2016-02-30 - Space Girl Callahan

"Civilian Astronaut Leah Callahan reporting," Leah says as she steps up to the elevator. She's wearing a top-of-the-line launch suit and has her hair bound tight to her head. Having already passed security, medical, and gotten through the half-hour process of making sure that she's suited properly and has all of her duties set clearly in her head, she looks like she's visibly vibrating as she steps out where Kara can see her from the back rooms and walks up to the kryptonian, the guards, and the GODDAMN SPACE SHUTTLE!!!!!

After months of training, Leah spent all of last night showing off her six-pack abs to Kara, who of course was duly impressed, and then staying up all night because someone, that someone being Leah, was way to excited to sleep. So she's on zero sleep and still wired, because this is the day she goes into space.

"Kara, Karakarakarakarakara it's time it's time! Gimme a hug!" You'd think she'd been waiting a while for this. The fact that the guards are saluting her hasn't registered on her yet.

Kara Zor-El had stayed up with Leah, although she did give Leah a little device before she took Leah to Houston for her to get suited up and everything. "Just in case you need to talk to me or anything private, yknow.... without it being broadcast to NASA?... just press that button on there okay? It's... um... basically like a long distance communicator that calls my phone. It'll work as far as lunar orbit."

Once at the launch site, with Leah about to go, Kara grins and gives Leah a hug. "You'll do great - you've worked really hard to get here. I'm going to be at mission control with the head of NASA watching, okay?" Leah has the awesome device hidden in her suit, because where else could she realistically hide it? But having it, gives Leah a little bit of relief. Just in case, y'know.

Hugging Kara tight, Leah dances a little, which looks awesome because everything is awesome right now, and she stops to give her guards a salute with that huge grin on her face that they're trying really hard not to mimic. Failing, though. Leah's grin is contagious and even guards are human.

"See, it's just space. Not like we're going to be the moon, which is complete bullshit because I still want to go to the moon but yeah, space station is super cool and I'll see you up there, got it?" She points at Kara, smirking, and then hugs her again really quickly as the elevator arrives.

"We're on a very strict timetable, Miss Callahan," the guard on the left says, though he's still smiling.

Leah sighs, then bounces and eaaases toward the elevator. "Love you, Kara." Then she's slipping into the elevator and her eyes look up with longing. Not to the shuttle, but about 20,000 miles higher. As it should be.

Kara Zor-El smiles at Leah. "I might stop by." she says before letting her head up into the elevator. She then heads off with the NASA director to Mission Control. She looks over at him. "I didn't want to say in front of Leah, but I'm a little nervous." she says before watching the big screen.

Launch Control is a tightly controlled chaos when Kara walks in. The director isn't actually directly in charge; he has everything in sight in case he's needed though, but the flight controllers and communications specialists are doing most of the actual work.

"That's understandable, Kara," he says, having met her at least once in the time that Leah's been at the base. "While the technology has improved immeasurably in the last decade, there's always still the occasional malfunction. We all remember the Challenger." He salutes randomly as it's mentioned. "The shuttles of today bear very little resemblance to that flight though. We send people up every week or so, now. Most of the risk is after they get to space, these days."

Out the window, the elevator has reached the doorway and Leah can be seen stepping into the Space Shuttle Infinity. Her hand waves quickly but it vanishes inside and the door seals behind her. Always late, she was the last to enter.

The big clock on the wall shows ten minutes to liftoff.

Inside, Leah finds her seat by climbing along the ladder inside, straps in, and signals the signal that's there to signal that she's done her signaling stuff. So tech-savvy, yus. That's me. Hey, I'm a cosplayer not a pilot!

"Final check on the transport material reports green. Ready to launch, sir." The mighty engines on the shuttle start up and the claxons sound, as the big ship begins liftoff sequence.

Kara Zor-El pauses, then looks at the director. "The Challenger?" she asks. That happened before Kara even got to Earth. She was just nervous about the spaceworthiness of Earth spaceships in general, given how often even their airplanes seemed to malfunction.

But his next few sentences seem a little more calming. "O...kay." she says slowly before looking back at the screen.

The Director of NASA glances at Kara when she asks about the Challenger, then says, "Hm. I'll...explain in twenty minutes," as the shuttle engines kick into high gear. Because in twenty minutes, they'll either be in space, or they...won't. The Challenger disaster was only minutes after ignition, after all.

In the shuttle, Leah takes one last look at her particular gauges and makes sure that they're all green. Unless they're not supposed to be, but that's fine too. She glances at the physical visual readout of the package she's responsible for on this trip, wishing she actually knew what was so important about it that they'd man an entire shuttle for a single strand of hair.

Nope, still just a black lock of hair. Well, she's a scientist for this mission, and that means doing the tests and coming home when they're done.

Leah's train of thought is cut off then by overwhelming noise and gravity as the massive shuttle starts to lift off. The water banks underneath the thrusters turn to vapour as the engines pour thrust, and the Space Shuttle Infinity begins to lift into the sky.

