5043/Supergirl's Pilgrimage

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Supergirl's Pilgrimage
Date of Scene: 06 February 2021
Location: Courtyard: Themysciran Embassy
Synopsis: Kara tells Troia of her impending journey off planet and that the world will surely notice the lack of Kryptonians in the skies.
Cast of Characters: Kara Danvers, Donna Troy




Kara Danvers has posed:
    While technically Titan's business, this was much more personal than a team meeting. The logistics, too, are an important thing to consider. It's not every day all the Kryptonians on the planet up and leave for a period. People will notice, they're too public not to be missed.
    Kara Zor-El stands amidst the overgrown shrubbery that lends the courtyard of the Themysciran embassy an entirely Greek flavour that Kara finds delightful. Her fingertips brush over the plants even as she listens to the gentle trickle of a fountain.

    She is a sight, dressed in a long flowing white dress with white cape pinned at each shoulder. Over the left of her chest is her family crest in red, blue, and gold. Her long hair is down and free and her expression looks - relaxed. She made a decision and now that it is made there is only forwards, as is the Kara way.

    Seeing Troia approach her blue eyes turn to greet her and a friendly smile is offered. "Troia," she says, "/ehrosh :bem/" Her white slippers tread on the ground gently as she approaches and offers her hands, "Thank you for meeting me here." This is a rare glimpse of the Kryptonian truly at ease with who she is and where she is. Not Kara Danvers, not Supergirl. Simply Kara Zor-El blended a bit with Earth. Her home.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna looks to Kara with an expression of mild surprise that quickly gives way to a smile. "/ehrosh :bem/," she replies, a glint in her eyes. "Kara, I have never seen you dressed like this before. It looks good on you, and it suits the location. You'd blend in very well back home."

    She glances back to the embassy proper before walking up the path from the lobby to joing Kara in the center of the courtyard, and offers Kara a hug. "Sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm sure you can imagine things are a little hectic here at the moment." It had indeed seemed a little busy in the embassy when Kara had arrived, with the American staff looking slightly harrassed, the phones ringing continually, and an unfamiliar group of Amazons standing in the middle of it all talking in hushed Themysciran Greek. Kara's lessons have a long way to go, but she could tell they were discussing guard duty schedules for Diana. If Kara had been to the Halls of Justice lately, she might have bumped into an Amazon contingent there too.

    Donna herself looks a little tired, but perhaps a bit less stressed than she has been looking the last few days. She brushes a hand over a low wall to clear any dirt that may have accumulated there before taking a seat, her back to the fountain. "If you were worried I wouldn't get a message, I may be a bit behind on answering calls from the media, but I am answering calls on the T-Com promptly. But if it's something you felt that was better to talk about face-to-face -- I'll always make time for a friend. What can I do for you, Kara?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
    Kara returns the hug and also give Troia's hand a small squeeze. "Yes, it is quite the hive of activity here today," she says pausing to make sure she got that idiom right. Not that Troia is necessarily the best judge when it comes to English world idioms either. "I do hope Diana is okay.. somehow I feel it's my responsibility all these doppelgangers have been unleashed on our world."

    She lets out a small sigh, but then sits down next to her. "Thank you though, this is clothing from home. Well, as best as I could recreate it. From Argo City where I was born and raised. That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about." She rubs the back of her neck a touch and says, "Unsurprisingly related to the doppelgangers too..."

    An almost resigned look crosses her face and she says, "On that other world, Argo City survived the destruction of Krypton and flew to Earth to help them fight ZZGU. My parents.. they made that happens. If they could survive in one timeline, then.... why not here too?"

    There's that hope in her eyes again, "I have been talking with my family. We are going to fly to Oa and find out what they know about the destruction of Krypton -- and then we are flying to Krypton's remains. If... if I am very lucky then perhaps Argo City survived and I can find it and I can find my parents," she says and gulps at that prospect.

