The next day, Zor-El was waiting for her in the living room, sitting on a crystalline chair; he wasn’t wearing his usual armor, but just his black robes. Feeling anxious, Kara stopped in front of him and the silence stretched between them for a minute or two.

Finally, her father spoke, his voice not betraying a hint of his own feelings. “Daughter, I believe it’s time to modify your training.”

“Father, did I do anything wrong?” Kara asked, afraid of being punished for peeking at their discussion earlier.

“No, instead, you’re quite advanced in your studies, and your help identifying points of failure has been… surprisingly useful for your level of education,” Zor-El recognized, tapping a finger against the arm of his chair. “However, destroying things is far easier than building them, and far less useful. It’s time you start learning how to do the latter.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt that you do,” Zor-El said, sending an information package to her personal computer. “Tomorrow, you’ll start studying the information inside; I want a working prototype in a year.”

Over the next months, Kara worked tirelessly to understand all the principles behind her father’s data. It was a blueprint for an imperial age Hyper-drive as well as all the necessary information to update it with modern day Kryptonian tech… or at least Kara thought it was.

With the religious guild mandate not to leave the system, it wasn’t like there was a lot of information about such things, or that any other scientist had interest in developing such an area of study.

It meant that Kara didn't have a point of reference and, even if she made mistakes, it was not like the device would ever be used anyway.

Still, Kara believed it was a test, one that she was determined to pass no matter what. Without any information to be found on the network, Kara had to develop everything herself, and even program the crystals from scratch.

Over the months, Kara didn’t build one prototype, but three, each one a drastic improvement over the other. Working on the devices, she learned far more than she thought possible.

She also discovered how to accelerate a piece of a piece of crystal to ludicrous speeds towards a target, but she had only done it once -even if it had been incredibly cool- and she hadn’t hit anything important in Argo city… she hoped.

When she was finally satisfied with her creation, Kara presented the already built hyper-drive to her father.

Zor-El spent an hour reading all her notes, testing the device and then spent another three hours telling her everything she had done wrong.

From using far too much Kryptium, causing the device to have no flexibility, to messing up its programming, causing a catastrophic failure that could have altered relative time experienced by the device in any number of ways.

Standing there, his arms behind his back, her father scraped most of her project, but he wasn't frowning.

Kara wanted to laugh out loud, he wasn't actually frowning!

When she was fifteen, she managed to present a prototype that her father accepted and he allowed her back into Kandor.

Still, with her device built, Kara couldn't help but want to see it in action, and even her uncle actually encouraged her, finding her passion for the project amusing.

She nearly had a heart attack when a member of the religious guild started asking about it but, after an afternoon explaining that she was the one responsible, and that she had no interest in actually using the device herself. The priest seemed content that it was just a training exercise.

Any Kryptonian actually building a ship capable of inter-system travel would violate Rao's edict, but she was simply using an abandoned field of study for training, and never really had any intention of creating a final product.

Well, Kara guessed that one of her prototypes could be mounted on a tiny, individual vessel, but escalating it to work on even the smallest ships of the military guild would still take years of troubleshooting, and she had no intention of doing that.

In fact, since she had passed her father's test and managed to create it to his satisfaction, she planned on mounting the prototypes into flying cars and aiming them at asteroids on the Rao system.

Small, unimportant ones, so they wouldn't be missed if she actually hit them.

Still, Kara’s home wasn’t any better, her father spent more and more time at work and even her mother stopped having time to run with her. Kara herself started spending more time with her own projects, and helping her aunt.

For some inane reason Kara couldn’t fathom, Lara Lor-Van had decided to carry her new cousin to term without the use of a birthing matrix, and her uncle had agreed to it.

Her aunt’s situation was such that both she and Jor-El had to take a break from their duties last month, causing Kara’s father to become even more frustrated. Still, when Kara heard that Kal-El was finally born, she couldn’t help becoming excited.

Despite that, it wasn’t until her sixteen birthday that she met him, standing over the small, fragile, helpless body; Kara poked its chubby arms with a finger in confusion. “What… is this?”

“He is your cousin, the new head of house El,” Jor-El answered with pride in his voice.

“But he’s so… helpless. How’s he gonna change clothes or eat?” She whispered. Well, she knew how, in theory, but she just couldn’t understand why they didn’t use the Birthing Matrix, it was so much better and more efficient.