Lifting up, the shuttle is barely visible to the human eye and bright enough to need serious filters through Launch Control as it lights up and lifts with the first astronaut cosplayer in human history in its cockpit!

Leah's just happy that she had a small breakfast though, because three gravities is noticeable even in the launch seats!

And shortly afterward, the crew is cheering, as the ship heads safely upward toward orbit!

Kara Zor-El watches the shuttle blast off. The director might not be aware of it, but at the same time she was listening in on all the different people at the many different computers and stations, just to make sure there wasn't any problem. Once the shuttle seems to be breaking the atmosphere and going into orbit, she seems relieved. "Okay well.. I um... what happens next for them?"

"Well, as the shuttle burns fuel and gets further from the Earth, it accelerates faster, so the shuttle is increasing in speed as it goes up. It was very slow when it started, but that's mostly because we don't want to hurt everyone inside. We'll be breaking orbit in five minutes," the Director says in response to Kara's question. He seems fairly calm, his heartbeat slowing as the most dangerous part of the launch has passed.

The flight coordinator calls "Throttle up!" as the shuttle breaks the thickest part of the atmosphere, and the director smiles. "They just passed the heavy part, they're moving at at 3500 miles an hour right now. They just dropped the main tanks and are igniting the shuttle burners. If you look at the screen to your right, you should see the course corrections being made by the computer. Unfortunately for all her training, it's very unlikely that your girl will actually need to do any piloting today."

The screens to Kara's right show an excellent course, as the ship moves toward a glowing blue line that flashes expectantly. As the ship reaches and merges with it, a controller calls out, "Orbit achieved, sir! Zero gravity inside, thirty minutes to linkup with the station. Current speed, fifty-seven hundred miles per hour and tracking normal."

Subtly, in the ship, something happens then as Leah is spending a moment experiencing zero-g for real. Aside from her stomach going all flippy that is. In the instruments, the shuttle's guidance system suffers a complete and total failure. At the same time, a series of four green-clad robots appear from a cloaked ship nearby and float to latch onto the outside of Infinity.

While the astronauts may not notice the equipment failure, the sound of four heavy robots landing on the ship makes their heads shoot up. "Odd sounds from outside, Kennedy. Are we expecting company?" That's Leah's voice over the speaker in the Launch Center on Earth. Then, on Kara's phone, a less confident, "Kara? What's outside my shuttle? This is scaring me."

The robots start pushing, their boosters allowing them to guide the ship to another destination than the makers intended. Which makes the launch center alarms go absolutely berserk.

"No, why are you changing course? Wait, that's not your systems," the Director says as he's fed information. Systems offline, course changes, additional weight. He turns to look for where Supergirl is, wondering if she's got anything to add to this...

When the Director looks over to where Supergirl was, he sees no one there.

That's because at that moment, Supergirl is already flying into orbit to where the shuttle is, which is probably showing up on the NASA screens as soon as he looks back from where Kara had 'disappeared.'

Kara makes orbit moments after the first signs of trouble, and when she sees the robots taking control of the shuttle, she gets in front of the shuttle, planting her hands on the nosecone and stopping its new course correction. She makes a little thumbs up to the astronauts in the window before she looks to see what those robots are that have latched onto the ship. Maybe she can just heat vision them off if she's careful enough without harming the shuttle?

Though Kara Zor-El may not have directly met the creator of these robots in person, she has read the Oracle files and the image of these robots is not hard for her to recognize. Humanoid bodies with green cloaks. Metal faces with narrow eye slits that a human could conceivably see through. A green tunic with an orange belt, and a permanent matching scowl on every one of the four faces.

Doom bots. Two of the bots stay back, near the fuselage, and keep pushing with their boosters for a moment while the other two lift up and separate to make taking them out with one attack more difficult. They lift their arms and aim them at Kara, sending savage bolts of electricity toward her through the void of space.

Even in the silence of space, they seem menacing. Or they would to the astronauts, who can only see glimpses of what's going on through their viewports.

Kara Zor-El peers at the doombots. Their creator must have known SOMETHING about Kryptonians, because their bodies were made of a lead alloy in order to prevent her from being able to see inside for the sensitive areas of the bots. Her eyes glow red as she planned on firing hea vision at one of them... when a second one blasts her with excruciating levels of electricity, causing her to let go of the shuttle and grimace. Kara could take a high level taser without flinching, but when enough electricity to light a city hit you in one big burst (obviously nuclear-powered)... that hurts even a Kryptonian. Her already red eyes turn to the doombot lighting her up like a Christmas tree and she fires the twin beams of red at it, slicing through it like a hot knife through butter.

Of course the other doombots were back to trying to 'steal' the shuttle, along with the astronauts on board and Leah! She shakes off the effects of the electricity - her hair was going to feel frizzy for days. Like when Livewire would blast her, dangit. And she grabs at a second Doombot - namely at his jetpacks with her hands, trying to crush it.

