More secret origins Power Girl never had.
Once upon a time, I was watching the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, thinking that one of the pilots reminded me a lot of Power Girl. Well, give or take a couple, um, *enhancements*. And then another character walked in and called her Kara.
If you don't believe me, look. Here's a picture of Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck which vagabond_sal found me. Here's one of Power Girl, aka Karen Starr, aka Kara-L which Google did.
So then. Technically this meant to be a DCU/BSG crossover, but it's far more towards the BSG side of the scale. (And if it feels unfinished, that's because it is. But I think this bit holds together well enough, at least for a beginning.)
Set Among the Sky
Kara slaps Shane’s cards from his hand. “You cheating fuck.”
“Not my problem you’re too drunk to count the cards right. Sir.” Shane raises an eyebrow at her. Kara laughs, shakes her head, jumps to her feet.
“Yeah? Maybe I do need practice. I’ll try to keep track of how many times I kick your ass.”
“Whoa, Starbuck.” Lee rests a hand over her arm. “You need to calm down.”
“And you need to back off.” She pushes him away, and Lee slams hard into the bulkhead a few feet behind him. There’s a second where he seems more surprised than anything, and then he folds up and drops to the floor.
“Lee?” Kara drops to his side. “Lee, you okay?” He blinks up at her, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.
“Holy shit, Starbuck,” Helo says, coming around the card table. “Did you kill him?”
“He’s fine,” she says. “Right, Lee?”
Lee pounds the floor next to her a couple times. He manages, “Fine… just… air.”
“See,” she announces. “He just needs to get his breath back.”
Lee climbs slowly to his knees and spends a few moments gasping and coughing. “Gods, Kara,” he rasps. “What are you doing.”
“I’m sorry, Apollo. I don’t know what happened…” Kara makes to help him back into a chair, but Lee waves her off.
He shuts his eyes and pulls in a painful sounding breath. When he opens them again, he focuses on a point just behind her ear. “I think you need to leave,” he says. “Go back and dry out.”
Kara looks away from him. She glances over at the other pilots, who are staring at her in varying degrees of shock and distaste.
“Yeah,” she says. “Good plan.” She grabs her jacket from the back of her chair and walks out of the room.
“Another time?” Shane calls after her.
“Frak you,” Kara shouts over her shoulder.
***
“About time,” Kara says when the klaxon begin blaring. The Fleet has been hanging around the same system for almost ten days, now, and the waiting is gnawing at her. It twists beneath her skin and makes the back of her mind itch, where she can’t get to it without a laser or a bonesaw. It feels like she’s on too many stimulants: every sense is pounding for her attention, sight and smell and by Aphrodite is the food always this awful? Commander Adama drops a stylus across the room and she jumps, startled; she closes a fist and feels the beat of her heart in her palm.
But now the Cylons have finally found them again and *this* is right, smell of sweat and metal, thrum of the engine, shoulders strapped into her bird and nothing but space and weapons and an enemy squadron to destroy. Starbuck breaks from the ranks and spirals into the fray, taking out three enemy fighters before straightening out and weaving around a burst of ammunition. The Fleet is vanishing in the background, being stretched and swallowed by spacetime, and Apollo shouts through the radio that it’s almost enough, they just have to buy a little more time. Starbuck shouts back that she could afford days.
She cycles back, firing at a flock of Cylons too close together - the controls are sluggish to respond, and she thinks vicious thoughts about the deck crew until - the ships explode brilliantly against the black, and burnt shrapnel tears up the ones she missed. A hundred degrees upward Hot Dog’s got seven bogeys closing on his position, so Starbuck punches it, engines screaming like a war cry, and they wipe the bastards out in a synchronized dance of thrusters and missiles.
“That’s it, everyone,” Apollo says, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Race you,” says Hot Dog, already facing in the right direction, and accelerates.
“I’ll take that,” Starbuck answers. She slams on the acceleration, pulls at the thruster controls and -
“That bitch-licking toaster-frakking son of a cockwhore!”
“I didn’t copy that, Starbuck,” Lee says. “Can you repeat?” Someone snickers on the line.
“Sure, Apollo. I said that my fucking pedals just broke the fuck off. I have no control of my bird at all. Copy that?”
There’s half a second and then, “Hang on, Starbuck. I’m coming to get you.”