    "I don't know how long I'll be gone. But the world is sure to notice I'm not around. I'm often front page news in one newspaper or website or another... and my cousin." She furrows her eyebrows, "It couldn't be a worse time with all these doppelgangers. Criminals will take advantage of our absence..."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna listens thoughtfully to Kara's story without interruptions, nodding her head a little when Kara is finished laying out her plans and her thoughts. She takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. "There's never a perfect time, Kara. If you wait until one problem is solved, another will turn up. If you leave later, you'll come back later too. On the other hand we are in a better position now than we were a year ago, when your cousin was presumed dead and there were no Titans. If there is any chance your parents are out there somewhere, you should find out."

    She reaches out a hand and gives Kara's arm a squeeze. "I don't want to raise your hopes too high, but... we have little evidence of major differences between their universe and ours aside from the fact that ZZGU didn't reach Earth in our universe. It may be that there is a greater divergence beyond the Earth itself between the two universes, but it's a good possibility. It's worth exploring. You're taking Kal and your... Power Girl with you?"

    She stands suddenly and takes a few steps away, approaching a statue of a woman with an owl on her shoulder that is half hidden amid the shrubbery and sighs softly. "I'll worry," she says. "Space is a strange and confusing place." She gives a short laugh and looks back, grinning a little ruefully. "Under other circumstances I would offer to accompany you, but I really can't leave right now - and I suspect this is something you'd rather keep in the family. If that latter part isn't a great concern, perhaps you should consider asking Caitlin if she would be willing to accompany you."

    " One thing I learned during my time wandering space is that a good engineer is invaluable to have along. Yes, I know Kryptonian science is more advanced than human science, but Caitlin has experience dealing with extra-terrestrial systems, and there's a gap between theory and practical engineering that she could help close."

Kara Danvers has posed:
    Kara nods her head, "I'm trying to temper my expectations -- Troia there is something else too. We have been told that the Oans once waged war against Krypton." There's a look of puzzlement on her face briefly and she says, "I got top grades in history class and I don't remember ever being told about a war with the Oans. Apparently it was in our space empire days. That was a very very long time ago. Not much is written about that period. If they hold a grudge... well, I'm sure we will be fine."

    She smiles at the arm squeeze and says, "Yes.. my Power Girl." There is a bright grin of amusement on her face and says, "My sister." She nods her head as if to declare it so for Troia in case she had any doubts that the older woman who looked so much like her could be anything else.

    "You are an amazing woman Troia. You are rooted in this planets history and future. Somehow I do not think Amazons were meant for the exploration of space. Kryptonians however.. we're apparently very good at it. And while /rao/ smiles upon me ~ ahem.. metaphorically. I may go where I please. But even if I do find my parents Troia, Earth is now home. In the best possible scenario I may have two homes and long commutes. I may finally have to learn how to fly superluminal correctly."

    "This... is a family pilgrimage Troia. I will spend the long hours in space considering my home and sharing stories with those in my house who never had the privilege of seeing it. I am preparing myself for the worst and hoping for the best."

    "As for engineers - well it seems my family have settled on hiring the Guardians of the Galaxy for this trip. They have a good ship, a solid crew.. and yes may be they are extremely rough around the edges but who am I to judged? I think we will be okay. They are mercenary. So long as we're paying them I think we can count on them. May be I will be able to convince the small furry one that not all of Krypton is extinct."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna gives a short laugh. "Rocket is an interesting one, for sure," she says. "I wouldn't go as far as to say you can /count/ on them though, they seem more chaotic than Terry. However you can count on each other, and I think so long as you keep a close eye on them the Guardians of the Galaxy will pull through. They are rogues, but their hearts are in the right place. Even the furry one, though he'd hate to hear me say it."

