The Supergirl Inversion

 It was another beautiful day in São Paulo. Isabella Torres, known to some as Supergirl Isabella and to others as simply Supergirl, was having lunch on the outside patio of an upscale restaurant. Her dining companions were her mother, known and feared worldwide as Supergirl Adrianna, mistress and tyrant of South America, and Isabella’s best friend Mindy, known and feared across São Paulo as an incorrigible gossip.

Supergirl Adrianna enjoying a glass of wine

Isabella was the only child to have been born to a Supergirl and had begun the transformation on her 25th birthday like the rest. However, unlike the others, her morality had not been consumed by the incredible power she had gained. She was, to the eternal embarrassment of her mother, a “good” Supergirl. She had refused to participate in the bloody ceremony required to join the League of Supergirls and take a place as one of the undisputed rulers of the world. A decision that had nearly cost her own life and that of her mother.

She and the League maintained an awkward equilibrium. She didn’t directly confront them and they didn’t interfere with her acts of heroism. Finding a way to live as a superheroine in a world ruled by a clique of evil goddesses - one of whom was her mother - was the impossible challenge Isabella had faced for the last year.

She’d been nervous about introducing Mindy to her mother. She tried to keep her relationship to the woman who claimed South America as her personal domain a secret, although the striking resemblance between the mother-daughter superwomen made the truth obvious to anyone with two brain cells in hand. Mindy was one of the few she’d explicitly told, but this was the first time the two women had met. To Isabella’s surprise, Mindy didn’t appear to be frightened of or intimidated by the notorious Supergirl Adrianna. The two women were conversing like old friends over glasses of wine and plates of seafood. Adrianna seemed charmed by the energetic young woman and her offbeat - largely purple - sense of fashion.

“What about this Lucas you told me about last time?” Adrianna asked Isabella. “Your downstairs neighbor. How are things going? Is he satisfying your superwomanly needs?”

Isabella groaned. She’d known that questions about her love life - or lack thereof - were inevitable but that didn’t make them any more comfortable.

Mindy laughed. “Oh, Lucas couldn’t keep up with your spitfire daughter.”

“Did you break him?” Adrianna seemed excited by the prospect of her daughter hurting an innocent man. She obviously held out hope that Isabella would see the dark and turn away from her path of righteousness.

“Just bruises, mother,” said Isabella.

“To his body and his ego,” said Mindy. “The funniest part is that he never figured out Isabella was a Supergirl. He’s having sex with an inexhaustible 6’5” goddess who can control his climax with her vagina, and he never realizes who she is because Isabella sometimes wears glasses.”

Adrianna shook her head. “I applaud you finding a himbo, but you must realize one man alone cannot satisfy a Supergirl. It’s simply too much to ask of him, physically and mentally. You need at least four available at all times. Then you can make a rota.”

Isabella blushed as Mindy cackled.

“I am not going to start a harem in my apartment!”

“Your loss,” said Adrianna. “I couldn’t survive without my boy toys.”

“Yeah, and some of them don’t survive you,” said Isabella, harshly.

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. I’m not like Supergirl Tania fucking every other man she meets to death. I treat my playthings very well and I rarely break them.”

The cruelty and death toll inflicted by the League had risen disturbingly since the disappearance of the genocidal extremist Supergirls, Victoria and Eden. That rise in brutality had stalled and actually reversed after the events of earlier in the year. Three Supergirls were dead. Their killer - Supergirl Katerina - was unconscious and imprisoned. Supergirl Onyx had become the first to ever resign from the League. The Supergirls had been shocked back to their baseline evil. It was a relief that Supergirl Tania had gone back to merely crushing lovers between her super-strong thighs rather than wiping out whole villages.

Adrianna had told Isabella about Katerina’s actions but had left out details that she was incredibly curious about. How had Katerina killed Zoe and Celina so quickly without destroying Buenos Aires and Warsaw in the process? Isabella had seen Freja on TV wearing the alternate black bodysuit costume for the first time. When she'd asked her mother about it Adrianna had said it was to hide the scar from Katerina's attack. How had Katerina been able to cut a Supergirl so badly that it left a scar? How had Chao-Xing immobilized Katerina? Why did Adrianna look at her daughter so oddly when Isabella mentioned something nice that “Auntie” Chao-Xing had said or done? The answers were not forthcoming. The renegade Supergirl might be tolerated but she would never be trusted.

Adrianna glared at her empty glass. “Where is that damn waiter?”

“I think he’s a little scared,” said Mindy.

“He should be bloody terrified if he makes me wait much longer for a refill.”

“Please don’t kill the waiter,” said Isabella. “We’re having a nice lunch and murder would ruin the vibe.”

“Fine,” said Adrianna. “Gen-Z and your damn vibes. I won’t kill him, but I will put the fear of a goddess into him.”

She got up and strode into the restaurant: 6’5” of divinely beautiful rage with the power to annihilate entire cities, focused entirely on one lowly waiter who had dared to take care of his straining bladder instead of topping up Adrianna’s wine.

Isabella put her head in her hands and tried not to scream.

Isabella is frustrated with her mother

“How are you holding up, Izzy?” asked Mindy. “Your mother is… a lot.”

“That’s the understatement of the year. Some kids say their parents are bad, but my mother is literally one of the most evil women on the planet. But I love her. It’s like trying to square a circle. I don’t know how to do that without going insane. Can I tell you a secret?”

Mindy leaned forward eagerly, her violet eyes sparkling with mischief and curiosity. Secrets were her favorite snack and Isabella should have known better than to feed her.

“Of course, that’s what besties are for. Dish, girl.”

“Most of the time, I wish the other Supergirls were more like me but sometimes I wish I was more like them. It would be so much easier if I didn’t care about doing the right thing. Does that make me an awful person?”

Mindy laughed and kept laughing to the point where it started to make Isabella uncomfortable.

“It’s not funny!” said Isabella. “I feel horrible thinking such things.”

“Oh sweetie, it’s fine. You want them to be like you and you want to be like them. I say: why not both?”

There was a flash of violet light and Mindy disappeared, leaving behind a puff of purple smoke.

“What the hell?”

Isabella felt strange. The city suddenly looked, smelled, and sounded different. There were more people eating on the patio now but theirs had been the only occupied table moments before. The street below was busier, more colorful, and more joyful somehow. There was a street musician playing Beatles covers. The League had killed all the street musicians in São Paulo while Isabella was growing up as part of their zero-tolerance policy on anyone who might endanger the only child born to a Supergirl. The people of São Paulo seemed… happy.

Adrianna was sitting back in her chair as if she’d never left - Isabella hadn’t noticed her return.

“Did you see what happened to Mindy?” asked Isabella.

“Who’s Mindy?”

The table was set for two, not three, as if Mindy had never been there.

Isabella now noticed that her mother was dressed differently than she had a moment ago. Her tight black skirt and silver leather corset had been replaced by a golden yellow sun dress. Adrianna was quite capable of using her super-speed for a quick change, but Isabella had never seen her wearing something so cheerful.

Supergirl Adrianna in a sundress

“Are you feeling all right, dear? I know this year has been hard for you, but I’m so proud of how you’ve managed to restrain yourself over the last few months. We all are.”