Starbuck looks at the Cylon ships speeding towards her. A few smaller rounds clip one of her wings. She glances at her screen, and there’s no way he can get to her in time. This many bogeys, there’s nothing he could do if he *did*. “Well, I could take these toasters out myself,” she says. “But I guess I'll save you some fun.”
“It’s appreciated. Just hang on,” he tells her.
Starbuck fires at a Cylon that crosses directly front of her, and it twists and ducks out of the way. “Bastard,” she shouts after it. She brings a hand down against the controls in frustration, and the metal dents and bends. The radio in her ear clicks off.
“Apollo?” Starbuck says into the silence. “Lee?” She taps at her helmet. “This is Starbuck to Apollo, do you copy?” There’s a moment of nothing, not even static. “Galactica, this is Starbuck.” No reply. “Anyone?”
She twists around to look behind her, and there’s a few glints of light that maybe could be the squadron, going after her. Galatica looms in the background like a small asteroid equipped with ground to air defense systems.
One of the Cylon ships swoops beside her and matches her flightpath. It tilts its nose towards her, and Starbuck feels like it’s staring through the window at her, considering.
She snarls at it. “I’m not afraid of you, toaster.” It shrugs off, rolls over at a distance (Almost playfully, Kara thinks. Not like a machine at all.) and fires at her.
And this is exactly how she thought it’d go. The belly of the Viper rips first, and there’s a millisecond of calm before the fuel tank has leaked enough energy to explode. Then it’s a flash of white heat, like being blind, like meeting a god, and that goes quickly to orange and nothing as the Viper is punched and torn and in pieces and the air rushes into space.
The Cylon glances over the debris and then shoots off to join the other ships. They’re setting up for a run at the colonial fighters, but Apollo and the half squadron he has with him swoop in and destroy the enemy ships. Apollo breaks from the squad and circles over the remains of Starbuck’s ship, a searching pattern.
“Lee,” Kara starts to say, and then chokes as the vacuum reaches around the word and into her lungs and steals every molecule of air it can find. Her body bucks, trying to breathe, and Kara fights to keep her mouth shut even though every instinct she has is screaming at her to replace the lost air. It feels like her lungs are on fire, like she’s tearing up from the inside, and Kara realizes in a shocked, perfect moment of pain that she’s still alive.
Which is a particularly funny joke on the part of the universe, but laughing isn’t exactly an option at the moment. Apollo’s still looking, but with no radio response it won’t be for long. And she has no way to reach him - her ejection suit is gone, burned with the Viper. Burned with *her*, and maybe this is just the Hades cocksure pilots get look forward to, rather than the one with the beer and the attractive coresidents she’d always tried to believe in.
A piece of rubble floats toward her, and Kara catches it. She tries to kick off in the general direction of Apollo. She moves, but not fast enough, and unless she can chop off a limb there’s nothing to sacrifice for more momentum. Apollo moves to turn, and Kara focuses on the lettering on his wing, trying to will it closer. Notice me, she shouts in her mind - and he doesn’t, but the Viper gets closer anyway. She’s moving faster than she thought.
As she gets closer to Apollo’s ship, Kara wonders if she’ll just keep moving through it, like a shade too stupid to realize that it’s dead, but she hits the Viper solidly enough to knock it off course. She wraps her arms and legs around the ship to hold on. Her head and chest are pressed down against Apollo’s view-window, and when he notices her, his eyes go huge and his mouth drops open. Kara can’t tell if he’s screaming or if it’s just that his brain is about to implode, so she twists her lips painfully into a smirk and raises her hand in a perverse little wave. He mouths, “Starbuck?” really, really slowly, and she turns the wave into a half assed salute. Then she turns and climbs carefully over his bird to the armoured siding. She can get a grip there without worrying about wrecking his ship as well.
Another colonial ship approaches them. It twists as it stops, so that Kara’s staring up the nose. She can imagine the conversation. “Should I frag her, Captain?”
You’d better say no, Lee, she says to herself. Or I will haunt your dreams. Or, given the rest of this fucked up day, possibly survive to track you down and take revenge myself.
The ship falls behind them after a tense few seconds, and Kara presses her forehead into the metal siding. Her body has finally figured out that her lungs aren’t immediately essential to her existence, and they’ve softened into a constant, almost bearable background of pain. The ship turns slowly and eases into acceleration, and Kara easily holds on. Galactica grows in front of her until it takes up the whole sky, huge and indomitable.
