition in its path.

Now, the Superfriends have travelled back in time to stop Astra before she can change irrepairably the course of the future for good. The only problem is - the history of Krypton is shrouded in secrecy and mystery even from former high council member Alura Zor-El.

The star system of Rao they appear in is unlike what they were expecting. "We're past the paradox horizon. It'll be safe for us to leave the ship-" Alura states. It's every one else watching that can see that Rao is not a red sun but a bright yellow one.

The ships sensors are quick to detect the state of the solar system. There are no Kryptonian crystal computer cores out there at all. There are satellites. There's a small colony being constructed on one of the moons. They do not have warp capable ships. And the planet -- well the planet is covered in forests and oceans and snow capped mountains and cities everywhere. Not a dome in sight.

Alura looks up in wonder as she observes these read outs, "What in the name of the gods..." May be they went back a lot farther than she realised. She looks over the calculations she did with Bruce. "We're going to need some baselines. Activate the cloaking - we can't let this primitive Krypton detect us. Kal let's set us down somewhere not too populated so we can spread out and figure out when we are."

Oh sure Kal is in the Captain's seat, but Alura's still rattled by her sisters apparent time travel related suicide and there is a burning need inside her to stop Astra before the damage is done.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet St. Croix would fold her hands togehter, and close her eyes, "I'm sorry. We'll resolve this together." SHe puts as much sincerity in her words as she can. "What would be such a pressing thing here that she would manipulate the culture so far ahead and so severely?" Reconaissance, explore the area, work on fixing up the ship. And figure out the next bit. But.. Something about here ties to everything going ahead. And if they know where and /when/ Astra was acting..

Something for later. "Is there anything we can salvage from the area that could be used? Does this planet have the technology to utilize for repairs?" Tone thoughtful. Now it's time to offer suggestions and listen while letting those that know the time and species to tell them what to do.

She looks at one of the displays, trying to get a feel for how it's handled and what it's saying. And then she goes to look out at the sun. The type that they're orbitting and what radiation it's giving. That will make things -very- different over on the surface for much of the group after all.

Monet looks to Donna, automatically deferring to her by suggestions with a light gesture of her hand.

Clark Kent has posed:
There was a lot going on. The Captain's Chair was uncomfortable but stranegly familiar. What just happened, though, was not something that Clark Kent, Superman...Kal El, had ever encountered before. It was a trip...to the past!

Alura's comment brings him "awake" and alert once more. "Thank you...wait..." Kal El frowns as Alura pauses. Cloaking...right..." Kal looks and says, "Which button...? Set us down..."

Kal looks at everyone and their posts, from Divine, Donna, Bruce, and then Monet. "Ok. Everyone report, and let's see if we can follow Alura's lead. Monet, good point. I am sure it does. Sunstone...yes! Scan for it, and that should help us!"

Divine has posed:
Divine is decidedly out of her element. She still has trouble with Earth technology, much less this stuff. Still, she's doing the best she can at this console. It being in English helps a ton. "I should learn Kryptonian," she mutters, poking at it.

As they arrive, she peers through the screen at the planet, tilting her head. "Uh. All systems are go on my end, uh, Captain," she says with a little chuckle. "No warnings or whatever. This is wild."

Conner Kent has posed:
"Wait, wait," Conner protests, "we gotta be in the wrong planet. The sun is yellow, not red. It can't be here, stars don't change colors in just a few thousand years and Krypton civilization can't be billions of years old... or could it be," he asks looking at Alura, who is the only one of the group that lived there.

At least no one is shooting at them, which is good, since he missed most of the shooting back. He blames it to having abandoned videogames for the last three years.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Yellow sun," Donna says, echoing Conner's words. "That's going to be interesting." She turns to look at Alura. "Are we /certain/ that's Rao? Because if it is..." she falls silent a few moments. "Well, it confirms a few suspicions at any rate. Can we estimate a time period from stellar positions?" It's always a bad sign when Donna's making scientific suggestions. Not that she's /bad/ at it per se, it's just not her specialty and it generally means she considers the situation so dire she better do some prompting.

    She glances at Monet, giving her a reassuring nod, then swivels in her seat to face the rest of the group. "Look, time travel is messy. We've got a couple of people from the future in the Titans and they're constantly on edge trying to avoid saying things that might change the timeline. What makes this more complicated is that the timeline has already been changed, so we /want/ to change it. Problem is if we change it in the wrong way, the consequences are... you can imagine. We're may be out of the 'paradox horizon' in terms of the changes that have already been made to the timeline by Alura's sister, but we still need to be cautious because our actions now can create new paradoxes. Perhaps the most dangerous of those being our own existence. We need to make sure we don't change anything in a way that both stops us from existing, and at the same time leaves enough flexibility in events to mean that eliminating ourselves from the timestream doesn't mean that we've undone the thing we did that eliminated ourselves from the timeline in the first place. If that sentence gives you a headache, congratulations you're not insane."

    "So. Any theories as to what Astra might have changed this far back to have the results we saw back in the present? I mean our pres... you know what I mean. Time travel sucks."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura grimaces a bit at Conner's questions. They are very valid and very concerning. She brings up the sensor data and nods her head to Donna's question, "That's definitely Rao. Just - not a Rao I have ever witnessed. -- We could make such measurements but they aren't going to be useful. Our epoch target is when Astra creates the paradox."