Adrianna frowned.

“Although I do wish you wouldn’t wear that horrible costume underneath your regular clothes. I don’t know what Chao-Xing was thinking when she made it for you.”

Isabella felt the tight embrace of a hyper-latex bodysuit against her body underneath her jeans and tee-shirt. But she hadn’t been wearing it a moment ago - she rarely wore the bodysuit Chao-Xing had given her for her birthday, because of the way the bulletproof skintight material pressed against her intimate areas, arousing her already powerful sexual urges to new heights. She preferred to stick with her crop top and miniskirt combo. Both of her outfits were blue, red, and gold rather than the traditional black and silver of the League.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Before Adrianna could respond, she suddenly tilted her head the way she did when her super-hearing had picked up something interesting.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, but duty calls. A school bus ran off a bridge into the river!”

What was her mother planning to do? Was she going to ditch lunch with her daughter to slaughter a bus full of children? The mental image of using her heat vision to boil children alive while they tried to swim to safety flashed before Isabella’s eyes and she smiled at the thought of their helpless screams. A warmth grew in her loins at the idea of such pointlessly cruel slaughter.

Adrianna sprang to her feet. In a blur of super-speed she changed into a Supergirl costume, but it was blue, red, and gold. The other diners saw the transformation and cheered as Supergirl Adrianna soared up and away to save the day.

Supergirl Adrianna in blue and red

A knot of anxiety lodged in Isabella’s chest. She pulled the collar of her tee-shirt aside and checked the colors of her bodysuit: black and silver.

There was a flash of light, a tiny fanfare, and a small burst of confetti, in the midst of which, Mindy reappeared. Isabella noticed for the first time how utterly odd Mindy’s outfit was: purple suit, purple blouse, purple shoes, purple tie, and a miniature purple top hat perched at an impossible angle on her head. Her hair and eyes were also purple. It was all just too much purple for one person.

“Hey, Izzy! I bet you want me to tell you what’s going on. Do ya? Do ya?”

“What the fucking fuck did you do?” snarled Isabella.

“Watch the anger, Izzy. You don’t want to get into trouble. You’re already on probation. Double super secret probation."

“Who are you?”

Mindy crossed her legs and floated in mid-air above the table.

Mindy

“I’m your best friend, Mindy!”

She suddenly clutched her head in agony.

“Ow! Serves me right for trying to lie. I can’t digest dishonesty. The truth is I only arrived in your universe thirty minutes ago. I inserted myself into your personal timeline as your best friend. You’ve known me for six months, if you believe your memories, which you really shouldn’t!”

“How can you mess with my mind like that? Why is my mother suddenly acting like a superheroine and why is my costume black?”

Mindy cackled. “Oh, it’s just about the oldest gag in the book: criss-cross! Have you seen Strangers on a Train? This isn’t one of the universes where Hitchcock died young - I checked. I rewrote the history of your world - well, the last forty years - in the blink of an eye! I did what you wished for: the other Supergirls are more like you and you’re more like them. They’re good and you’re evil. Cross-cross! Isn’t that hilarious?”

“That’s impossible,” said Isabella.

“Not for Ms. Mindy Mxyapkix!”

She pulled a business card from her hat and presented it to Isabella. It was blank apart from a purple capital M. She snapped it back before Isabella could touch it and concealed it in her miniature top hat.

“Don’t ask me to spell that and definitely don’t ask me to say it backwards because then I’ll have to go home to the fifth dimension and undo all my good work. I’m an imp and your fourth-dimensional reality is clay in my hands.”

“You’re an imp?”

Mindy shrugged. “It used to be a slur but we reclaimed it. ‘Imp’ isn’t the headline, Izzy. Did you miss the fifth-dimensional part? I’m from a higher dimension and the entire history of your world is laid out in front of me like sandwich fixings and I can arrange them any way I like."

“Why would you do this?”

Mindy laughed. “Why else? For the lulz! Oops, your mommy is on her way back. Catch up with you later, bestie! Try to stay out of Supergirl jail!”

Mindy vanished again in a puff of lilac-scented purple smoke. A moment later, Adrianna returned, changed back into her sundress, sat in her chair, and took a sip of wine.

“Ugh, too warm!”

“Don’t take it out on the waiter,” said Isabella.

Her mother looked at her with a curious expression on her face. “Why would I do that? I can see the staff are rushed off their feet. Besides, I can always cool things down myself.”

Adrianna pursed her lips and blew a tiny puff of freezing super-breath towards her wine using a fine level of control she had never bothered with before. When she used her freezing breath, it was usually on an entire crowd of innocent people. She took another sip of her wine.

“Perfect. Now, where were we?”

“We were talking about my romantic misadventures, at least that’s the way I remember it.”

Adrianna frowned. “Yes, well... The others aren’t very keen on letting you keep a harem, but they’re willing to allow it as long as the men are willing participants, that you don’t hurt them, and you allow them to leave at any time. If you abide by those rules, then it’s just polyamory with extra steps. Tania knows some good-looking boys who are into submission. She says she’ll reach out and see if any are interested. She'll play up the 'dark goddess' angle.”

Isabella wanted to ask so many questions about this new world and her place in it but she didn’t want to spook her mother. In the end, she decided to keep her questions within the family.

“Have you talked to dad recently?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I asked Bruno to come today but he’s still not comfortable being around you. He loves you, of course, but he can’t get over the things he saw you do. He’s haunted by the idea that it’s his fault, that something he did while we were raising you is why you became…”

“A monster,” said Isabella. “In this world I’m a monster. You and dad are together, though?”

Adrianna laughed and raised her left hand to show off a simple wedding ring with a single emerald. “Of course we are! 26 years and counting. It’s sweet that you worry about us. It gives me hope.”

Isabella’s emotions were in turmoil. Growing up, the one thing she’d wanted more than anything was for her parents to be together. Adrianna and Bruno loved one another but hadn’t been able to find a way for their relationship to survive Adrianna’s ascension into the ranks of the League of Supergirls. Perhaps if Isabella hadn’t been in the picture, her father would have been happy to move into Adrianna’s palace in Rio as her consort, but that was no place to raise a child. In this version of history, her parents were married but the price of that happiness was their daughter being as evil as the League in the history Isabella remembered. And dad didn’t want to see her. The pain of that rejection was like an icicle through her heart.

It was so unfair! Why couldn’t she get what she wanted, just once? A heady mixture of rage, hate, and frustration boiled inside her, shrouding her thoughts in black and red clouds of blood and darkness. Her eyes began to glow red.

Suddenly, Adrianna was holding her, hugging her close so that Isabella’s eyes were pointing at her invulnerable bosom. Heat vision would hurt Adrianna but it wouldn’t reduce her to ash the way it would any of the fragile human targets on the patio.

“Calm down, sweetheart. Do your breathing exercises and remember the mantras that Nga taught you. Please, Isabella, you need to control yourself. I don’t know what the others would do if you had another episode like Santiago.”

Isabella fought to control the unfamiliar darkness as every atom of her being cried out for her to kill someone, destroy something beautiful, or break someone’s spirit. The darkness hungered for fresh sacrifices on the altar of her divinity. Was this how her mother felt all the time? No wonder she’d become the Butcher of Brazil. It was a wonder she ever paused.

