Bee Breather snapped his fingers again, and with an angry buzz, the bees dove inward and downward, their stingers pointed at Supergirl and Mon-El.
“Duck!” Supergirl shouted, grabbing a corner of her cape and pulling it over her body. She spun toward Mon-El, who did as she asked, and Supergirl’s cape enveloped them both.
But not completely. Their left sides were still exposed, and the bees changed their flight path to attack the vulnerable area.
Taking a deep breath, Supergirl turned her head toward the bees and exhaled a torrent of frosty air. Frozen solid, the tiny bee corpses clattered to the marble floor like hail on glass.
Mon-El pounded a fist into the tile beneath him, breaking off a sizable piece. He hurled it across the room like a twenty-pound discus, aiming for Bee Breather’s legs. The tile fragment knocked Bee Breather off his feet, and he fell—hard. His eyes slid shut, and the remaining bees flitted off in various directions.
Mon-El stood with a triumphant grin. “Talk about a buzzkill.”
Supergirl didn’t crack a smile. “Let’s not celebrate yet.” She nodded to Bee Breather’s partner, who arched an eyebrow and smirked.
“Wise decision,” said the woman. She raised her hands by her sides and wiggled her fingers.
Shards of broken glass from the display cases rattled and clinked against the floor before slowly lifting into the air. As they hovered, each piece rotated until its sharpest point faced Supergirl and Mon-El. The woman thrust her hands forward, and the slivers of glass sliced through the air toward the heroes.
Supergirl leaped in front of Mon-El, cape raised, but while she could stop the penetration of the glass, she couldn’t stop the force behind it.
She and Mon-El were thrown across the room into a statue of Emperor Caligula. Supergirl grappled with the statue as it fell, but her fingers couldn’t find purchase, and the ancient artifact smashed to the ground.
“Oops,” said the female thief, putting a hand to her smiling lips. She raised the other hand and pointed at Mon-El. “You know, I haven’t tried to levitate anything big yet.”
With a twirl of her finger, the woman sent Mon-El airborne, lifting him higher and higher.
“I love vaulted ceilings,” said Lady Levitation. “What would you say this is? Thirty, maybe forty feet?”
“Enough!” said Supergirl. Fist outstretched, she charged through the air toward the female thief, who lifted a hand in a halting gesture.
Supergirl felt a brief resistance, but controlling both heroes was too much for Lady Levitation, and Supergirl broke through. Just as her fist was about to connect with Lady Levitation’s face, the thief nodded past Supergirl.
“Shouldn’t you be more worried about him?”
Supergirl turned to see the invisible force lifting Mon-El let him go.
“Mon-El!” she shouted, dashing over.
Mon-El yelped as he fell but twisted his body in midair, landing on his feet with a ground-shaking thud.
“I’m all right,” he told Supergirl. “But our friends are gone.”
Supergirl whirled around to face a room full of relics, one unconscious security guard, and no crooks.
Sirens sounded nearby, and she could hear footsteps rushing from the other room.
“I have to get to the DEO,” she told Mon-El. “Can you stay and handle this?”
He glanced around. “You mean explain how we destroyed a piece of history and only have a pile of dead bees to show for it?” Mon-El gave her a thumbs-up. “I love a challenge.”
Supergirl gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and flew toward the exit. Behind her, she heard Mon-El tell someone, “We’re really sorry about this. Could I interest you in a sacrificial sheep or apology song?”
As Supergirl sped toward the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, she scanned the ground for any sign of the museum thieves. No luck.
Zipping onto the balcony of the DEO control room, she took the stairs down two at a time, stopping when she reached the stone floor where the DEO insignia stretched before her. At the far end, J’onn J’onzz, the DEO’s director, was drying his arms and face with a towel while he watched the screens on a video wall.
“Oh, good! The DEO got a pool,” Supergirl said with a smirk. “I always thought this place could use something fun.”
“We didn’t get a pool,” J’onn said calmly.
“And if we were going to get anything fun, I’ve already put in a request for a virtual reality room,” Winn Schott spoke up from one of the desks surrounding the video wall.
Not long ago, he’d been a one-man IT department at CatCo. His friendship with Kara and his amazing tech skills had earned him a new job at the DEO.
J’onn faced Winn with a frown. “Why do you need virtual reality when you have actual reality?”