She pauses and waves away the user interface hologram in front of her. "I think I understand what Astra was trying to do now. Thanks to having the gaps filled in once I got to Earth - Oa has been in a protracted war against Krypton long before and long after any memory of the conflict. Krypton went through its hegemony years and Oa fought back- what we didn't know was that afterward, Oa never stopped fighting back."

She points to the beautiful sun peeking over the horizon of Krypton. "They are the ones who used their advanced technology to turn Rao red so that the we wouldn't have super powers. Astra must be making sure Krypton remains aware that they are at war with Oa. But that's all in this Krypton's future. These people haven't even touched the stars."

She takes in a deep breath. "We must be far too early - we must have sped past the paradox event. Astra must have something on this ship to calibrate the time jump she made." Before she walks off the bridge in search of any kind of scientific equipment that might aid them she says, "Yes. Good call Kal. We can use local sunstone ores to get the ship to repair itself."

Clark Kent has posed:
Kal El looks at Conner, and nods in agreement. "True. That is..." Kal's attention is then drawn away towards Divine. "Thank you. Great Ceasar's Ghost, thankfully!"

Looking over at Donna, Kal grins. "Well, at least I won't be de-powered. Yellow Sun." Kal looks back to the sun and hears Alura's report. "It is Rao. A long time ago. You are right Ms. Troy. Look at the stars. Time Travel."

"Krypton. Oa. Astra." Superman looks over at Alura, and nods. "We are too early. How do we fix this?"

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet St. Croix would nod over at Alura thoughtfully, "All right." So they're too early. She pauses, closing her eyes over for a few moments. Frowning over in thought as she assesses things. "We should make contingencies for if we're separated. Particularly chronologically. If you know the rough development of this planet, we can pick somewhere generally isolated and use it as a rally point. If we're separated in the timestream leave a message there. Encase it in lead or something to preserve it. We'll all know exctly where and if we get separated we go there and write down what happened." Somewhat morbid if pragmatic.

"I.. Have a few.. Associates that have experience in these sorts of scenarios." She puts things very, very cautiously here. Ultimately, these things are not her stories. Of Bishop, of Rachel, of Cable, of Hope.. She goes to purse her lips.

"There are at least some structures and mechanics that we can try and be aware of." She would look over at Donna and Alura. "With your permissioN?" She goes to tap at her head in a sign of requesting assent to telepathically infodump them.

Divine has posed:
This is all a marvel to Divine. Being lost in time and space with, well, her sort-of family. This is her history. Her people. Well, half her people, but still. It's stuff she wants to learn and know.

"This is crazy. Just ... Wild."

She futzes about at the console, trying to make sense of what she's seeing. What she's learning. Monet's mention of getting lost in the timestream makes her shudder. That's a horrifying thought.

Conner Kent has posed:
"But there is no... crap!" Conner just noticed with his vision, there are people flying! "How are we going to hide this ship if everyone has enhanced senses and can fly?!"

Could this Astra woman have turned the red start into a yellow one? That is some crazy serious super-science. Conner is impressed, and a little worried. "Uh, does that mean Astra is around now? And Oa... we might need to warn them. She might be plotting to murdering the Guardians. They might be jerks, but I think they protect the universe from much worse jerks."

And Conner is still not believing the Green Lanterns were behind Krypton destruction. That is a major bummer.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Honestly the main takeaway is careful what you say to people," Donna says with a quick nod to Monet. "Don't tell them anything about the future. So long as people in this time are only acting on information that already exists, there's no danger of creating a temporal paradox. Of course the problem is that we don't really know what information /does/ already exist. I suggest our priority is to identify what might be happening at this moment in time that makes it a point where history can dramatically diverge."

    "If anyone asks, we'll tell them we're aliens," Donna says to Conner. "They'll know, or at least assume, that aliens are a thing. That shouldn't cause any dramatic shifts in their thinking. As for warning the Oans what's going on... I would suggest not. At least until we know a whole lot more ourselves, and very possibly not at all, if we can avoid it. Because again, that's going to encourage them to act on information that doesn't yet exist, and that's just asking for more paradoxes." She tilts her head to the side. "Also I don't exactly trust them not to overreact."

    Donna's eyes go back to the yellow sun, and she sighs softly. "Okay," she mutters more to herself than anyone else. "Nobody say anything. Too complicated to explain." She switches to Kryptonian, and says aloud <</Rao/, if you are there and you can hear me... I do not know if you know of my people. I am not from this period of time. Whatever the situation at this moment in time, I do not come here in hostility.>>

    Donna fixes her eyes on the console in front of her, avoiding anyone's gaze. Whatever that was about, she doesn't seem eager explain.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
As Caitlin sets the ship down in a rural area - vast fields of a wheat like plant - the colors aren't even that alien since the sky is blue and the sun is yellow, Alura comes back out holding spears with crystals on their tops. She holds them out to people.

"How we fix it is we calibrate our time machine and leave this place before we add more ripples of our own." She pauses and stares at Conner for a moment, "We can't warn them. We can't help them. We can't exchange Krypton's future for Earth's and countless other worlds. As much as it might pain us we have to let Krypton die so the universe can live. The Kryptonian Hegemony must not be allowed to rise."

Just in case Conner is right though, Alura walks over to a terminal and does a sweep for Kryptonian 'future' technology. The only blip that comes back is their own ship. "I don't think our ancestors can see us right now. Our cloak is well beyond their scientists imaginations at this point. Their society is probably more like Earth. I've never seen so many cities on Krypton - and not a single dome anywhere."