She took deep slow breaths and pulled herself back from the edge. Her mother released her from her hug and stroked her short black hair.

“You did great, sweetheart. Well done.”

Isabella’s voice was unsteady. “Mom, what happened in Santiago?”

Adrianna looked at her with concern and confusion. “You killed fifty people, sweetheart. Don’t you remember?”

The guilt Isabella felt was tinged with relief. It could have been so much worse. In the history she remembered, Victoria alone had killed over four million people across Central America in less than a week. Isabella didn’t remember what this version of herself had done but her body did - the thought of fifty murders gave her a shameful flush of arousal and a craving for more. Not enough, said a quiet voice inside her. Not nearly enough.

Adrianna’s phone beeped a reminder. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I have a meeting with the President in half an hour. He wants my help with the new reforestation plan.” She flexed her arms. "Heavy lifting in places machinery can't reach."

Isabella laughed. In this reality, Brazil had a President. In the world she remembered, her mother ruled South America as an absolute tyrant with input from an advisory council she regularly purged of anyone deemed insufficiently sycophantic. A human asking for Adrianna’s help would be lucky if being flayed alive was all she did to them.

“Are you going to be okay getting home?” asked Adrianna. “You’re calm?”

“I’ll be fine, mom. I promise.”

“Don’t be late for therapy,” said Adrianna. “It’s a condition for your current… arrangement.”

In a blur, Adrianna changed back into her blue and red costume. It was uncanny for Isabella to see her mother dressed like a superheroine after having spent her entire life knowing her as a capricious monster.

Adrianna started to leave and then turned back. “Ji-Seok’s joining ceremony is in a week. Will you come? It would mean a lot to the others. Perhaps you might even change your mind about your own ceremony…” Her eyes were hopeful for a moment before she shook her head. “Of course you won’t but please consider attending Ji-Seok’s.”

Supergirl Ji-Seok celebrates joining the League of Supergirls

Min Ji-Seok was the nascent Korean Supergirl whose assassination Katerina had arranged while the young woman was within the first day of her transformation and far from being invulnerable. In this reality she was alive. Zoe and Celina would be as well. Were Victoria and Eden still around, but sane? The pair of extremists were so defined by their lust for endless slaughter that it was hard to imagine what would be left once that was stripped away.

Without waiting for an answer, perhaps to protect herself from inevitable disappointment in her daughter’s choices, she was gone, a blue and red streak soaring into the sky faster than the human eye could follow. Isabella watched with her telescopic vision until she was beyond the horizon. Supergirl Adrianna, off to save the world instead of bending it to her whims.

Isabella had expected Mindy to reappear as soon as her mother was gone, but there was no sign of the aggressively purple imp. It was uncanny how Isabella remembered that Mindy was her best friend while knowing she was no such thing.

Her apartment wasn’t too far, so she decided to walk. Flying seemed unwise until she had figured out her place and her reputation in this new world.

---

When she reached her building, she looked around to be sure no-one was watching before launching herself up and through the window she always left open. Except that it wasn’t open, something she didn’t realize until broken glass exploded around her as she somersaulted into her living room.

The first thing she noticed was Lucas, sitting on the faded couch that belonged in his apartment, not hers. He wore only a pair of black boxer briefs and was holding a game controller. He stared at her in disbelief. Isabella ran her eyes over his trim body, drinking it in.

“Lucas!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

The athletic young man looked even more confused than when she’d burst through the window.

“Vixe Maria!” he said. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my apartment?”

“No,” said Isabella. “This is my apartment. You live downstairs.”

She looked around the room. The furnishings were somewhat familiar but only because she’d seen them in Lucas’s apartment during her regular bootie calls on her downstairs neighbour.

“Where’s my stuff?”

She suddenly realized that in the world Mindy had willed into existence, she didn’t live here. Lucas did, and he didn’t know her. She’d just smashed her way into a stranger’s home.

Lucas stood and dropped the controller. He began to back away from her with increasing fear in his eyes.

“Goddess protect me, you’re her,” he said. “The renegade!”

Isabella held her hands before her with her palms up. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

Isabella was becoming irritated by Lucas. The dumb himbo hadn’t figured out she was the good Supergirl while she’d been fucking his brains out every night for a month, but the moment she turned evil he was suddenly Mr. Perceptive. She had a growing urge to hurt him a bit just for that. It was her right to use and abuse humans as she liked, after all. The perks of being a goddess.

Before her dark instincts fully took over, there was a sudden blur of blue and red. Supergirl Renata stood between Isabella and her prey. She was surprised to see that Renata wore a sleek blue leotard and red thigh highs rather than the crop top and skirt her mother had worn. Apparently Chao-Xing had started making custom costumes in this version of reality as well. Isabella wondered if good Kara was as annoyed by this as evil Kara.

Supergirl Renata is annoyed

"I apologise sincerely on behalf of the League of Supergirls, Mr. Rocha," said Renata. "We will cover the full cost of repairs and deposit a significant sum in your account to make up for the inconvenience."

Renata handed Lucas a business card with the words "League of Supergirls" in a non-threatening font.

"Call or email and one of our liaisons will assist you, day or night.”

Renata turned and faced Isabella with a stormy expression. In the normal reality, the trauma Renata had experienced as a street rat in Juarez, doing anything and everything to survive, had left her with uncontrollable rage issues. She was prone to dark periods where she lashed out on anyone unfortunate enough to be in her vicinity. It was one of the reasons her palace was deep in the rainforest instead of in the middle of Mexico City. This version of Renata seemed more controlled, but there was still a sharp edge of anger to her.

"What the hell were you thinking, Isabella?"

She grabbed Isabella's shoulder, marched her to the window and pushed her out. She followed and the two superwomen floated in mid-air outside Lucas's apartment.

"Were you watching me?" asked Isabella.

"One of us is always watching you, chica," said Renata. "Today it's my turn. What the hell were you doing in this neighborhood? Why did you burst in on that poor man? You were supposed to come straight back to the villa after lunch."

"I'm sorry," said Isabella. "I got confused. I used to live here."

Renata tilted her head. "No you didn't. Supergirls don't get confused so that excuse isn't going to work in case you were planning to use it again. Come on, I'll escort you back to the villa so you don't get more 'confused’."

Supergirl Renata flew north to the outskirts of São Paulo, leading Isabella to a luxury villa nestled in the hills. Isabella took note of the high fence around the property, the locked gate, and the guard post. It looked like a very cosy prison.

They landed at the front door.

"Your new therapist will be here in half an hour. Try not to scare this one off. It looks like you also have another visitor," said Renata. The Mexican Supergirl soared into the sky to resume her watchful surveillance of Isabella.

Isabella entered the villa that was her home and perhaps her prison. The floor to ceiling windows of the great room showed a view of the city spread out before her. It was in much better shape than her own São Paulo, lacking the scars of thirty-plus years of brutal Supergirl rule that all cities in her reality shared. Her super-vision showed that the air and water were cleaner as well.