“Why . . . ?” Winn blinked at him and leaned forward. “J’onn, in virtual reality you can do anything. You can go to Hawaii or drive a Ferrari or beat up the kid who called you Cheap Schott when you ate a sandwich out of the trash . . .”
Supergirl and J’onn stared at him blankly.
“Or, you know. You could use it to see Mars.”
J’onn pointed to Winn’s keyboard. “Get back to your search.”
Supergirl nodded approvingly. “So you’re already working on the Bee Breather thing?”
J’onn and Winn both looked at her.
“What Bee Breather?” asked J’onn.
Before Supergirl could explain, Alex trotted over. In addition to being Kara’s sister, she was J’onn’s second-in-command at the DEO.
“Oh, good! I’m glad you’re here,” Alex told Supergirl. “Did J’onn and Winn brief you?”
Supergirl shook her head. “I actually came to tell you guys something.”
Alex beckoned for her to follow. “Me first. There’s something—er—someone you need to see.”
J’onn handed Supergirl the damp towel. “You might need this.”
Supergirl raised an eyebrow, but followed J’onn and Alex down a hallway to where the DEO held extra-normal criminals.
“Sorry to be so abrupt, but it’s been a weird morning,” Alex said.
Supergirl snorted. “You’re telling me. The thief I chased out of the bank earlier suddenly has superpowers.”
“What?” Alex stopped outside a cell with a sign that read PRISONER 52 above the door.
“Are you sure he didn’t always have powers?” asked J’onn. “Maybe he was testing you this morning.”
“He almost peed himself when he ran away,” Supergirl said with a chuckle. “Trust me: He didn’t have powers.”
Alex placed her hand on a scanner to open Prisoner 52’s door. “Well, we can help you with that if you can help us with this.” She and J’onn stepped inside; wavy blue light shone across their faces.
Supergirl joined them and gaped in awe at the source. A massive aquarium tank dominated the room, water sloshing at its brim.
“You don’t want to know how long it took to fill that thing,” said Alex.
Inside the tank floated a humanoid creature with dark green flesh and webbing between its toes and fingers. Its torso appeared rubbery and bumpy like a frog’s, and it had two tiny nostrils that produced bubbles every minute or so. Its mouth was massive, as were its eyes, which sized up Supergirl as she approached the tank.
“Who is this guy?” asked Supergirl. “I mean, I assume it’s a guy.”
“We think so, too,” said J’onn. “But that’s about all we can figure out. We hoped it might be an alien race you could identify.”
Supergirl walked around the tank, the creature treading water in a circle to keep up with her.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not any species I ever learned about.” She tore her gaze away from the creature and looked at J’onn and Alex. “Where did you find him?”
“National City Aquarium.” Alex pulled a tablet computer from a holster on the wall and showed the screen to Supergirl.
On it was a video of the deep-sea exhibit at the aquarium. A crowd of people stood in a room below the water level where they could see inside the tank. Brightly patterned fish and stoic turtles swam around a scuba diver who was intermittently waving to the audience and feeding the animals. A dark figure swam toward the scuba diver, and the audience pointed to it and waved, assuming it was another diver.
Until the dark figure entered a patch of artificial light.
The crowd screamed at the face Supergirl recognized from the tank beside her: Prisoner 52. And he had no interest in waving to the audience or feeding the animals.
He just wanted to kill the scuba diver.
Supergirl clapped a hand to her mouth as Prisoner 52 tackled the scuba diver around the middle and proceeded to pummel him.
“That goes on for a few minutes before aquarium security figures out what to do,” said Alex, closing the video. “Oddly, when our friend here was captured, he didn’t try to attack anyone else. He did, however, try to speak.” Alex pulled up a sound file that, to Supergirl’s ears, was nothing more than screeches and squeaks. But out of the corner of her eye, Supergirl saw Prisoner 52 react.
“At least he recognizes his own voice,” said Supergirl as Prisoner 52 swam side to side, water spilling over the top of his tank and onto the floor. “Since you can’t figure out his species, I’m guessing you can’t figure out his language?” she asked her sister.
“We’ve tried everything,” said Alex. With a smirk, she added, “Winn even ran it through Google Translate.”
Supergirl looked at J’onn. “What about telepathy?”