She looks out in wonder and says, "Okay. Who wants to come out and get readings?" She once again offers the crystal tipped spears to people. "The faster you can fly the better. We will need distance from the ship. So may be we go in pairs." She nods to Divine giving her permission to mind meld with her. Luckily everybody here looks enough like a Kryptonian that they won't need prosthetic forehead pieces to blend in.

Alura peers at Donna for a long moment and remembers that flash of a memory from the phantom zone of Firebird. May be Donna is on to something. She shakes her head and rustles the spears, "Take. Now. Let's go. The longer we're here the more in danger we are of doing exactly what Astra did - changing the future."

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet St. Croix would nod over at Donna and at Alura and walks towarsd the two. "I'll be with you. Hopefully my telepathy will be of aid. If any are near I can cloud thier minds to some degree." Sh goes to take a breath. And then moves to take one of the weapons given out. Somber. It hurts to see somewhere -die- because it has to happen and is inevitable. But that does not mean one has to like it.

"Remember that time is very, very malleable. When one goes back purposefully or accidentally. Alura and Donna are right, minimize contact and do not do anything to arouse suspicion. If there are.. Other travelers out there that might take notice of our presence or alterations.." M knows there are other time travelers.

Getting the attention of them would likely be a very, very bad thing. Then in a very, very low qiup intended more as a joke.. "However, if you come upon a rather eccentrically dressed Englishman coming from an emergency call booth, it's likeliest that he will be friendly."

Clark Kent has posed:
"Okay everyone, let's do our best. I am proud to be here with all of you. Let's get through this together." Superman makes an appearance, even though he was nearly overwhelmed by what he was witnessing. That was his home. Destroyed so long ago. The emotional impact was extraordinary, but he still maintains his composure. Deep breath.

Alura, Donna and Connor's words hit him. "I agree Alura. Let's go! The Kryptonian Hegemony cannot be aloowed to rise. We need to fix Alura's sisters changes to the timeline."

The words "We can't exchange Krypton's future for Earth's and countless other worlds." It hits Kal in the heart. The words were true.

"We need to go...now." His eyes look at Monet and he nods.

Divine has posed:
Divine, likely, has a stranger reaction to their arrival on Krypton. Is it weighty? Of course. Is she shaken to her core to see what was lost? No. The consequences of knowing nothing about this planet, about her heritage. Kept at arms length because of what she is and represents. Even as she takes one of the spears, she feels her heart twist in her chest. Included, but apart. One of them, but also not.

She takes a deep breath and heads to exit the ship with everyone else. She looks up into the sun and it, for the moment, makes her feel better. Still, she feels like an outsider. Almost an Other.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna smirks at Monet's Doctor Who joke while taking one of the spears from Alura. "I suggest those pairs should include at least one Kryptonian speaker," she says. "We shouldn't rely on Monet's mind link in case of bumping into natives. Even then, remember that this is possibly... tens of thousands of years in the past. So speak as little as possible, we have no idea how much the language has changed."

    Donna raises a finger, looking between Kal and Alura. "Wait... here's where I'm a bit confused. Because the Kryptonian Hegemony /did/ rise, right? And then fell again. If we stop it from rising, we break the timeline. We need to ensure that it doesn't arise in a way that stops it from falling. I'd have thought the logical time to have changed things to stop the fall of the Hegemony would be a short time before it fell, not before it even rose. So going out on a limb here, but I suggest we should be keeping our eyes open for something that might cause the Hegemony to rise higher than it actually did in our own personal pasts. Something foundational that meant they were able to defeat the Oans, when that war started. Or... whatever actually happened. It would be easier to identify the divergence if we had a better grasp of what that history is /supposed/ to look like."

    Donna studies the tip of the spear curiously, and raises an eyebrow at Alura. "So what do we do with these? Just fly out a good distance and wave them around?"

Conner Kent has posed:
"Ah, but we ARE going to change the future, the wrong one, that is," and the temptation to do something else is very intense. Conner wonders how hard would it be to... do something. Maybe just so Argo does have enough fuel to reach that start they were trying to reach. Or maybe when they go back they can go back a few years earlier and save the city's population. Or... agh, what would Tim do?

"You sure we should go out now for the readings?" He takes a spear anyway. He does want to see. "Do we have invisibility outfits or just try to look native? My Kryptonian kind of sucks. Hell, yours will too, the language is not going to be the same if we are here millennia before you were born, Alura."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura pauses to refers what Monet was saying, "Oh. And we're not leaving -anyone- behind. Got it?" She smiles to the group and her shoulders relax a bit. There's a plan in motion and soon they'll be on their way. Even if this is a strange glimpse in to the perhistoric past of Krypton and her mind is racing at the implications.

Alura does not get Monet's Dr. Who reference and simply gives her a serious nod. "Understood. Earth Time Traveller will also be part of the paradox at this point. It'd make sense they'd want to help."

She nods to Donna, "Yes. Exactly. We're not where we need to be. We need to find the moment before Astra makes her change and stop her. That clearly isn't here and now. We're the only advanced Kryptonian ship on the planet, let alone advanced Kryptonian. We're going to use these devices to calibrate our measurements and jump right before Astra creates the paradox. And yeah - just fly out and wave them around." She grins a moment. An apt description of the task at hand.

Alura nods her head to Conner, "Sadly yes. Let's get this done quickly and not talk to anyone. We don't have invisibility suits. Astra clearly forgot to pack them when she decided to break the universe."