Lifting the baby into her arm, Lara smiled down at him and handed him over into Kara’s arms. Wide eyed, she tried to avoid the small creature, but it was useless.

Stiff as a crystal, Kara stared at her little cousin and was assaulted with a sudden bout of nostalgia, as if she was missing something, but she had no idea what. Poking his cheek with a finger again, she watched him giggle and try to grab her offending digit.

“Isn’t he perfect?” Jor-El asked, looking down at the both of them together.

“I… wouldn’t say that,” Kara answered honestly, thinking about how the baby didn’t even have the strength to support its own head. “More like, fragile.”

“Well, that too,” Her uncle said and caressed his son’s head in a rare show of affection, then took him off her arms. Looking at them, Kara couldn’t help feeling envious of the little thing. “Kara, as his elder, it will be your job to help guide and teach him.”

“I- what? But you…”

“I am a busy man, and I may not always be there for him,” turning towards her, Jor-El stared at her eyes with unexpected seriousness. “I will be counting on you to watch over him and make sure he is ready when the time comes.”

Feeling conflicted; Kara spent the rest of the day in a daze, watching the rest of the El house pay respect to the new heir, even if most of them agreed with her about the use of the birthing matrix.

She did wonder where Krypto had gone but, with how vulnerable Kal-El seemed, her uncle had probably terminated the creature lest it endanger him. Her heart hurt at the notion, and she really wished he had offered the dog to her, even if she knew her father wouldn’t approve of it.

Going back to Argo city, she was preparing to go to sleep, but she still heard Zor-El’ frustrated yelling as he lost his temper again, not wanting to attract his attention, Kara increased her speed towards her home, Zor-El’s anger was such that Kara swore she could feel the entire house shaking at his anger.

The next days were hard, her father seemed to be spending more and more time away from his work at the science guild, but he wouldn’t leave his own laboratory, to the point that Kara actually saw him even less than before.

On her travels to Kandor, Kara started to notice she was getting strange looks from the scientists there, and she was no longer allowed to work on some of their simple projects, even when she was perfectly qualified to do it.

Worst, Kara started to notice small earthquakes happening in both cities. Earthquakes weren’t unknown in Krypton, but they only happened once every year or two, and only in one city at a time. Now they were almost a monthly occurrence, and Kara couldn’t find any reason for it, be it on the common network or at the Science guild.

Everything together started to create an oppressive atmosphere, as if it was all building up for something, the looks, the shaking, the lack of support from her family… For the first time in her life, Kara had no idea what to do.

Finally, five months later, Kara was called to have lunch with her family. Deep inside, she hoped that it was the start of a change, that her family would get back in order.

Sitting at the table with both her parents, they actually ate in silence. A small quake caused Kara to spill some of her water, but her father didn’t even react to it, continuing to eat as if it was nothing important.

That was probably when Kara realized things wouldn’t be getting better, her father would never have ignored such things. Feeling some dread, Kara finished her lunch and put down the cutlery. “Father, what’s wrong?”

“This is farewell, Kara,” Zor-El said, lowering his own hands and cleaning his face with a napkin. Trading a short look with Alura, Kara’s father squeezed his wife’s hand in a show of affection.

“What do you mean?”

“Twelve years ago, your uncle noticed an anomaly on Krypton’s core, further study indicated that our planet’s core was critically unstable and in danger of imminent failure. Unfortunately, when he brought the information to the high council, no other scientist was able to independently verify it,” releasing Alura’s hand, Zor-El put both elbows against the table and steepled his fingers as he explained. “Jor-El had long spoken against some of our customs, and he was a known advocate of re-starting diplomatic relationships with other systems. His warning was taken as a power play and greatly suppressed.”

Barely able to understand her father’s words, Kara felt another quake shaking her chair, distracted, she took the time to push her cutlery back into place and just continued to listen.

“As the second in command of the El house, I supported my brother, but others saw the chance to diminish our influence at the science guild. Once the high council had made up its mind, they continued to refuse to see reason no matter what kind of proof was presented, confident in their own reasoning no matter what was said,” Taking a second to drink some more water, Kara’s father pushed his chair back and looked out at Argo city. “Despite how dire the situation was, the question became a political and religious discussion, and Dru-Zod’s attempted coup did not help our cause.