The other significant feature of the great room was that Supergirl Freja was waiting for Isabella, her arms crossed in front of her generous chest. She wore the typical blue and red crop top and skirt. In Isabella's reality, Freja had been one of the last to embrace the alternative costumes Chao-Xing had offered and had only switched to the full black bodysuit to conceal the scar from her fight with Katerina. In this reality there was no scar.

Supergirl Freja

"Freja," said Isabella. "It's good to see you."

Freja wasn't the kindest or most lenient member of the League, but she was far from the worst. Her rule over Scandinavia was harsh but she didn’t revel in causing unnecessary pain and suffering the way some Supergirls did. Isabella respected her.

Freja responded to her greeting with a venomous glare.

"You might have fooled the others with your little contrition act, but you don't fool me," said Freja. "I was a cop before I was a Supergirl and I know more about the criminal mindset than the rest of the League. You're a stone-cold killer and you don't deserve to be called a Supergirl."

Anger rose in Isabella's throat. "Did you just come here to insult me?"

Freja shook her head.

"I came to see if you'd be honest with me and help give closure to some families."

She placed four sheets of paper on the coffee table, each was a report on a missing person. Four men in their early twenties, missing from different cities across South America.

"Freja pointed at each sheet in turn. Marcos Palau, Joel González, Hugo Pomar, Pablo Campos. Each of these men disappeared without trace while you were in their city. I know you took them, I just don't know why or what you did with them. Come clean and maybe I won't push to have your shopping privileges revoked."

Isabella examined the printouts carefully but none of the faces stirred any memories. Perhaps this version of her had done something to the men but she didn't remember what.

"I don't know these men," said Isabella.

Freja looked at her carefully.

"I don't believe you. I know you've committed more and worse crimes than Santiago and I'm going to prove it. I won't rest until the League buries you in a deep, dark hole for eternity."

With those ominous words, Freja walked away, leaving Isabella shaken. She wondered if Freja's anger was born of disappointment and betrayal. She always thought that she and Freja could have been friends if the world were different. Perhaps they had been in this reality, until Isabella had screwed it up.

She tried to get her bearings in her new home. There was a black obelisk in the main hallway engraved with fifty-four names, those of her victims in Santiago and four others. There was room to add more should Freja's investigations find them.

Isabella removed her jeans, tee-shirt, and sneakers. She looked at herself in the big mirror in the main bedroom. She had to admit she looked good in the black and silver bodysuit. Even better than her mother did in hers. She posed a few times, relishing the way the material clung to her perfect body. The press of the hyper-latex on her pussy was having the usual arousing effect, but she resisted the urge to masturbate. There was work to be done.

Evil Supergirl Isabella

There was an office with a high-end PC and Internet on the second floor. Isabella sat and began to research the history of this inverted world. Somebody - probably Ziana - had fixed things so Isabella could read whatever she liked but couldn't post anything. That was fine by her, it wasn't as if there was anyone she knew to reach out to.

In this reality, the League of Supergirls was not the authoritarian governing body of the planet but an association of superpowered women who pooled their resources to do good. They had occasionally intervened directly in world affairs, but had guided with a relatively gentle touch rather than crushing the human spirit beneath their invulnerable boot heels. The League was still a concentration of power unlike any ever seen, but they used that power sparingly, preferring the mere fact of its existence to do the work of persuasion.

Their headquarters was not a modern Mount Olympus carved from the bones of Everest as in her reality, but an island in the Caribbean where the forum for their discussions was just one part of a small city dedicated to making the world a better place.

Only two dictators had been directly overthrown (bloodlessly) by the League, the rest had seen the writing on the wall and stepped down voluntarily. Authoritarian governments had released their grip on the levers of power after being admonished by a Supergirl, fearing what might come if strong words proved inadequate. The patriarchy had not been forcibly dismantled or replaced by female supremacy, but had rather dissolved in the face of ultimate female power into a gentle equality.

The Supergirls put the worst criminals behind bars whether they were rich and powerful or not, and encouraged rehabilitation for the rest. Their nobility served as both an inspiration and a warning. They had used their powers to feed the hungry, to make deserts bloom, to clean rivers and oceans. They had used their influence to bring freedom and human rights across the globe. They challenged hate and misinformation wherever they saw it, using their knowledge and energy to keep fighting where normal humans were beaten down and discouraged in the face of constant lies.

They had built an absolutely glorious fucking paradise with only one flaw: her. Isabella was the renegade Supergirl here as in the other reality, the girl who had gone wrong. But in this world she was evil while the others were good, twisted by the genetic legacy she had inherited from her mother into a monster. She was the only Supergirl to have refused to join the League, the only Supergirl who had killed, and the only Supergirl who was feared rather than adored.

The only Supergirl who lived under the watchful eye of the League at all times. Whether she was good or evil, the League didn’t trust her.

Deep into her research she began to see flaws and inconsistencies in Mindy’s handiwork. The League history stated clearly that 36 women in total had transformed into Supergirls, including Isabella and Ji-Seok. But there were only 32 biographies on the site. Her own absence wasn't surprising, but Victoria, Eden, and Kara were also missing. The official history explicitly said the first Supergirl appeared in 1990, but skipped Kara and went straight to Katerina in 1991, who was always referred to as the second Supergirl. There were references to "the first Supergirl" but she was never named. As for Victoria and Eden, the histories said that a Supergirl had appeared every year since the first, but the names of the Supergirls from 2004, and 2013 were missing. There was no way that this perfect world had been marred by any kind of rampage like the ones Victoria and Eden had engaged in back in her reality - 50 dead in Santiago would have barely registered if so. So what had happened to the two extremists to erase them not only from the world but from history itself?

And where the fuck was Kara? In some respects, Isabella was relieved the first Supergirl wasn't in this version of reality. Kara had tried to kill her when she'd first rejected the League after all. But the League of Supergirls without Kara Lang was a worrying aberration.

Not one writer or commentator remarked on these inconsistencies, it was as if they had a blind spot that allowed conflicting facts to be true at the same time.

Isabella was startled by a buzz from an intercom unit on her desk.

"Supergirl Isabella," said a male voice - one of the guards, presumably. "The therapist is here for your afternoon session: Dr. Mzy - oh fuck, I can't pronounce that. She's on her way to the main house."

Isabella rolled her eyes and went downstairs to meet Mindy. The imp was as resplendently purple as ever, even while posing as a mental health professional.

"Looking good," said Mindy and whistled. "Embracing the skintight latex. Va va voom! Love it! Are you getting your bearings, Izzy? Filling up that spicy brain with all the facts and figures of this brave new world? How does it feel to be the only evil Supergirl in a world of sickeningly good ones? Better or worse than what you're used to?"

"Fuck you, Mindy."

Isabella went into the great room and lay on a comfortable-looking couch.

"If you're going to pretend to be my therapist, we'll do it right. Therapise me."

"If you insist," said Mindy.

She produced a pen and a pad of paper from nowhere. She whipped a pair of glasses from her suit pocket and perched them halfway down her nose. She settled into a chair opposite Isabella and looked intently over the rim of her glasses.

Ms. Mindy Mxyapki is not a real therapist

"So," she continued. "How do you feel? Have you killed your father and slept with your mother yet?"