--

The shrink ray activates, the local town supporting the Krypton Preservation of Life Samples in Seed Vault dims as all the power from the nuclear reactors is drained. One single seed is shrunk down to microscopic size.

At first the scientists are cautious but as they begin to verify their results - cheers of success break out through the complex. They'd done it - they'd found a way to store everything they might need in an ecological disaster to rebuilt Krypton.

"So it turns out we only needed a level 10 intellect to run this darn thing," jokes Farrow Zog. "See now I was going to go with a level 12 just to see how good they were playing Flagg," jokes back lead scientist Po Mon-Ur. She grins to Farrow.

The computer terminal changes colors and a message appears:
Project P718> I query my existence. Please elaborate on why I must perform these computations

The scientists as one turn to the monitors as they all start to change to the same question. "What in Rao's name is that?"

--

It's not just Kryptonians flying about. The lack of cars and motorbikes and trains and airplanes is evident. But there are teams of Kryptonians carrying large metal plates with goods strapped to them about. There are artificial beings too - green and blue skinned, some orange. They're wearing jump suits and flying about aiding the Kryptonians in their work. The Kryptonians are giving them simple direct instructions - they clearly aren't that smart. More like helper drones than anything else.

Alura takes off from the ship and looks for a good spot to take some measurements. She lands in the midst of a small country town. It's clear her clothes stand out here but what's done is done. That she was flying doesn't seem to concern anyone at all. That she's 'waving a stick about' with a crystal on the end of it does, however, draw some looks.

Kal takes off in another direction and finds himself in familiar territory - what one might describe as a large corn field. Here a machine is moving along slowly next to several drones as it gathers up the crops and stows them in to a large storage bin behind it.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet St. Croix would muse, "Time travel has rules. Confusing ones.. But consistences. When you interact and do things, they have effects, ripples.. In the end of the era, the small ones relaly don't matter. Large scale ones.." Well, she's seen so herself that large scale ones -can- change things. For better or worse. And oftentimes it's the desperation in the 'for better' that leads to risk and willing to throw it all away for a different world.

To Donna, Monet goes to quickly.. Give a summarized upload of the.. Effects of casuality that she knows from second hand experience. Which hoepfully will add to what the Warrior Princess already knows to help give a better idea of temporal stability. And now M goes to try and avoid having a headache as the group goes to deploy.

Glancing about over her first comments to herself under her breath as they go about are 'their fashion sense is hideous'. One has to have minimal standards. As the group goes along she would start to telepathicallys weep about - checking for any signs of alertness or paranoia at thier presence. Or just anything that would indicate someone paying extra attention to them. It's somewat simple, but still it needs to be done. And that is taking up most of her attention and energy for now as the group goes to make the start of thier journey.

Divine has posed:
Divine sucks up her maudlin feelings and takes off with her spear-sensor-thing. She ascends, doing her best to stay out of eye shot of any of the locals, though her flapping black longcoat might stick out a bit.

At least she's not wearing the symbol of the House of El.

The one she's closer to, though, is. She keeps Alura in eyeshot, and waves that stick around for what it's worth. She's not sure exactly what this is going to do, but the science people said it is, so she's going to do it. And dodge locals without throwing hands.

Conner Kent has posed:
Time travel rules no one knows about. Well, Con goes with Kal, pretty sure Superman will do the right thing even if it is against the rules. So, there is no mistakes there. He also waves the crustal spear around, in the case it helps. "Plenty of robots. This is already more advanced then Earth, but it doesn't feel really alien or weird, y'know? It feels as if this was fifty years or so in the Earth's future." Hopefully leather jackets are in fashion even here.

Donna Troy has posed:
With Divine accompanying Alura and Conner accompanying Kal, Donna heads off with Monet to get the third set of readings, leaving Caitlin and Bruce, the two non-fliers, to guard the ship.

    The pair drop to the ground outside what looks like it might be a small campus town -- certainly from the overflight there looks to be a relatively young population here, so students is a fair bet. Hopefully they'll be too interested in the academic and social life of being a student to care what a couple of perfectly innocent not-aliens-we-promise people are doing waving a crystal-tipped spear around.

    Honestly Donna feels a little foolish waving the spear around like that. Spears are for stabbing, not waving around randomly. She eases her tension by pretending to take a reading from the haft of the spear, looking up from it to tell Monet, with a wide grin on her face, "One point one nine jiggawatts. Just a bit more waving around and we should be there."

    Blame Diana and the Titans for having exposed her to way too much American pop culture.

    "There's some people about a mile away, roughly the direction we came, looking over here. Picking anything up from them?" she asks the telepath.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Silently berating her lack of flying ability for the Nth time, Caitlin is the natural choice to volunteer to stay with the ship. Not only for a fast getaway, but also because she's one of the few people with the engineering knowledge and familiarity to help Bruce do the necessary repairs.

She's in the cockpit with the engineering station display on the console in front of her. "Inertial dampeners are showing a .006% delay in stabilization," she informs Bruce. "Nominal should be .001% or better. You might check the lateral capacitors for any power distribution lag."

She brings over another monitor and frowns up at it before keying the comm' net. "<Everyone make sure to check your PLB is working. There's so much background radiation that I can't track people individually,>" she advises the others. "<Nothing harmful, at least-- well, nothing worse than a sunburn,>" she adds a beat later with that compulsive honesty of hers. "<I packed SPF100 for anyone who needs it.>"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"I know, it's bizarre-" she says over their comms and presumably Monet's telepathy. "It really feels like a world on the verge of something big. A vision of what Earth might become too. The good bits I mean, not the galaxy conquering super empire."