    She looks back from the statue with a thoughtful half-smile. "You know, I think you're both very right and possibly entirely wrong about Amazons not being meant for the exploration of space, but that's a story for another time. Kal and Green Lantern seem to get on just fine, so I doubt there's too much of a grudge there. You, your sister, and your cousin have not been conquering worlds, you have been defending them. What little I have heard of the Oans, I doubt they would hold an ancient war fought against your ancestors against you. "

    She steps away from the statue to face Kara again, resting her hands gently on Kara's arms. "Tell me, Kara. Tell me about /rao/, last believer in him who may not be the last believer in him after all. You said before that it is also the name of your sun, so he is a solar deity, I assume?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
    Kara nods her head, "Yes I got that impression from them too. For all their complaining and pretences at chaos, it does seem like they set out to do good. Perhaps they'll figure out how to achieve it sometime soon." A little tongue in cheek she looks at the beautiful statue for a moment and then nods her head, "Yes you'd hope so. The Green Lanterns are not the Oans and the Oans are not the Green Lanterns. So hopefully there is no issue and if there is -- that the Green Lanterns will see that justice is done."

    There's a tough of delight when she is asked about her religion. She leans in to Troia just a touch and says, "That's right. Ancient Krypton was a very superstitious place, much like Earth is now. We had a sun god named /rao/ and that became synonymous with sunlight and ended up being the name we gave our sun when we became scientifically minded enough to understand the difference between fact and fiction."

    "To keep the traditions and faith alive we have the Mediator Guild, which I suppose on Earth would be considered the religious guild. There are many gods but rao is the supreme god amongst them, the creator of all things. So the fables go.." She grins a touch.

    "The worship of our gods is an every day affair, attributing them to parts of our lives, like the Nightwing and Flamebird. It is said that they choose vessels to live amongst us. The Mediator Guild would say the troubles of Krypton and Earth are tests set by rao, but that is more the Cult of Rao speaking than what most Kryptonians believe..."

    "I suppose, the easiest way for me to explain rao is to tell you our prayer... /wahn rroshu solo kryp, sern i shesuruju w kryp fah rao :jevia :divi, nim kryp zhadif ahvrigahjah zw kryp zhadif udolkhehdia, thronivahjah kryp w fah tiv rao i ighai, daogh rao w kryp vo ukiem kryp w iovis, chad rao w kryp i raogrhys rrem kehpahjah raogrhys, krym rao w kryp fis doliause tahn, skiloruju aovehmuju rao - ukiemuju rao, throniv rao w kryp vrrahdh throniv kryp w uju, rrofish kryp - rao i shom - :divil chao ighai/"

    She pauses a moment to consider how to translate it, "Though we Kryptonians go forth alone, our souls unite us under Rao's loving light. We are never lost, never afraid, for we shrink not under the illumination of righteousness. Rao binds us to those we love, and gives us strength when we have none. And in the darkest places guides us. For rao sees all, feels all, their love eternal."

    She pauses again and then nods her head as she says the most important part, "Rao protect us, so that we may protect others. We shall rise, a fire in .." she stops and looks puzzled, "this is less poetic, the field of energy a sun produces in the quantum realm.. uh.. there is no word for it in English. I'll say.... We shall rise, a fire in rao's hearth, burning and free."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna frowns with concentration as Kara recites the prayer, but most of it is beyond her. /:divil chao ighai... a cleansing light?" she asks. "No, /chao/... the conjuction is... 'light of cleanliness'? Something like that?"

    She steps away a little and smiles softly. "I will miss our lessons, Kara. And our training. Most of all I will miss your presence. You have become a good friend. But I believe this is something that you need to do, and please do not convince yourself that you have any responsibility for unleashing these doppelgangers on our world. They did that all by themselves. We will deal with them."