J’onn maintained the human appearance of Hank Henshaw, a black man in his fifties, but the DEO director was actually a Green Martian, capable of flight, shape-shifting, amazing strength, and mental communication.
He shook his head. “Nothing intelligible. Just random images of scuba divers.”
Supergirl took the tablet from her sister and brought it closer to the tank, replaying the sound file for Prisoner 52. She pointed at him. “You. This is you.”
The sea creature tilted his head and squawked, but didn’t act as if he understood.
“We’ve already tried that,” said Alex. “For now, we’ve got Winn doing an exhaustive search of sound files from marine biologists, linguists, even cryptozoologists.”
Supergirl thought back to when she lived on Krypton. She’d been simply Kara Zor-El then, staying up late to hear her mother, a judge, talk about her job.
One time, Kara’s mother had ruled over a case in which the defendant spoke a language nobody on Krypton could translate. Kara had asked her mother how she’d managed to find him innocent.
“Kara,” her mother had said, “everyone just wants to be heard. If you’re willing to listen, the message will get through—even if you don’t understand the words.”
Now as Supergirl, Kara stood in front of Prisoner 52, who clearly wanted to be heard. She pressed a hand against the tank and smiled at him.
“We’ll find a way to communicate,” she promised the creature, as well as Alex and J’onn.
“I sure hope so,” said Alex. She took the tablet back from Supergirl and returned it to its holster. “Come on. Tell us more about this crook with spontaneous superpowers,” she said, scanning her hand to open the cell door.
“Actually, there were two of them.” Supergirl recounted her skirmish with Bee Breather and Lady Levitation as she, J’onn, and Alex walked back to the control room. “I think the woman’s powers were new, too. She said she hadn’t tried to levitate anything big yet.”
J’onn nodded. “If she’d had her powers for a while, she’d know what they were capable of.”
“Exactly,” agreed Supergirl.
“Who are we talking about?” a deep voice spoke up. James Olsen, still in his Guardian armor, came toward the group accompanied by a woman in a police vest.
“Hey, you guys!” Supergirl smiled at them.
Alex approached the woman—her girlfriend, Maggie Sawyer—and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
“Not that I’m unhappy to see you, but what brings you here?” Alex asked. “It can’t be anything good.”
“It’s not,” agreed Maggie. “But I thought the DEO might have intel I don’t.”
“Is it about normal people suddenly having superpowers?” asked Supergirl.
Maggie’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah, how did you—”
“Ha!” Supergirl pointed at her sister. “See? I knew it!”
Maggie opened her arms wide. “Um . . . we still don’t.” She gestured to herself and James.
“And what we don’t know is becoming dangerous,” he added, lifting one of his arms to reveal a tear in his suit sleeve.
Winn gasped and leaped out of his chair. “What did you do to my masterpiece?” He rushed over to James, taking the sleeve in hand. In addition to being a mechanical genius, Winn prided himself on being an expert tailor. He’d crafted both Supergirl’s and Guardian’s costumes.
“I didn’t do anything. Some old lady in the warehouse district clawed me. And I’m fine, thanks for asking,” said James, jerking his arm away.
“Sorry. It’s just . . .” Winn shoved his hands in his pockets and muttered, “That material’s really hard to find.”
“So we have another villain out there with spontaneous powers,” said Supergirl.
“Actually, she thought I was the villain,” James corrected. “Even after I told her I was Guardian!”
“Well, at least we’ve got one, uh—” J’onn fumbled for the word—“supercitizen on our side.”
“Supercitizen. Nice.” Winn held his fist out to J’onn for a fist bump. J’onn just stared at it.
“I mean, how did that lady not know Guardian?” James continued. “I’ve been saving lives since way before she jumped in the game.”
“Well, a helpful supercitizen isn’t necessarily a good thing,” said Alex. “Especially if they’re taking the law into their own hands.”
“Which is why I’m here.” Maggie handed her cell phone to Alex. It showed a man’s profile on the screen. “Some people saw this man bring down a purse snatcher by shooting poison darts from his fingers.”
Winn snorted. “From his fingers? What’s he calling himself . . . Digits?”
“He hasn’t given himself a name, but that’s not bad,” mused Maggie.
Supergirl frowned. “I know it’s odd to care, but is the purse snatcher OK?”