“For some reason, my brother still hoped to change the council’s mind, so he did not support Dru-Zod, letting him get sentenced to the phantom zone, but also eliminating any chance of solving the issue,” Shaking his head, Zor-El actually took off his neural control, laying it on the table and taking a deep breath. “My brother’s insistence on hoping for a better outcome was almost as ridiculous as the council’s refusal to see the truth but, at that point, attempting to depose him as the head of our house would only destroy us faster.”

“Were…” Kara swallowed hard, looking at her parent’s resigned faces with despair. “Were you able to find a solution?”

“No, not for Krypton.” Zor-El answered with a cold voice. “For you and Kal-El, yes.”

“The hyper-drives,” Kara whispered, realizing what her father seemed to be implying. “But… Why leave it to me?”

“Succeeding was never the goal, your prototypes were surprisingly effective, but both I and Jor-El still had to improve their designs before they were actually usable,” Her father didn’t explain further, allowing Kara to think things through.

“You only wanted the materials… and maybe the blueprints too.” She said, feeling her hands close into fists at the realization.

“Indeed,” Zor-El nodded, a rare glint of approval on his eye. “While the high council and the religious guild were keeping a very close watch on any of my or your uncle’s projects, our family still had enough influence to muddle your own actions, especially when they did their best to keep any information from spreading, such that even their own informants didn’t know exactly why our house was under watch. You have not even completed your education, how important could a simple learning exercise be?

“Jor-El managed to send that beast of his as a test pilot for a first ship, the hyper-drive caused a temporal distortion that we had to make adjustments for, but we used the information gathered to finish two ships in time.”

Another small quake interrupted their talks, and Kara let the silence stretch between them, her mind completely unable to process everything she had just heard. Finally, Zor-El put the neural transmitter back into his forehead and announced. “Kal-El’s ship has just departed, it’s time.”

Together, her parents got up and started walking towards the courtyard. Unable to help herself, Kara walked at her mother’s side, holding on to her hand for support. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why lie and manipulate me like that?”

Without stopping, Zor-El glanced towards her briefly before answering. “Would it have changed anything? There was nothing you could do. I simply chose to spare you the worry, and I never lied, building the hyper-drive prototype was an incredibly valuable exercise. That is why it never gathered any suspicion from the guild.”

Stepping out of the house, Kara saw the crystals on the courtyard folding up, revealing a platform with a single person ship as it was lifted into open air. “What now?”

“Now you’ll leave, I have installed a suspended animation chamber and, once you arrive at sector 2814, both it and the hyper-drive will deactivate, allowing you to pilot the ship and giving you enough time to study the system. The ship’s computer should have all the information you need,” Zor-El said. Looking out at the city, he actually had to brace himself as another earthquake hit them, one far more powerful than before.

Kara actually saw one of the crystal towers on Argo cracking under stress, staring at the falling in both fascination and horror.

“Hmm, the core was predicted to remain stable for another three days,” Her father wondered out loud. “Quickly, you were supposed to leave two months ago, but the council vastly increased the surveillance after Jor-El’s test and I had to make way for a better stealth system on the ship.”

Kara felt her mother embracing her, squeezing her body against her chest as hard as she could. For the first time in her life, she felt tears running down her cheeks and soaking into her mother’s robes. “Kara, I want you to know I love you, you make me proud to be your mother, don’t let your cousin dictate your life.”

Cleaning her face with her sleeves, Kara hugged her father, squeezing her face against his chest with all her strength. Awkwardly Zor-El squeezed back, before lifting her inside the chamber on the ship.

“Kara Zor-El, you and your cousin are now the last hope of our house, and maybe of our entire race, the crest on you have on your chest is now more important than ever in our history,” Zor-El stepped away from the ship, standing beside his wife and holding her hand on his own. Slowly, the glass covered her face, but she could still hear his voice. “But don’t make the same mistake as your uncle. Remember, hope without substance, without the will, the power and the wisdom to see it through is less than nothing. Don’t let an empty hope blind you to reality and guide your cousin well. I know you’ll make me proud.”

Kara Zor-El’s last sight on Krypton was the same as the first one, her parents standing behind a glass wall, their backs straight as they faced the future, or lack thereof, with perfect composure. Closing her eyes, she felt the ship’s engines igniting, taking her away from the planet and gaining speed.

Still, the ship had to gain enough distance from the Rao’s gravity well before activating the hyper-drive without suffering too much disturbance from the large star and that took time.

Kara felt her eyelids growing heavier and heavier as the chamber started putting her into suspended animation, she closed her eyes and trusted her father’s programming to bring her away.