"Why are you here, Mindy? Why did you come to Earth?"

"Not just any Earth," said Mindy. "Your Earth! Yellow-Harmonic-Alpha-Descending-Praxis is the designation for your universe. I’m sure you didn’t know that. I could have chosen an Earth from so many different realities, although most of them are boring because they don't have humans, and most of the ones that do are boring because they don't have Supergirls or Supermen or Supercats. Now that last one is a fun Earth, unless you're a mouse."

"Huh," said Isabella. "So the multiverse from the movies. That's actually a thing?"

Mindy bobbed her head from side to side.

"Yes and no. Mostly no, but also mostly yes. It’s complicated. Imagine a library the size of a galaxy but every page of every book is a different reality, and most of the library has burned down because of one crisis or another, and the librarians are dead, and the roof leaks. The multiverse isn't what it used to be.”

"So again, why did you come here? To this Earth, out of so many others."

"Because you're so noisy! Not just Supergirls, but utterly evil Supergirls. So many people screaming and running and being disintegrated. And then there are the portals. You can't just go around opening portals between universes without expecting somebody like me to notice. And I’m not talking about the nasty little dimension scoop that whisked Emery off to her little showdown with that red headed beanpole, I’m talking about portals chiselled from the raw substrate of the multiverse through sheer force of will. That shit is loud, higher-dimensionally speaking.

Isabella frowned. "Portals? I don't know anything about portals."

"I suppose you wouldn't be in the know, but that's how poor Victoria and Eden ended up on alternate Earths in two different universes. Let me tell you, that did not end well for those Earths. Oh boy! Those are two movies you don't want to show at a kid's birthday party."

Isabella recalled that Kara had once told her that she'd sent the extremists away. A pair of alternate universes was even farther than Isabella had expected.

"I don't understand why Victoria and Eden aren't here after you made the League good. Kara would have had no reason to exile them if they weren't trying to end the human race."

Mindy looked confused.

"I have no idea who 'Kara' is, but I can't go messing with other realities while I'm messing with this one. Victoria and Eden are part of the history of those other Earths. Well, actually they're more like the end of history for both of them. They have to be there so they can't be here. So there's a little bit of an inconsistency - sue me! You'll never make it stick in court!"

Isabella made a note of Mindy's ignorance of Kara. If the imp could truly see the entire history of the world, then how was she ignorant of the first Supergirl? It implied a flaw in the imp's powers.

"Do you want to see?" asked Mindy.

Without waiting for an answer, she snapped her fingers and a pair of holographic globes appeared: two Earths.

"This universe on the left is Obsidian-Reflective-Gamma-Spiral-Entirety," said Mindy. "Earth was home to only 2 billion people. Evolution and history took a slightly different path leading to a kinder, gentler human race. Cooperation instead of competition. Victoria always said that humanity deserved to die because they were irredeemable. What would she do to a human race that didn't need to be redeemed?"

The view of the Earth on the left zoomed in and panned over the aftermath of carnage. Cities turned into mausoleums of rubble and bones.

Supergirl Victoria: exterminatrix

"Answer: she killed them anyway. It was a lie Victoria told herself to avoid the awkward truth that she's just a genocidal psychopath. It took her nine months and 5 days to kill an entire world."

The scale of it was beyond Isabella's comprehension. She'd never really believed Victoria's rhetoric that she wanted to exterminate the entire human race, but when the Costa Rican Supergirl had found herself in a world of innocent victims with no Supergirls - good or evil - to protect them, she'd done exactly what she'd said she'd do. Murdered and kept on murdering until there was no-one left.

The other globe came into focus.

"Amber-Tardigrade-Erasmus-Argent-Reproduction," said Mindy. "1.5 billion people working their butts off to save the environment. Then Supergirl Eden appears out of nowhere and starts her great culling regardless. She doesn't get pleasure from sex but oh boy does she get pleasure from killing. All but 150,000 humans murdered to save an Earth she wasn't even born on. And do you want to know the funny part? The Earth died anyway. An out of left field environmental collapse she didn't see coming and couldn't stop without the resources of the civilization she'd destroyed!"

Supergirl Eden: world killer

"Fuck that's bleak," said Isabella. "So Victoria and Eden are alone on two lifeless worlds."

"Oh no," said Mindy. "They've been recruited. Twin extinctions were quite the audition for bigger and worse things."

"Recruited? By whom?"

"No spoilers from me," said Mindy. “But pray their new boss doesn't come calling. She’s not nearly as much fun as I am.”

"So, how is it I remember the way things used to be instead of the things my evil twin has done?" asked Isabella.

Mindy shrugged. "Oh that's my fault. While I'm around, you exist in two versions of history at the same time. I'm anchoring you to your old reality. Once I'm gone, your waveform will collapse to match the reality around you."

"And I'll be evil Isabella forever."

"Don't look so glum, little Izzy. This world isn't so bad, in fact it's a damn utopia! A world cradled in the loving hands of a pantheon of kindly goddesses instead of the crapsack hellscape you remember. A quarter of a billion people are alive now that were dead before I rewrote history."

"I didn't think the League had killed that many people."

"Oh, I forgot you missed out on that little bit of gossip. Chao-Xing's been holding out on you, Izzy. Your 'Auntie' has been a very naughty Supergirl. What was it Freja's new plaything called her? Oh yes: history's greatest monster. But not in this version of the world! Here she's so good it will make you barf. And her inventions, oh my! Clean energy, a cure for cancer and the common cold, social media that doesn't suck, beer that keeps itself cold, and a thousand others."

Isabella's heart went cold. She knew the kindness Chao-Xing had shown her over the years was mirrored by the cruelty she inflicted on her unfortunate human subjects, but the idea that the woman who had made her blue and red costumes as a gift was also responsible for death on an industrial scale was too much to bear. This new world proved that the Supergirls could have done so much good with their powers instead of dominating and murdering their way across the globe. Why couldn't it have been this way all along?

"Zoe, Celina, and Ji-Seok are alive," said Isabella. "Is Zoe crazy here as well?"

"No, she's just insufferably smug about becoming a Supergirl after telling everyone she was going to since was a teenager. Celina is the sweetest: she doesn't just build model ships here, she helps her father build real ones in the Gdansk shipyard. Precision Supergirl welding can't be beat! I can already tell that Ji-Seok is going to take the world by storm: a Supergirl K-Pop starlet is just peanut butter and chocolate all over again."

"This world seems amazing," said Isabella.

"Except for you," said Mindy. She cackled. "Poor little Izzy left out in the cold like always. Nobody loves her, everybody hates her, she might as well go and eat worms. At least in the other version the League leaves you alone as long as you don't bother them. Here, they're watching you every nanosecond, waiting for you to fail, knowing you can't help but fuck up sooner or later."

"I'd be a monster to want the world to be a worse place for everyone else just to make it better for me," said Isabella.

"Oh, you're a monster, you just don't remember it. If you fully integrate with this world, you'll do so many terrible things. You'll break your mother's heart, I just know it. You don't even have your pet himbo to fuck your worries away. Although you do have a few boy toys squirreled away in your secret lair. Freja was only scratching the surface. Oh, did you know you have the same favorite sex position as your mother? Were you both cowgirls in past lives, I wonder. Cowgirls who fucked a lot. You know, sexy cowgirls."