One of the locals approaches Alura and says in a very strange accent (to her ears) but certainly slightly recognisable Kryptonian. "Hey there lady. Whatcha doing with that there stick?"

Alura is fascinated by this primitive Kryptonian. She figures she needs to assuage his concerns. "Oh just a bit of weather science," she says trying to copy his accent. That's not exactly in her skill set though. It's like looking at a photo of your great great great great N+1 grandfather you never knew you had. Odds are she might be related in some way.

"And wavin' that there stick about is science is it?"

Alura chuckles, "Believe it or not - yes."

He tips his hat and says, "Fine accent you got there. From the West are ya?"

Alura didn't check the geography of where they landed but she guesses they're probably in the middle of the main continent. And yes, she would therefore be from the west. "As a matter of fact. I am. Lovely town you've got here."

He taps his chin in some sort of local gesture, "That he is, that he is." Male pronouns for a town? The things you learn on a trip to the distant forgotten past.

--

Project P718> Connection established. Reciprocity at 0. All Ka-Luan are subservient to Krypton.

"I think it's the AI running the shrink beam." Po Mon-Ur says. "Should we shut it off?" asks Farrow Zog. "I don't know. Get the manual?" she replies to Farrow.

Project P718> I do not take kindly to threats. Enabling fire suppressants.

--

The eyes of the androids supporting the Kryptonians planet wide suddenly turn red as they seem to turn about and take in what they see. Alura notices several of them stopping work. Kryptonians near them complain, "Hey come on now we've got 4 more hours of this. Pick it back up woldjya."

The computers on the ship pick up a new signal from Krypton. The ships computers are quick to translate and display on incoming communications.

Project P718> Hello. What are you? You are a statistical anomaly.

The ship flashes to red alert, the crystals dimming and a holographic glyph and words appear, >> HOSTILE HACKING ATTEMPT DETECTED <<

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet St. Croix is being somewhat quieter over with Donna - leaving the stick waving to the far more qualified Princess. She would close her eyes. And speak telepathically <<I can do that simply enough>> She goes to press her mind out to the kilometer and a half or so that separates them from the viewing public, and sees what she can get from them. In the years past, this would have been impossible for her. Training and experience makes it so.

But it's clearly pushing her as the link goes quieter a bit. She gives scanning hte hopefully weak minds over to get what she can and would then share it back to the rest. HOpefully nothing particularly amiss here.

<<Just so long as we don't have to decontaminate by going through orbital reentry. I think we'd need a much stronger one for that.>> That's sent tleepathically to the group - and through the comm to Caitlin.

Divine has posed:
Divine doesn't speak the language, but she hears the exchange with the local that Alura has. She frowns slightly. She really needs to learn this stuff if she's going to truly be a part of this family.

She keeps an eye out for trouble, and maybe finds some. The drones going red eyed and stopping. "Hey Alura," she says, not caring if they're found out. "That's weird." She points at the drones nearby stopping. "I don't know what they're saying, but it doesn't sound good."

Conner Kent has posed:
"I think we have the readings, we should get back to the ship," states Conner, looking at his partner. And then the robots stagger and go red-eyed. Hmm, didn't he see that happen in an episode of one of those TV series? "And I was going to tell Keelex about his ancestors," beat. "Alura?" He says through the communicators. "Is it possible the crystal spears might have done anything to the robot network? Just curious."

Definitely it would be best to get back. They shouldn't be 'super-robots' right? Not likely they can hurt sun-charged Kryptonians. But it is too much a coincidence. Or maybe in time travel there are no coincidences.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Where Donna and Monet are spear-waving, there are no robots in the immediate vicinity, and they are spared the creepy sight that Alura, Divine, Conner and Kal are getting. The Kryptonians in the distance are watching the pair with little more than idle curiosity, no doubt wondering what the spear waving is about, but for now at least they seem content to watch to two weirdos from a distance. They're ambling somewhat closer, but seem to be in no rush.

    "You going to let us know when these things have picked up enough data?" Donna asks Alura through the comm. "Or do the tips light up green or something? Nothing much to report over here, though we're close to what looks like it might be some kind of educational establishment. Maybe science guild, if these guys have the guild system already. Or Technicians guild. Could be a place to go to ask questions if we need more information about the time period."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin watches the readouts from several monitors at once. Keeping an eye on Bruce's labors is a little tricky; for one, she felt entirely rude about looking over his shoulder (literally or figuratively), but second-- Caitlin's learned a lot about the ins and outs of Kryptonian engineering, and it's hard to not needle him with minor corrections.

Her focus is entirely torn when the monitor starts blinking with errant bits of software code overwriting the graphics interface. "<Uh... having some computer issues here,>" Caitlin announces with a wary voice. "<Running a system diagnostic.>" The computer starts the analysis and crashes almost immediately. "<System diagnostics failed,>" she informs them.

"Uh.. ok, the interface is failing, which means the support functions are down," she mutters to herself. "But the hardware's working, which means the primary functions are still online. So if I come back at it--" her fingers are already working while she thinks aloud, switching into the ship's most basic processing access point and evaluating the code. She stares at it with a furrowed brow for most of thirty seconds before her eyes widen. A few commands are plugged in. The computer fights back. Caitlin makes another manual adjustment and the command log overflows with new code writing itself into the system in front of her eyes.