Let’s go home, Lee, she says, weighting the words in her mind. Take me home.
If you don't believe me, look. Here's a picture of Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck which vagabond_sal found me. Here's one of Power Girl, aka Karen Starr, aka Kara-L which Google did.
So then. Technically this meant to be a DCU/BSG crossover, but it's far more towards the BSG side of the scale. (And if it feels unfinished, that's because it is. But I think this bit holds together well enough, at least for a beginning.)
Set Among the Sky
Kara slaps Shane’s cards from his hand. “You cheating fuck.”
“Not my problem you’re too drunk to count the cards right. Sir.” Shane raises an eyebrow at her. Kara laughs, shakes her head, jumps to her feet.
“Yeah? Maybe I do need practice. I’ll try to keep track of how many times I kick your ass.”
“Whoa, Starbuck.” Lee rests a hand over her arm. “You need to calm down.”
“And you need to back off.” She pushes him away, and Lee slams hard into the bulkhead a few feet behind him. There’s a second where he seems more surprised than anything, and then he folds up and drops to the floor.
“Lee?” Kara drops to his side. “Lee, you okay?” He blinks up at her, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.
“Holy shit, Starbuck,” Helo says, coming around the card table. “Did you kill him?”
“He’s fine,” she says. “Right, Lee?”
Lee pounds the floor next to her a couple times. He manages, “Fine… just… air.”
“See,” she announces. “He just needs to get his breath back.”
Lee climbs slowly to his knees and spends a few moments gasping and coughing. “Gods, Kara,” he rasps. “What are you doing.”
“I’m sorry, Apollo. I don’t know what happened…” Kara makes to help him back into a chair, but Lee waves her off.
He shuts his eyes and pulls in a painful sounding breath. When he opens them again, he focuses on a point just behind her ear. “I think you need to leave,” he says. “Go back and dry out.”
Kara looks away from him. She glances over at the other pilots, who are staring at her in varying degrees of shock and distaste.
“Yeah,” she says. “Good plan.” She grabs her jacket from the back of her chair and walks out of the room.
“Another time?” Shane calls after her.
“Frak you,” Kara shouts over her shoulder.
***
“About time,” Kara says when the klaxon begin blaring. The Fleet has been hanging around the same system for almost ten days, now, and the waiting is gnawing at her. It twists beneath her skin and makes the back of her mind itch, where she can’t get to it without a laser or a bonesaw. It feels like she’s on too many stimulants: every sense is pounding for her attention, sight and smell and by Aphrodite is the food always this awful? Commander Adama drops a stylus across the room and she jumps, startled; she closes a fist and feels the beat of her heart in her palm.
But now the Cylons have finally found them again and *this* is right, smell of sweat and metal, thrum of the engine, shoulders strapped into her bird and nothing but space and weapons and an enemy squadron to destroy. Starbuck breaks from the ranks and spirals into the fray, taking out three enemy fighters before straightening out and weaving around a burst of ammunition. The Fleet is vanishing in the background, being stretched and swallowed by spacetime, and Apollo shouts through the radio that it’s almost enough, they just have to buy a little more time. Starbuck shouts back that she could afford days.
She cycles back, firing at a flock of Cylons too close together - the controls are sluggish to respond, and she thinks vicious thoughts about the deck crew until - the ships explode brilliantly against the black, and burnt shrapnel tears up the ones she missed. A hundred degrees upward Hot Dog’s got seven bogeys closing on his position, so Starbuck punches it, engines screaming like a war cry, and they wipe the bastards out in a synchronized dance of thrusters and missiles.
“That’s it, everyone,” Apollo says, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Race you,” says Hot Dog, already facing in the right direction, and accelerates.
“I’ll take that,” Starbuck answers. She slams on the acceleration, pulls at the thruster controls and -
“That bitch-licking toaster-frakking son of a cockwhore!”
“I didn’t copy that, Starbuck,” Lee says. “Can you repeat?” Someone snickers on the line.
“Sure, Apollo. I said that my fucking pedals just broke the fuck off. I have no control of my bird at all. Copy that?”
There’s half a second and then, “Hang on, Starbuck. I’m coming to get you.”
Starbuck looks at the Cylon ships speeding towards her. A few smaller rounds clip one of her wings. She glances at her screen, and there’s no way he can get to her in time. This many bogeys, there’s nothing he could do if he *did*. “Well, I could take these toasters out myself,” she says. “But I guess I'll save you some fun.”