"Try to stay on track, Mindy. I really don't want to know about my mother's sex life. Why couldn’t you have made the others good without making me evil?”

“Where’s the fun in that? Where's the joie de vivre? Of course I could have done that-“

She stopped talking abruptly and tilted her head.

“Oh that’s interesting. I couldn’t have made you all good. Every universe has rules that even I can’t break. You have to be an anomaly. If they’re bad, you’re good, and if they’re good, you’re bad. No way around it. Like a seesaw with all of them at one end and you at the other. I wonder why that is…”

Isabella noted another limitation to the imp’s power. There were forces stronger than the purple-clad mischief-maker.

"So, here's the deal," said Mindy. "I'm going to give you 24 hours to fully appreciate the wonders of this world and how much your life totally sucks in it. Then you can make a choice: keep the good League of Supergirls or go back to the way things were."

"That's an easy decision," said Isabella.

"Don't tell me now! I said 24 hours and when I say 24 hours, I mean 24 hours, not a minute more and not a minute less. Quick test: when do you have to make your decision?"

"In 24 hours."

"Wrong! It's now 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 48 seconds. Time waits not for Supergirls, only for imps. You know, I think this has been a very productive session. I don't know why therapy gets such a bad rap in the fifth dimension."

Isabella decided to poke at Mindy's blind spot. Before she committed to keeping this world, she needed to be sure the anomaly of Kara's non-existence wasn't going to unravel it or make things worse somehow.

"So, with your fifth-dimensional powers, you can see everyone everywhere at any time, right?"

"Abso-posi-lutely! Any time in the past or present. The future hasn't happened yet. No spoilers, even for me.”

"New York City?"

"Yes, ma'am. You want to see pictures from Fiona and Owen's wedding? You somehow managed to make that awful pink bridesmaid's dress look good, even with a bow the size of Staten Island covering your butt. That was before you turned all ‘Grr! Evil!' of course."

Supergirl Fiona on her wedding day

In her reality, Supergirl Fiona had taken her former fiance Owen as her consort and broken him physically, sexually, and morally. It made Isabella weep to imagine the two of them as a happily married couple. No collar, no power games, no forced worship, just love.

"South Africa?"

"Of course. Ntombi doesn't have to hide herself in this reality. Everyone knows she's trans and nobody cares!"

That was news to Isabella. Mindy really was an incorrigible gossip.

"Smallville, Kansas?"

"Don't play tricks, Isabella! There's no such place on your Earth. I've been to Smallville in other universes - very popular when the big blue boy scout is in play - but there's no such town in your Kansas, just a blank spot on the map that shouldn't concern me in the slightest."

"A blank spot?"

Mindy nodded. "Yes, a ten mile radius of nothing that shouldn't concern me in the slightest. I'm not concerned about it. Not in the slightest."

"I'm getting that."

Isabella had to go to Smallville before she made her decision. She wanted to let this new version of history continue. She'd been able to do so little as a superheroine in a world ruled by the League, but now she could save everyone. Except for herself. She had to take the chance, but she needed to be sure there wasn't a worm in the apple.

"Anything else you want to know?" asked Mindy. "I know all the hot gossip. Aisling and Hazel have decided to adopt. They only made it four months in your reality before Aisling executed Hazel for sedition. Michele and Vincent are just the cutest running that little bookshop in Marseilles. In your version, they haven't met but if they ever do it probably won't go well for him. Aiko has a new girlfriend - a novelist, no less. You should see how evil Aiko twisted Tamala’s principles, but here they're just the sweetest thing. Emery and Matt are combining their streaming channels into one when they move in together. They're actually pretty cute in your reality as well, and he spends just as much time on his knees here as he does there.”

Hearing about the wonderful lives the other Supergirls were having was enraging. Isabella was stuck in this fucking empty mansion, basically under house arrest, while the others were flying around in their cute little miniskirts, falling in love and starting families and running fucking adorable fucking bookstores in adorable Marseilles. And the world loved them, every single fucking one of them. She was the defective Supergirl, the one everyone hated, the one nobody but her mother would ever love. She had gone from a broken world to a world where only she was broken. It wasn't fair!

"No, I don't want to know!" screamed Isabella.

She unleashed a massive blast of heat vision at Mindy's stupid, perky face before she could spout any more stories about the perfect Supergirls. The twin beams of livid energy somehow went around Mindy and passed through her at the same time. The wall behind the imp was not so lucky, nor the room beyond, nor the wall after that. There was a hole all the way through the eastern half of the villa.

In an instant, Supergirl Renata was there. She looked between Isabella and Mindy.

"Isabella, did you just try to kill your therapist? Ma'am, are you all right?"

Mindy waved off Renata's concern.

"Pfft, it's fine. Isabella had an emotional breakthrough and the feelings were a little intense. Nothing I haven't seen before."

The east wing collapsed in a cloud of dust and rubble.

"I'm going to need somewhere else to stay tonight," said Isabella. "I would like to exchange this house for one that isn't half-demolished."

"You're the one who demolished it," said Renata in an exasperated tone. "Sleep on the couch tonight. We'll figure something out tomorrow. If the ceiling falls in, shake it off. You're invulnerable."

"I should go," said Mindy. "Isabella, remember you have an important decision to make in 23 hours and 31 minutes. Get some beauty sleep!"

---

Isabella spent a few hours drinking most of a bottle of Cachaça that had miraculously survived the collapse of the east wing and researching the League of Supergirls. The more she drank and the more she read, the more melancholy she became.

The edgiest the Supergirls in this reality got was Supergirl Tania occasionally making porn, but all of the proceeds went to charity. Her blue movies paid for operations and medicine to save the sight of children across the Middle East and North Africa. It was sickening.

Even Katerina, the Steel Tsarina herself, was a beloved figure in this world. She wrote philosophy in her dacha, each book guaranteed to be a thought-provoking bestseller. She thought of the cold intellect behind the green eyes of the Katerina she knew and shivered.

When the bottle was empty, she lay on the couch and pulled a blanket over herself. She passed out immediately and slept.

Or rather, that was what Isabella hoped that Supergirl Sabrina - who had taken over from Renata at midnight - had seen. For every glass of liquor Isabella had downed, two had been surreptitiously poured into the trash, leaving her buzzed but far from the blackout drunk she appeared to be.

Isabella kept a close eye on Sabrina, watching the Moroccan Supergirl through her eyelids with her x-ray vision, waiting for a moment of inattention from her watcher. After half an hour, Sabrina's attention shifted east. Isabella followed her gaze to a Taylor Swift concert in Rio. With luck, Sabrina's super-hearing would be focused on that as well.

Supergirl Sabrina on guard duty

Isabella worked quickly to carve and arrange the couch cushions to give the illusion of a sleeping body under the blanket. She used her heat vision and hands to quietly tunnel through the foundation of the mansion, pulling a rug over the hole in the floor behind her. She moved through the dirt and rock of the hills towards the coast.