    "There are those who claim that the gods derive their power from the faith of their followers. They would argue that the reason the gods of my people play such a small role in the mortal world these days is because they have so few followers compared to the past. I don't believe this is so." She nods her head towards Athena. "There are few outside my sisterhood who give thanks to Athena by name these days, and yet... Athena is a goddess of wisdom, and so perhaps every time anyone silently wishes for the wisdom to know what to do, they make a prayer to Athena, unknowing. If these deities, be they Themysciran or Kryptonian, are bound to such abstract ideas, they receive prayers even when the do not have followers, I think. And we know there may be more than one god who might share such abstractions. We have both met Thor and know he can command the lightning, yet that too is Zeus' domain, and Diana and Cassandra are his daughters. Both exist, and apparently there is no contradiction."

    "Perhaps then, every time someone gives thanks for the warmth of the sun on their face, be they a Kryptonian or Tamaranean or just a human who gains no particular powers from the sun beyond what heat and light provides, they are making a prayer to the abstract concept of the sun, and they give a prayer and give strength to /rao/, and to Apollo, and perhaps countless other solar gods. Tell me, does /rao/ have a sister? Apollo's sister is particularly important to me."

Kara Danvers has posed:
    "I suppose the closest translation might be 'pure energy'? But, it doesn't matter. You're doing very well learning Kryptonian," she says with a genuine look of delight. I shouldn't be gone more than a week.. two at most. Oa itself is farther away from Earth than Krypton. It's quite the detour, but my family insisted we go there. So, we're going there."

    "I don't really know the inner workings of Kryptonian theology, that is not a guild I am part of. I do know that it's a strange coincidence that a prayer on Krypton has so much relevance to me here on Earth." She shakes her head and twists her lips. "Anyway I shouldn't dwell on that idea too much. If my parents are alive -- I may be longer."

    She shakes her head, "No. /rao/ is not gendered like the deities on Earth. Gender plays a lesser role in Kryptonian society. Though, we do have our own odd throwbacks and anachronisms. For instance, women are named after their father. My father is Zor-El, so I am Kara Zor-El."

    "If I had a brother, such as, Kaon.. he'd be called Kaon-El. Strange, but tradition. I think it's easy to personify the gods with genders but that way probably introduces biases and problems. For instance, the god Cythonna is one of cold and ice and hated all that is fire and life. You can read in to the stories -- space bad, Krypton good. Like I said, they come from an ancient superstitious culture."

    "So no, rao is not male, nor female.. and rao has no sisters. Rao is not a 'person' in the way your gods are. Nor a concept. If anything, some historians like to believe rao, nightwing, flamebird, yuda, cythonna, aethyr, and vohc were aliens who helped found our civilisation. There must be a link between our worlds.." she motions to you and to her, "After all, look at us. We look so similar."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "The same could be said of our gods," Donna agrees with a nod. "In that they are not entirely human, they could be said to be alien, though I suspect they were born on Earth. The mother of all our gods is Gaea, who represents the world itself. They certainly helped to found our civilization. Asgardians too fit the description."

    "Perhaps the best way to view it is that certain elder species developed a different kind of relationship with the universe than the vast majority. There are mortals - metahumans, or sorcerers, or mutants or whatever - who's power rivals at least some of the lesser gods, but it's not quite the same, I think. It seems to me almost like we mortals are overlayed on the universe, a part of it but separate, while the gods are in some way beyond our understanding a fundamental part of the universe. "

    Donna gives a small shrug, glances back at the statue and sits down again. "Our gods - the Greek pantheon - more closely resembles what we think of as people than do some more abstract pantheons. The Asgardians share that. They have defined personalities, they have emotions and drives. They can act out of pure self-interest or from the greatest altruism. In short, they may be gods, but they are also people. I would suspect that must be the reality of any gods. If you see your gods in more abstract fashion despite the fact that they have names they call each other by, I suggest that perhaps that abstraction is in the way your people have come to see them over the years, and that if you met them they would seem more like people than you anticipate. You might even discover that they have genders, and sisters," She grins a little.