“He’s in critical condition,” said Maggie, “and this . . . Digits is still at large.”
Alex studied the image for a moment and then looked at Winn. “Can you—”
“Use traffic, ATM, and store cameras to find this guy with facial recognition software?” Winn finished for her. “Just send me the photo.”
J’onn put a hand on Supergirl’s shoulder. “Winn, see if you can also get security footage from National City Museum and find this Bee Breather and Lady Levitation. I’d hate for them to cross paths with the woman who attacked James.”
“Guardian,” James corrected.
Winn was already halfway to his computer, a thumbs-up raised above his head.
James turned to Supergirl. “Maybe we should run a piece at CatCo about up-and-coming superheroes.”
She smirked at him. “Featuring anyone in particular? As much as I’d love to, I’m not allowed back in the office right now.”
James raised an eyebrow. “Says who?”
“I’m gonna guess Snapper Carr,” spoke up Alex. She pinched her little sister. “You didn’t try to speak his language.”
Supergirl threw her hands up. “He wouldn’t let me! I have to get this interview with Mayor Lowell, but the mayor doesn’t want to talk to anyone from CatCo.” She looked at James. “I was hoping you could—”
She was interrupted by a ringtone version of Newsies’ “Seize the Day” from James’s pocket.
“Sorry,” he said, taking the phone out. He groaned when he saw the screen and answered the call. “Hey, Snapper.” James’s eyebrows rose. “Kara? Uh . . . yeah, she’s right here.” He handed Supergirl the phone, which she took with a mixture of trepidation and confusion.
“Hey, Chief! How’d you know I’d be with James?” she asked.
“I’m an investigative reporter,” Snapper said in a bored voice. “Tracking people down is half my job. Listen, everyone else is on assignment, and since I assume you’ve gotten nowhere with yours,” he said pointedly, “I need you to interview someone at Eighth and Palmer.”
Supergirl blinked rapidly but didn’t say anything until James nudged her. “Uh . . . yes! Of course, Chief.” She reached for a notepad and pen. “Who’s at Eighth and Palmer?”
Snapper sighed. “I was afraid you were going to ask. There’s a structure fire, and a woman—Jacqueline Reyes—is supposedly putting it out with rain clouds she created in her bare hands.”
“She can create rain clouds with her bare hands?” Supergirl repeated loudly enough for her friends to hear.
“I know, it sounds ridiculous,” Snapper said, misreading her tone, “but it seems Supergirl isn’t the only superhero in National City anymore.”
“I’m on it.” Supergirl hung up and handed the phone back to James.
“What’s this woman’s name?” asked Winn, fingers poised over his keyboard.
“Jacqueline Reyes,” Supergirl supplied. “And if you’ll all excuse me, I have a city to . . . watch someone else save.” She cocked her head to one side. “Weird.”
Supergirl zipped back to the museum to grab the clothes she’d left on the roof and then landed in an alley near the fire to change into Kara Danvers. She couldn’t risk being seen flying around in her work clothes, and she couldn’t appear as Supergirl because then she’d be expected to help put out the fire. All focus would be off Jacqueline Reyes, and Kara would lose the interview.
Luckily, Kara’s powers gave her a speed boost, and she walked several blocks in a minute before a traffic light stopped her. While she waited for it to change, Kara searched social media for Jacqueline Reyes. There were several in the city, but none were known superheroes. She thought about the old lady who attacked James. It was pretty unlikely she was a superhero, either.
That made five supercitizens. In one day.
It can’t be a coincidence, she thought. How are they all tied together?
The light turned green and Kara stepped off the curb, switching screens on her phone so she could text Alex. A second later, tires screeched and a horn blared in Kara’s ear. She turned to stare, wide-eyed, at the front grille of a delivery truck.
On instinct, Kara crouched and braced herself, holding out both hands to stop the truck. It might give away her identity, but it was better than being roadkill.
Before she even touched metal, however, another pair of hands—male, by the looks of them—reached the truck before hers could. The hood crumpled, and the truck’s tires shivered as it skidded to a stop.
Kara let out a deep breath. “Perfect timing.”
She put a hand on Mon-El’s and went to kiss him. Then she froze.
The guy who’d stopped the truck wasn’t Mon-El.
It was Marcus, the guy who worked the coffee bar at Noonan’s.