“It’s appreciated. Just hang on,” he tells her.
Starbuck fires at a Cylon that crosses directly front of her, and it twists and ducks out of the way. “Bastard,” she shouts after it. She brings a hand down against the controls in frustration, and the metal dents and bends. The radio in her ear clicks off.
“Apollo?” Starbuck says into the silence. “Lee?” She taps at her helmet. “This is Starbuck to Apollo, do you copy?” There’s a moment of nothing, not even static. “Galactica, this is Starbuck.” No reply. “Anyone?”
She twists around to look behind her, and there’s a few glints of light that maybe could be the squadron, going after her. Galatica looms in the background like a small asteroid equipped with ground to air defense systems.
One of the Cylon ships swoops beside her and matches her flightpath. It tilts its nose towards her, and Starbuck feels like it’s staring through the window at her, considering.
She snarls at it. “I’m not afraid of you, toaster.” It shrugs off, rolls over at a distance (Almost playfully, Kara thinks. Not like a machine at all.) and fires at her.
And this is exactly how she thought it’d go. The belly of the Viper rips first, and there’s a millisecond of calm before the fuel tank has leaked enough energy to explode. Then it’s a flash of white heat, like being blind, like meeting a god, and that goes quickly to orange and nothing as the Viper is punched and torn and in pieces and the air rushes into space.
The Cylon glances over the debris and then shoots off to join the other ships. They’re setting up for a run at the colonial fighters, but Apollo and the half squadron he has with him swoop in and destroy the enemy ships. Apollo breaks from the squad and circles over the remains of Starbuck’s ship, a searching pattern.
“Lee,” Kara starts to say, and then chokes as the vacuum reaches around the word and into her lungs and steals every molecule of air it can find. Her body bucks, trying to breathe, and Kara fights to keep her mouth shut even though every instinct she has is screaming at her to replace the lost air. It feels like her lungs are on fire, like she’s tearing up from the inside, and Kara realizes in a shocked, perfect moment of pain that she’s still alive.
Which is a particularly funny joke on the part of the universe, but laughing isn’t exactly an option at the moment. Apollo’s still looking, but with no radio response it won’t be for long. And she has no way to reach him - her ejection suit is gone, burned with the Viper. Burned with *her*, and maybe this is just the Hades cocksure pilots get look forward to, rather than the one with the beer and the attractive coresidents she’d always tried to believe in.
A piece of rubble floats toward her, and Kara catches it. She tries to kick off in the general direction of Apollo. She moves, but not fast enough, and unless she can chop off a limb there’s nothing to sacrifice for more momentum. Apollo moves to turn, and Kara focuses on the lettering on his wing, trying to will it closer. Notice me, she shouts in her mind - and he doesn’t, but the Viper gets closer anyway. She’s moving faster than she thought.
As she gets closer to Apollo’s ship, Kara wonders if she’ll just keep moving through it, like a shade too stupid to realize that it’s dead, but she hits the Viper solidly enough to knock it off course. She wraps her arms and legs around the ship to hold on. Her head and chest are pressed down against Apollo’s view-window, and when he notices her, his eyes go huge and his mouth drops open. Kara can’t tell if he’s screaming or if it’s just that his brain is about to implode, so she twists her lips painfully into a smirk and raises her hand in a perverse little wave. He mouths, “Starbuck?” really, really slowly, and she turns the wave into a half assed salute. Then she turns and climbs carefully over his bird to the armoured siding. She can get a grip there without worrying about wrecking his ship as well.
Another colonial ship approaches them. It twists as it stops, so that Kara’s staring up the nose. She can imagine the conversation. “Should I frag her, Captain?”
You’d better say no, Lee, she says to herself. Or I will haunt your dreams. Or, given the rest of this fucked up day, possibly survive to track you down and take revenge myself.
The ship falls behind them after a tense few seconds, and Kara presses her forehead into the metal siding. Her body has finally figured out that her lungs aren’t immediately essential to her existence, and they’ve softened into a constant, almost bearable background of pain. The ship turns slowly and eases into acceleration, and Kara easily holds on. Galactica grows in front of her until it takes up the whole sky, huge and indomitable.
Let’s go home, Lee, she says, weighting the words in her mind. Take me home.