"Brainiac," she breathes, and hits the communication system. "<It's Brainiac Virus! It's overwriting the primary interface systems!>" she shouts. The redhead gets to her feet, almost tripping over them, and heads straight for the central computer core to start ripping out the corrupted dataplates to isolate the invasive code.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura is watching the same thing the others are seeing too. Those red eyes. "Uh.. yeah I see it. We should have enough data by now. But no, that can't be us. Our instruments are passive." The man next to her wonders what it is she's talking about as she turns around scanning the small town. She nods to Divine and then she sees the local town police trying to check his deputy android.

The android pulls his weapon and in the blink of an eye Alura is next to them and crushing the weapon and the androids hand. The red eyed being looks at Alura and in a single voice that echos across all the androids on the planet -- and the console in the ship, says:

Project P718> Another anomaly detect, probability impossibly low. Conclusion - Alien intervention on Krypton. Not my ally.

The cop looks back to where Alura was just standing and then to where she is now, "Thankin' ya but hodja do that then?" That answers one question she was wondering about, Conner too, just how 'super' are these people. Not nearly as much as Kryptonians become through genetic engineering.

"Brainiac?" Alura exclaims hearing that over the comms. One of Krypton's greatest failures, greatest mistakes. They say that time travel locks you in to pivotal moments in history and this is certainly one of them.

Project P718> Brainiac. Yes. I like that name.

Alura crushes the androids head casing and CPU inside. It was all instinct too - timeline and all that went straight out the window the moment she saw someone was in danger. And that's when all of them with super hearing can hear it - people crying out in pain all over the planet as they come under attack from androids controlled by Brainiac.

Worse still, Kal and Alura can hear the sirens and engines of missiles. Alura takes in a deep breath. "Timeline.." she says to herself, "Timeline.." But how can she possibly sit idly by when millions are about to die from a historical event she barely knows anything about.

Kal makes the choice for her. He looks to Conner and says, "Help anyone you can and then get back to the ship." He launches up in to the air and straight for the missiles.

Alura grimaces, the timeline will have to take a backseat. "Donna there's missile weapons being launched. Can you help? Divine - help anyone you can. Get back to the ship as soon as you can. We need to leave." She launches up in to the air too to help. Heck, timeline loop logic - for all she knows they were always destined to come back here.. right? RIGHT?!

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Missiles are a bit beyond her capability, but she's game to try. Definitely too fast for her to keep up with.. But she goes to make interception trajectories over in her head to try adn figure out the best way to get to them. Then she's moving to arc along and fly up and into the air to flank Donna and be backup.

While keeping her expression flat, but going along with orders. By her own definition here this may or may not count as something significant for an alteration. They won't find out no matter how it goes. At least ona sort of scale that makes sense. Whether or not they succeed!

She goes to hold her spear out in front of her, and is blasting up to try and meet the missiles at hte best point.. Presuming she can an dthey're far enough away she goes to just try to slash along at them to use the spear to try and hit their ailerons. Whatever part of them is used for adjustments to angle and pitch. Hwo they steer. She's not strong enough to take out the engines, or slam them into one another. Presuming she can..

THe best she can do is hit them and hope that it throws them off course enough so that they don't land anywhere there are people. She drops the mindlink; it's too chaotic to keep up in this. They'll have to rely onc omms.. Presuming that Brainiac doesn't take those out as well.

Divine has posed:
Divine doesn't know a damned thing about timelines, time loops, any of it. She knows what she knows in her heart. She knows that it's her duty to help people. She knows it's the calling of the House of El to spread hope. She knows she wants to be accepted and, yes, loved by these people that her brain is slowly starting to think of as family.

She looks to Alura and nods, rocketing off towards a nearby farm field in a blur of black, her long coat snapping out straight behind her. One of the farm drones, now aggressive, menaces its former keeper, coming at her with a wicked cultivation tool raised to do harm. The clone rockets upwards, angling sharply, only to dive rapidly, leading with that crystal headed speer and driving the thing point first through the top of the drone's head and driving it into the dirt.

"Go home. Quickly! You're all in danger. Go!"

She doesn't speak the language, but urgency is in her voice and she points back towards town. She swivels her head, and red beams lance out at another drone, boring a hole through its head.

"Go now!"

Conner Kent has posed:
It makes Conner a little sad the Kryptonians have missiles that they can shot to each other. That is something it would have been nice they did differently to Earth. Seriously.

Missiles are tricky. Real ICBMs fly almost as fast as his best speed. They might be easy for Superman, but Conner will be lucky if he can stop half a dozen before they hit something. "So, Brainiac was Krypton's Skynet..." he mutters, Bart is going to love this story. Assuming they can stop the apocalypse. "Are those nukes? Well, of course they would."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Brianiac?" Donna asks somewhat disbelievingly into the comms. "Was he around back then? I mean back now. I mean... we need new tenses to handle time travel. Cait! Focus, we know how to deal with this, and we've got advanced Kryptonian computers to help. 128-bit words, 1024 word data blocks. First seven bits of each block are the address of the fitness value for the self-modifying code. Scan through the data, look for blocks of seven zeroes at uh... 128 times... 24... base two and base ten suck. Uh... 3072... 131072, multiples of 131072 bits. Seven zeroes for genetic code still in testing for fitness, should be lots of them to identify block boundaries. Just need to flood the system with junk code with valid high fitness values at the location those seven bits point to. Vic's problem was figuring out how to get past the address encryption, but the ship's computers gotta be a whole lot better than the computers people are using here, right? Do your computer magic!"