Twenty minutes later, not quite believing her Scooby-Doo level plan had worked, Isabella flew low above the choppy waters of the Atlantic, heading north. Kansas awaited.

---

In her penthouse apartment in Shanghai, Supergirl Chao-Xing paid close attention to the display on her tablet. The tracking device she'd integrated into the bodysuit she'd gifted Isabella was working perfectly, able to locate the renegade Supergirl to an accuracy of inches. Chao-Xing's current companion was sleeping soundly after their intense lovemaking.

Isabella was on a direct path to the United States. What could her troublesome god-daughter possibly want there?

Chao-Xing considered the options. Renata was in Mexico, but she deserved some rest after being on Isabella duty for twenty-four hours. Blanca Teresa was in Havana, Rachel was visiting San Diego, and Fiona was in New York City. The three of them could converge and intercept Isabella before she reached the coast.

She reached for her nigh-indestructible Supergirl phone to make the necessary calls but hesitated.

She extrapolated Isabella's path and zoomed in to see what points of interest there were.

"Oh," said Chao-Xing. "She's heading for the hole."

Chao-Xing's tablet showed her the empty part of the map in Kansas. A ten mile radius of nothing that Isabella was heading straight for. Not just empty of towns and people but empty of land, of meaning, of existence. It had intrigued her for years but for some reason she had never investigated. She had always had a strong sense that the existence of a hole in reality shouldn't bother her, but that sense was now overridden by her curiosity about Isabella's agenda.

Chao-Xing would go to Kansas herself. She opened her walk-in closet, filled with dozens of different variations of the blue and red Supergirl costume. She would fly there just as soon as she decided what she was going to wear…

Supergirl Chao-Xing can't decide what to wear

---

Dawn rose over Kansas. Isabella floated in mid-air, her super-senses focused on the unassuming red and white farmhouse in the distance. She'd never been to Kara's home, she wasn't aware of any Supergirls who had, but she recognized it. It was famous. This was the home Kara had shared with her husband, where she'd watched him die, and which she had failed to save from being repossessed by the bank. This was where her transformation had begun and this was where her grief and anger had crystallized into a divine fury that had reshaped the world. Three miles beyond the farmhouse was the edge of the crater where Smallville, Kansas had once stood.

It was a small pocket of the reality Isabella remembered. She had to find out what it meant for her and for this Supergirl utopia. She didn't have long. Her absence from the villa would have already been discovered, and every member of the League of Supergirls would be looking for. Hiding from one Supergirl was impossible, hiding from 32 of them… There wasn't a word for that.

In a flash of purple light, Mindy appeared, not bothering with the confetti or fanfare this time. The imp grabbed Isabella's arm and tried to pull her away.

"We can't be here," said Mindy. "This place is wrong."

"It's just a farmhouse, Mindy. What are you frightened of?"

"It's a farmhouse that I know for a fact doesn't exist, but I can see with my eyes that it does. That's what frightens me," said Mindy. "That's bad voodoo!"

"Shall we knock on the door and see if the big bad wolf is home?" asked Isabella.

She flew across the field to the farmhouse and Mindy reluctantly followed.

The front door opened while Isabella's hand was poised to knock. Kara Lang stood there in her Supergirl crop top and skirt - the black and silver version Isabella remembered, not the blue and red of the reality Mindy had woven.

"Isabella," she said. "You finally made it. And you brought your imp. How darling.”

"I'm my own imp, thank you very much," said Mindy. "Who the heck are you?"

"I'm Kara, my little fifth-dimensional minx. The first Supergirl, at least in this universe. You two look parched. Lemonade?"

Kara twirled around, her dark gray cape fluttering, and walked towards the kitchen, gesturing for them to follow. From a refrigerator older than Isabella, she grabbed a pitcher of lemonade and poured three glasses.

Supergirl Kara is the perfect hostess

"Sit," she said, gesturing to a rustic farmhouse table and chairs.

"I'd prefer to float," said Mindy. The imp crossed her legs and hovered in mid-air.

Isabella sat. "I've never seen you drink anything other than bourbon.”.

"One needs a clear head to think portals," replied Kara.

"I think you should choose now, Isabella," said Mindy. "This reality or the old one. Choose so I can get the fudge out of here and go home."

Kara laughed. "Oh, Isabella won't be choosing, and you're not going anywhere, imp."

She closed her eyes in concentration for a moment. When she opened them again, she had the cruel, calm smile that Isabella had learned to fear more than an obvious expression of anger.

Mindy screamed. "That hurts! What did you do?"

Kara tilted her head. "A fifth-dimensional being can't survive in this universe any more than I could survive in a flat universe. You carry a little bubble of your dimension around with you like a protective suit. A pocket universe. I'm very good at making portals between universes. I've pierced your survival suit around your hands and feet, and linked it to a pair of four-dimensional universes like this one. You're trapped in place, your essence slowly being sucked into dimensions utterly hostile to your very existence."

"I'll turn you inside out, bitch!"

Mindy snapped her fingers and nothing happened.

Kara reached into the waistband of her skirt and pulled out a glossy business card, blank except for a purple 'M'. The font was different to the one on Mindy's card.

Mindy turned pale.

"Where did you get that?"

"Do you think you're the only fifth-dimensional troublemaker to visit my universe?" asked Kara. "I'll admit the first one was tricky - I actually had to get him to say his name backwards which was a chore. After that I figured out how to use portals to deal with you more permanently. The cards are what your kind leave behind after you're gone and you can't touch me as long as I have one. Or more."

She revealed more cards and placed them on the table in front of her one after the other. Each card featured an 'M' in a different font. A dozen in total.

"You should check in on your neighbors in the fifth dimension more often," said Kara. "A lot of them didn't make it home."

"Don't do this!" begged Mindy. "Have mercy."

"Asking Kara Lang for mercy," said Isabella. "That's a bold strategy."

She was starting to enjoy the imp's predicament. Her darker instincts were looking forward to Mindy getting her comeuppance.

She turned to Kara. "How do you make portals? Is that your special power?"

Kara tapped the side of her head. "Applied math. The building blocks of reality are numbers. Numbers can be manipulated with algorithms. A properly trained Supergirl brain can perform the necessary calculations in less than a second. Portals are easy: they're just big holes."

"You're no mathematician. How did you figure that out?"

"I have a friend who's very good with this kind of thing. Before you ask, it isn't Chao-Xing. That bitch barely understands this reality let alone the multiverse."

"I manage," said Chao-Xing, choosing that point to make her entrance. "I don't know where Isabella found another evil Supergirl, but the rest of the League are on their way, so don't think you're going to get away with whatever nefarious scheme you're plotting."

"Nefarious scheme?" said Kara. "Seriously. This version of you really is the cutest thing, Chao-Xing. I almost wish I could keep you around. Breaking you would be very entertaining."

Mindy screamed again. Her feet and hands were missing, sucked away into another universe.

"What is this?" demanded Chao-Xing.

Kara shrugged. "Basically a chipper-shredder for fifth-dimensional imps. In a few minutes, you'll be back to your normal, evil self and you won't remember any of this."

"This reality was never going to survive, was it?" asked Isabella.

"Of course not. This is my universe," said Kara. "No imps and no hippies."