    Donna stretches her arms and looks up to the sky. "Being in space taught me that aliens are essentially all people, and there are more similarities than differences. That first day - we had just driven Warworld away, and a few hours later we were sitting in a hut eating stew and drinking beer with a very jovial Warzoon. In the Titans we have a Kryptonian, an Akiar, and a Tamaranean, and there is far more that connects us than that sets us apart. Perhaps that's just because people are people, however they look, but it is interesting just how similar our species appearance is, isn't it? And not just Human and Kryptonian, it seems to be the most popular design. We were continually being confused for other species. Rann, Kree, Daxamite, Euphorian, Tharrian, there are a bunch of races that all look pretty much the same. Makes you wonder if someone didn't arrange it all, hmm?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
    Kara chuckles a little and shakes her head, "No.. arrange? I think that a species a long time ago travelled the stars and settled here there and everywhere. Who knows what races descend from Krypton too.. after all we had an empire that spanned the galaxy."

    She frowns a moment and says, "So strange to think of that. Krypton is just Krypton. We had no other colonies in our collective in my time. I often wonder how we managed to go from vast empire to a single planet. Perhaps it was for the best. I look at Maxima and the way she behaves and it worries me, not even Zod thinks that way and he was born for war."

    She wraps an arm about Troia and gives her a snug. "So.. this is me, saying I am off very soon. Within a few days most likely. I'll be thinking of you and all our friends here on Earth as I travel. No matter what you say I will continue to worry about this little blue planet I call home. In the three years I've been here it's grown on me quite a lot. All the colours and cultures and languages and art and music..." her tone becomes very fond.

    Then she pats Troia's leg and stands up, "Give me a hug. It is the Human way," she says with a grin and opens her arms up. "If the news starts to wonder where all the Kryptonians have gone.. well.. let's just hope it doesn't come to that. Also.. if Dru-Zod turns up looking for us, let him know where we have gone." Something about the Zod on the other planet got her thinking about his motives and who he really is. "I wouldn't want him to think we'd abandoned him," she adds with a playful wink.

Donna Troy has posed:
"The media can be very importunate," Donna says with a laugh. "I'm sure they will notice before long that you're not around. If you would like I will release an annoucement on your behalf once your absence has been noticed, just so that people know you're on the way back. I've been considering catching a few crooks dressed in Diana's armor just to confuse the press, to be honest."

    It's easy to guess that there's more to her thinking than confusing the press, but the fact she's making a joke of it suggests she probably doesn't want to be thinking too much about her thinking.

    "If you wish me to inform the rest of the Titans, I will do that for you," she says with a smile. "And I shall inform some others too. I shall pray for you to Apollo, and perhaps /rao/ will hear my prayer too, and shine his light to guide you. I shall also pray to Artemis, goddess of the hunt and of the wilderness, that your hunt in the wilderness between the stars bears fruit. I identified closely with her when I was younger, and perhaps if I cannot go with you, my prayers to her can go with you in my stead."

    She gets to her feet with a smile and meets Kara's hug with a tight squeeze, lifting the Kryptonian off the ground a touch with her enthusiasm. "/dhagiehr-u wis rip, dhagiehr voi, Kara Zor-El/" she says.

Kara Danvers has posed:
    Kara nods her head, "That will suffice. I do not mind people know who can be trusted. Our friends, the Titans, that makes a lot of sense to me Troia." She smiles and says, "I need that, someone who can pretend to be me when I'm not available." She grins and says, "Oh well, I guess I'm one of a kind.." or three.

    Kara dips her head and says, "Thank you." Then she looks quite surprised and smiles extremely wide, "Very good Troia. I think you may have accidentally used the correct wording there but let us hope this journey isn't an epic." She winks and pats Troia's shoulder, then looks up in to the sky and lifts a hand as she shoots off up up and away.

    The wind whips about as it is pushed around suddenly before it settles once more, the wake of her launch making the bushes rustle until the courtyard garden is once again tranquil.