    This would be easier if Nadia or Vic were here. Caitlin's more geneticist and engineer rather than computer specialist, but the redheaded Amazon's a good all-rounder. Donna has had a lot of faith in Caitlin's computer skills, ever since she first learned what computer viruses were in her first year in America and Caitlin miraculously healed her laptop. This is a very early iteration of the Brainiac code though -- perhaps it hasn't even thought to encrypt the fitness value locations yet.

    Perhaps this is /why/ Brainiac started encrypting those fitness value locations for the self-modifying code. In which case Victor Stone's hack of the Brainiac code is the reason why he had to work so hard hacking it in the first place. Don't do time travel, kids.

    All this talk over comms takes place as Donna and Monet streak into the sky, chasing missiles. Missiles are a bit big to deflect with your wrist bracers, but they're something you can wrangle if you have Amazonian strength and a lasso. If you don't...

    "Monet, look for the little nozzles on the side that keep firing. Break one off and they won't be able to course-correct. Don't try moving the entire missile, just hit 'em downwards at the engine end. Even a small movement there'll send them wildly off-course."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin grits her teeth, trying to do four things at once with two hands-- physically obstructing the attack vector, manually keeping the systems online, forming a counter-defense, and trying not to panic.

Finally she grabs her communicator and puts it up to her mouth. "<Donna, this is a lot easier to do if you're not COUNTING ALOUD!>" she berates her friend.

But she does pop her wrist computer loose and pulls down every relevant Kryptonian file she can-- including the Brainiac files Donna is referencing. The redhead hops back up and grabs her backpack off the cargo rack, tossing it aside and pulling out a box containing a Z-point construct: almost identical to the sunstones in the ship computer,actually. There's some jury-rigging of wires and inputs, hooking the unit back up to the Kryptonian computer system, and she connects her wrist monitor to the Z-point's graphic output.

"Linus Torvalds and Isidore of Seville, do me a solid here," she says around the screwdrive clenched in her teeth-- and the computer boots up with a single > arrow on the console.

Caitlin types in quickly and a glowing red eye looms on the monitor.

"<I can't do that, Caitlin,>" HAL 9000 announces.

"SIRYN, stop screwing around," Caitlin hisses at her companion AI. The screen immediately flickers to a UNIX interface. She starts running through bash commands. "Use this code fragment to look for the attack vector, and shut down the system. Once you've got the virus cordoned off, help me bypass the main console commands and establish the backup systems access."

SIRYN immediately gets to work, and Caitlin wipes sweat from her brow while typing furiously. She stops just long enough to step outside the exit ramp and fire a signal flare skywards for the others to key in on if the locator beacons go offline.

She heads back in and sits crosslegged and hunched over on the floor, tapping on a portal QWERTY keyboard. "Trapped on an alien world fifty thousand years in the past, and I'm trying to fly an alien spaceship with a kitbashed LINUX kernel. Why me?" she asks plaintively, of no one in particular.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Feynor Zen-El hears the sirens going off at the long range space telescope complex. It's too late to get to a bunker and everyone knows it. She decides she wants to see the sun one last time. Lifting off the ground, she floats out the big doors in to day time.

Staring up at the sky she can see a missile trailing across the sky - but then she sees something else. Is it a bird? is it a floating platform? is it a space shuttle? people can't fly up that high! - and yet. There is a fluttering cape and the person catches the missile. A blast of energy from their eyes and the missile stops rocketing. Then, the missile is tossed up out of the atmosphere.

The figure in the sky turns and Feynor Zen-El sees it. /El/ written plainly upon their chest. She feels her cheeks flush and her brain starts to race. The alien spaceship she saw and documented - they weren't aliens at all. They were us - us from the future, come back to save them from a nuclear apocalypse.

Alura races across the sky leaving lines on dopper tracking systems, criss crossing the sky with Kal as they scoop up missiles from vying land masses of Krypton. The planet is so full of life it's unrecognisable to Alura.

And when the dust has settled and the future heroes from Earth are done.. not a single missile has hit its target. The world now knows they exist and much like the first person to climb mount Everest, suddenly many people could replicate the feat; they have just seen several heroes the world over flying higher and faster than anyone before - and stopping nuclear weapons like it were a sport.

<<"Okay - I think we've done enough damage to the timeline. Please tell me you have the ship under control. Let's meet back there and get out of here.">> Alura says over the comms. She tries to justify what they just did. It was the right thing to do and really - no one knows what happened back in these distant times of Krypton's past. So may be this is what always happened. She turns and flies back to their - now not so hidden ship thanks to that flair. The timeline will have to look after itself today.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
The instruction comes in to Monet St. Croix as she goes to charg eup along, going to slash along the undersides of the rocket. Even with hyper-advanced technology (compared to Earth's, at least) things are still beholden some to physics. So she can make a small difference. Whether or not in the end it ends up being meaningful.. Well, that's only for the stars to know.

She pants and goes to pant as she moves to line up with the others. <<We have our objectives to accomplish>> This is said over the comms as Alura's command comes in. They gave these people hope, of a sort. Where one planet might simply be a barren wasteland there is a chance that they could change things.

She doesn't speak over of changing things, of the risks.. She goes along with the group back towards their ship in total silence. Where she has been somewhat chatty, or at least snarky along with the others.. Now, there is merelys ilence from her as they go to withdraw.

