Chapter 11: FIELD TEST
[National City, Downtown District — October 2016, 2:34 PM]
The alarms cut through our training session like a knife through paper.
Kara's head snapped toward the DEO building, listening to something beyond human—or Daxamite—range. Her expression shifted from instructor to hero in the space between heartbeats.
"Alien attack. Downtown." She was already moving toward the roof's edge. "Stay here."
She launched into the sky before I could respond.
I didn't stay.
The decision wasn't conscious—my body moved before my brain engaged, following her trajectory from the rooftop to the street below. I couldn't fly properly, but I could jump. Building to building, using the strange strength to propel myself in controlled arcs, covering ground in a way that would have terrified my old human self.
By the time I reached the downtown district, chaos had already erupted.
The attacker was massive—eight feet tall, covered in iridescent scales that reflected the afternoon sun in nauseating patterns. It swung arms thick as tree trunks at everything within reach, sending cars tumbling like toys. People screamed, scattered, fled in every direction.
Kara engaged from the air, heat vision cutting across the creature's back. The scales absorbed most of the energy—the thing roared but didn't fall. She switched to direct strikes, hammering it with punches that would have leveled buildings.
The creature barely staggered.
I landed on a crashed car, assessing the situation. The attacker was strong, tough, and seemed resistant to Kara's standard approach. She was winning through attrition, but the fight was taking too long. Every second meant more property damage, more risk to civilians.
A tactical part of my brain—the part that had been watching too many combat scenes and analyzing them for weaknesses—noticed something. The creature favored its left side. Protected it. Turned to keep attackers away from that flank.
Weak point.
I moved before I could second-guess myself. Sprinted across the debris field, using enhanced speed I hadn't fully tested. The world blurred at the edges. I tackled the creature from behind, aiming for the left side, putting everything into the impact.
My TK-enhanced strength hit like a freight train.
The creature staggered. Actually staggered. Its balance broke and it stumbled sideways, scales scraping against asphalt.
Then it recovered.
A massive arm caught me across the chest. I went through a car windshield—glass exploding around me, metal crumpling—and slammed into something solid on the other side. Pain lanced through my back.
Focus. Don't panic.
I pushed myself up. Glass shards fell from my clothes, my skin—the cuts were already healing, the TK field having absorbed most of the impact. Hurt like hell, but nothing permanent.
The creature had turned toward me. Kara used the opening, diving down to land a devastating blow on its exposed weak spot. The scales cracked. The creature howled.
But it wasn't done.
It charged—not at Kara, but at something behind me. I turned and saw—
A child. Frozen in the street. A little girl, maybe six years old, clutching a stuffed animal, eyes wide with terror.
Her mother was screaming from the sidewalk, blocked by debris, unable to reach her daughter.
The creature was faster than me. Stronger than me. I didn't have time to intercept it, didn't have the flight ability to close the distance, didn't have anything except the desperate knowledge that a child was about to die.
I threw myself between them anyway.
Grabbed the girl. Curled around her. Turned my back to the creature and focused—focused on the TK field, on protecting not just myself but the person I was holding, on extending that warmth beyond my skin to wrap around her like armor.
The impact hit my spine like a sledgehammer.
The world went white with pain. I heard something crack—the ground beneath us, I hoped, not my bones. My vision swam. My arms tightened around the small body in my grip.
The girl was crying. Screaming. But she was alive. Unhurt. The TK field had held.
Another impact—Kara, driving the creature away from us with a fury I hadn't seen from her before. The thing crashed through a storefront, shattered a support column, didn't get back up.
Silence fell. The ringing in my ears made it hard to hear anything else.
Hands grabbed my shoulders—the girl's mother, pulling her daughter away from me, clutching her child with desperate relief.
"Thank you," she gasped. Her face was streaked with tears and dust. "Thank you, thank you, thank you—"
I nodded. Couldn't speak. The pain in my back made breathing difficult. I watched her carry her daughter away, watched the child look back at me over her mother's shoulder with wide, confused eyes.
I'd saved her. Actually saved someone.
The feeling that settled in my chest wasn't pride exactly. Something deeper. More fundamental. Like a key fitting into a lock I hadn't known existed.
"Mon-El."
Kara stood over me. Her expression was complicated—anger, concern, something else I couldn't identify.
"That was incredibly stupid," she said.
"She was going to die."
"You could have died."
"But I didn't." I tried to stand. My back screamed in protest. I made it halfway before my legs decided to stop cooperating. "Okay. Maybe I'm a little hurt."
Kara caught my arm before I could fall. Supported my weight without visible effort.
"DEO medical," she said. "Now."
She didn't lecture me during the flight back. Didn't say anything at all. Just held me steady as National City blurred beneath us, the afternoon sun warm on my face, the pain in my back settling into a dull throb.
I'd made my first save.
It hurt like hell. Worth every second.
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