The rate of Mindy's disintegration increased. She screamed until she no longer could and then she was gone. Her card fell to the ground. Kara picked it up and handed it to Isabella.

"Just in case," she said. "Imps are like rats. If you can see one, there may be two more you can't."

Isabella took the card. She felt nauseous and guilty. Mindy had been a pain in the ass but she didn't deserve to have her fifth-dimensional guts smeared over a pair of four-dimensional universes. There was still a part of her that remembered Mindy as her best friend and she'd done nothing to protect her from Kara.

The good version of Chao-Xing was gone, presumably returned to whatever she'd been doing before Mindy had rewritten history. Isabella's bodysuit was back to being blue and red instead of black and silver, and the darkness inside her was gone. The world was back to its broken self.

"I still remember everything that happened," said Isabella.

"Of course," said Kara. "Your waveform never collapsed into the new reality."

Kara leaned forward and pinned Isabella with her piercing blue eyes.

"Tell me how it felt to have your entire reality rewritten on the whims of an imp? Honestly."

Isabella took a deep breath. "I felt violated. Seeing the League as a force for good was a dream come true, but knowing that our reality was just a toy for a bored godling was repugnant."

Kara nodded. "Good. If you feel that way, there's hope for you yet. The imps aren't the most powerful beings out there in the multiverse and they're not the only ones who've been meddling in our business. Someone or something has been fucking with this world for almost forty years. Supergirls don't just happen by accident - we were brought into being by an entity with plans. We're tools or toys or game pieces to them and I don't like being used."

"What can we do about it?" asked Isabella. "You can't fight a real god any more than a human could fight one of us."

Kara smiled. "We'll see about that when the time comes to storm the gates of heaven. Assuming we survive that long. There are other dangers in the multiverse, Isabella. Monsters that make me look good in comparison. When they come for this world - and they will - I need you to stand with the League to fight them. Don't be seduced into thinking the enemy of your enemy is your friend. If the Supergirls fall, this world falls with them."

Isabella turned Mindy's card over in her hand. Eventually she slid it into one of her bodysuit's secret pockets.

"Mindy showed me a better world," she said.

"Mindy showed you a lie," said Kara. "This world may suffer under the rule of the Supergirls but I will make sure it survives."

"She said that Victoria and Eden had been recruited," said Isabella. "Once they were done killing three and half billion people you sacrificed to them."

"Yes, they failed my little morality tests predictably and spectacularly," said Kara. "I'm aware of their new mistress and I have matters in hand. Those two alternate Earths were a small price to pay."

"Fuck," said Isabella. "You're a scheming monster."

Kara smiled, baring her teeth. "Yes but I'm your monster."

---

Once Isabella was safely on her way back to Brazil, Kara ensured that the perimeter defences were back online along with the stealth systems. She opened what looked like a closet door to reveal a private elevator. She rode it down to the last of the secret levels beneath her farmhouse.

She passed through a series of blast doors until she reached Laboratory number 17.

Inside, her sister Lana was in the middle of dissecting a specimen Kara had fished out of another reality.. Her subject was a tall, muscular man with short black hair and a kind face. He was wearing a blue bodysuit and red trunks. A stylized red and gold 'S' would have been emblazoned across his chest if his bodysuit hadn't been split to give access to crack his sternum open. On the table next to him was glowing green rock.

Lana Lang

"Anything interesting?" asked Kara.

Lana looked up from her work and shrugged. She was a slender woman in her early 60s with long white hair that had once been bright red. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of white, not having seen the sun in over 30 years, the freckles she'd once had bleached away to nothing. She reached in and pulled an alien organ from the cadaver's body. She weighed it without emotion.

"This kryptonite stuff works differently to K-Metal. Just its presence was enough to weaken and eventually kill him. I doubt any Super-beings from his universe would present a challenge as long as we have kryptonite, lead, and… yellow things."

"So, he's an alien?" asked Kara.

"Yes. The survey of universes with Supers shows a distribution of origins - some are aliens, most are transformed humans like you, a few are alternate evolutionary paths like the Supercats. There's one where Supers come from Atlantis. Weird stuff."

"Put him in the freezer with the others when you're done," said Kara.

Lana nodded. "How did Isabella do with the imp?"

"Passable. She would have made the wrong choice eventually but she gave it some thought at least."

"She has the card?"

Kara smiled. "She does. Our Trojan horse is in place. I can't believe I almost killed her once upon a time. What a waste that would have been."

"She's the anomaly and the anomaly is the key," said Lana. She removed her glasses and polished them nervously. "When this is over, you'll set me free?"

Kara stroked her sister's hair. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Lana, imprisoned in this underground complex, her genius shackled to Kara's needs, slowly growing old while her sister stayed eternally young. The last thirty-six years had been one continuous act of delicious revenge against the sister whose talents had overshadowed her for so long. One more broken promise and Lana would be out of her hair for good.

"More than that, Lana. You'll be free, you'll be young again, and you'll be immortal. I promise that all your sacrifices will be worth it."

---

Supergirl Chao-Xing lay awake on her bed while her current companion - a poetess whose tongue was every bit as skilled at licking pussy as it was at orating - pleasured her. Chao-Xing was thinking very hard, which usually meant bad news was coming for someone.

With a dying burst of energy, Mindy Mxyapkix had played one last trick in this universe. Chao-Xing remembered everything. She remembered the other reality and her life in it. She remembered Kara's deceptively ordinary farmhouse. She'd never been allowed close before. Kara's protections were back in place now but her good counterpart had used her super-vision to map the entire facility, including the many floors of underground laboratories and the mysterious woman on the final level. She remembered what Kara had done to the imp and how.

Kara could make portals between universes. Chao-Xing had speculated on the possibility but there had always been something else more interesting and pleasurable to work on. She was embarrassed that Kara had shown such focus and unlocked a secret that she hadn't.

She looked at the back of her hand and then the palm, tracing the lifeline.

She was two people now. Two histories in one body. One Chao-Xing responsible for uncountable atrocities and another who had made her world so much better it was almost painful to think of the possibilities that had been lost in her pursuit of cruel pleasure. Supergirl Yin and Supergirl Yang.

Was this a bifurcation, a merging, or an annihilation? Could absolute evil and absolute good exist inside the same person or would they necessarily destroy each other? And if they did, what would be left of her? The only thing she knew for sure was that she would never be the same again.

She couldn't answer these questions as a scientist. She would have to do something she hadn't done since before she'd become a Supergirl, when she was just Liu Chao-Xing: talk to her father.

The poetess brought her to a pleasant climax and she took position to reciprocate. She couldn't remember the last time she'd done that with a human…

---

Isabella ground her hips against Lucas, taking him deep inside her until she came for the third time that night.

"Did you miss me," she purred.

"We agreed to take a break, Isabella," said Lucas. "You're too much for me."

"Why do you think that is, Lucas? Have you figured out my secret yet? Do you know why you can't resist me physically or sexually?"

Lucas looked at her with puzzlement in his big eyes. Isabella stroked the side of his head.

"Oh, you poor dumb, handsome, well-endowed lunk. I could just eat you up."

She contented herself with riding him into the early hours.