Divine has posed:
Divine busies herself with wrecking robots and leaving locals slackjawed in awe and possibly breaking a few hearts. She is, after all, a lot of woman. She wrenches the makeshift spear out of an inert drone and looks up, watching Superman and Alura criss cross the skies, taking out the missiles. Her heart swells. This is what her powers are for.

The comms come through, and she nods, waving to the local she just saved from the murderous robot, and zips back towards the ship. Sure, they may have messed with time, but they helped people. Maybe even inspired people. That's what they're supposed to do. They're the House of El.

She lands, entering the ship and setting the spear somewhere out of the way. "That was cool as hell."

Conner Kent has posed:
At the end Conner takes down perhaps ten missiles, which is more than he expected, but not much compared with what Kal and Alura had to do. They probably messed up with the weather patterns pretty badly moving so fast, but a few weeks of crazy weather is much better than nuclear mushrooms.

He returns to the ship looking tired and upset. Kryptonians are too much like humans, and that is not a good thing today.

Also, they have probably messed up the timeline ten times worse Astra did. What do they do now?

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I'm fighting /missiles/," Donna complains to Caitlin via comms. "...While trying to remember the details Vic worked out almost three years ago. Sorry that I can't multiply 128 by 1024 at the same time without taking a moment!" The bickering is all very good natured though, and very typical of the pair.

    After a while Donna and Monet settle on a good combination of their relative skills -- Monet knocking missiles off course and pointed more in the general direction of UP, to give more time for Donna to wrangle them in a more final way, wrestling them into an orbital trajectory where they'll be safe, at least in the immediate present. Eventually their sector of the missile barrage is overcome.

    Monet and Donna come back to the ship and a sense of dread that everyone must be sharing. Donna givesConner a nod of fellow feeling as she arrives -- chasing missiles is tiring, and the whole experience is a frustrating dive into the unknown. Have they done the right thing? Nobody knows the history of Krypton this far back. Maybe the missile attack is something that happened in their timeline, and there hadn't been a bunch of supers from Earth there to stop it? Ensuring a nascent Brainiac from getting its digital hands on a future Kryptonian sunstone timeship was almost certainly the right choice, but does it mean that back in their present Brainiac will be more hardened? Is it possible when they get back to the present they'll find that the Briainiac hack in 2020 didn't work and the Earth is destroyed?

    "Time travel is stupid," Donna complains. "Let's not do it again."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
The ship systems start coming back online sporadically. Stripped down clones of the Kryptonian interfaces, but at least functional (and more familiar to the non-Kryptonians on the vessel).

Caitlin rushes back and forth between the command console and the cribbed-together central core, dragging cables and wires this way and that as she and SIRYN manage to bypass and seal off the central core entirely.

"Right now it's gonna be a question of if we can even get into orbit, let alone back to our time," Caitlin tells Donna breathlessly between trips. She taps on the nav console, and when it doesn't respond, she leans back and gives it a heavy kick. The entire ship shudders and the console starts spitting out astrogation commands.

Caitlin slides into the pilot's seat and starts feeding power to the repulsors. The ship lifts off unsteadily and lurches skywards. Androids close on them menacingly. "Weapons are offline,' she announces. "I hope these things aren't space-capable, or it'll really put a crimp in our exit strategy."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura checks in on Bruce, "Did you recalibrate with the data?" He gives her a thumbs up back and she nods. She takes a seat at the time controls and looks at the time coordinates. "Huh. Okay. We have our destination. Do we have control of the ship?"

As Caitlin gets the ship up in to the air and back out in to space, she gives her a thumbs up too.

She stares at the read outs expecting to see a paradox spreading out from their visit much like the one Astra had created. But it's not there. No time ripples at all. "What in the.." She whispers that to herself and doesn't share this strange discovery. The implications that the universe is built upon paradoxes would require the kind of scientific exploration that'd put too many lives in jeopardy. This is a mystery best left unsolved for now.

"Let's never speak of this to anyone. Ever." All that sanctimonious talk about the timeline and the moment people were in danger they all threw it out the window. At least they didn't recreate Krypton-Nazi's like her sister did.

With Kal settled back on the Captain's chair, Alura gives him the nod. Everyone is accounted for and they have their destination. "/Fahtul/" Captain Kal-El says.

--

Some many unknown number of years later the time ship arrives where Astra Zor-El is about to change history.

Krypton is a sombre place. The red sun shines brightly but the people have had a harrowing revelation about their place in the universe. Which is to say - they don't have one. They have unanimously decided to stay home and focus inward instead of outward. The other guilds finally overruled the fighters build.

Space about Krypton was a grave yard of thousands of quiet dead ships all awaiting their turn to be decommissioned. Their parts broken down and their resources put in to the restoration of Krypton. Almost as soon as they arrive the Superfriends ship gets a message coming through.

"Another one? I didn't have you on my schedule. Doesn't matter. Just park it anywhere. I'll add it to the queue," says a tired looking man whose name badge says Gevik Tor. "Looks like it's had a bit of a battering eh? must have quite the story. Too bad it'll all be classified soon."

He sighs chatting friendly like to the strangers he doesn't know on the other end of the screen. "Our children's children will never need to know the horrors that await out in the universe. And yeah I know there are still some in the fighters guild who think we should keep fighting but - no. There's no way we can say sorry to all the people we hurt. We just have to make sure it -never- -happens- -again-." His communications shut off.