Leah floats up to the window, staring out at the lightshow outside. She's joined by the other astronauts, realizing that there's a full-on superhero firefight going on outside their 'routine' space shuttle mission. Leah throws up a finger at one of the robots from inside, sending a message to Doom who's monitoring the fight that's entirely in her style.

While Kara is crushing the Doombot that she's grappled, one of the two remaining fires a bolt in Kara's direction. It hits, but not at Kara. It instead strikes the bot that she's holding, forcing it to detonate in an obliteratingly bright flash of light, hopefully dazzling Kara's powerful eyes.

At that point, the two remaining robots detatch from the drifting shuttle and move together. Almost touching, they aim their hands at each other and a charge seems to form between them in a ball. Then a big charge, then it changes from yellow to white, and after a few seconds a blast of pure solar energy is turned toward Kara, emitting toward her like a minor solar flare.

Kara Zor-El crushes one robot's thrusters, which causes it to explode. Fortunately, she pulled it off of the shuttle BEFORE that happened, shielding the explosion from damaging the shuttle further with her own body. The blazing light temporarily keeps Kara from being able to see what's happening, but that goes away pretty quickly. After all, she's a girl who can literally fly through the sun.

And speaking of the sun, as the other two fire a concentrated burst of solar energy, expecting 'the full might of the sun' to vaporize the Kryptonian teenager, all that happens is... well.. actually nothing, except she actually looks like she didn't mind it at all. She motions a finger at the robots.

The windows darken for the astronauts, which is probably best because of the light-based weaponry being used outside. Leah personally takes it grumpily, but she and her team start checking instruments again. Which is probably for the best really.

The two robots' hands are glowing red after having fired the major attack at Kara, and the programs inside register failure. Turning toward the unarmoured space shuttle, the Doombots open their hands and aim them toward the windows, preparing to send lethal electrical attacks through to the sensitive equipment and much more sensitive fleshy humans inside.

Kara Zor-El frowns as the remaining doombots fire at the shuttle, and amazingly enough, she is fast enough to get in front of the electrical blast. Literally, the girl moved faster than electricity. And unlike the first time she got hit by the high bursts of electricity, this time, she didn't even flinch.

Kara's eyes glow red again, firing heat vision again at the bots, slicing off their arms that were firing the bursts. Then she's right in front of them after having dis'armed' them. She makes a tsk'ing motion with her finger... right before grabbing them by the heads and smashing them together with insane levels of force.

And this leaves Kara with two very mashed Doombots without arms, and a space shuttle with no guidance system, and a text on her celphone from Leah. Who, perhaps unsurprisingly, has reception when connecting to Kara's cel. It certainly surprised Leah, but she was more than willing to use it.

As the windows lighten and the people inside can see out again, they wave out to Supergirl. Well, most of them. Leah's making bunny ears.

Kara Zor-El realizes, without a working nav system, the shuttle was going to need help. Either bringing it back down to Earth, or to the ISS. And since the ISS was right nearby, and she could always help them get supplies to repair the nav system... the choice was pretty clear. First things first though.

She texts back to Leah, as she waves at the astronauts in the window. She texts back:

GONNA GIVE U A TOW TO ISS, K?

Moments later, Kara was pushing the space shuttle to the international space station, taking her time to put everything in place just right until it locks up. Then she waits for the astronauts to get in the station before she goes in through an airlock as well.

After a few minutes, the space shuttle is swarming with mechanics. Leah is led to a vault to put her very important package into it, while the actual experiments aren't scheduled to start until the next day due to the excitement of the arrival and the Doombots attack. There is a pool as to how long it'll take Leah to tackle Kara long before she arrives, but the person who guessed 'two seconds' turns out to be the winner of that particular one.

Unfortunately yes, Leah is given another quick medical checkup before she's basically pushed aside to let the space station workers do their job and get things back to running order that she's technically supposed to be using to type up a report, but she pauses and grabs Kara's hand, then quickly whispers a request to the Captain. "Can I? Please?"

The captain laughs and points Leah at the space suits. "Twenty minutes outside, have fun you two." And Leah is dragging Kara toward an airlock, biting her lower lip.

Kara Zor-El oofs a little as Leah pounces on Kara, although she obviously doesn't get knocked over or anything. She's Supergirl, after all. Powerful enough to take punches from the Hulk, blasts from doombots, and even pounces from exuberant roommates. She grins. "Welcome to outer space?" she says

She had to admit, Leah was pretty brave. It wasnt a big deal for Kara to be in the void of space, but with Leah, all she had was that suit between her and the cold vacuum. She figured that since she was with her, she might as well show Leah her favorite spot up here. When would she have this chance again?

So instead of using a lifeline for Leah's spacewalk, Kara takes her hand when the outer airlock door opens, Kara takes her to a nearby satellite to sit on it.

Kara came up here a lot because it was nice to look down at a planet that she lived on... that wasnt exploding.

Leah's eyes are wide, round, and fascinated as she's led out into the vastness. The stars around her, so many that she can't even understand. She isn't even babbling as she's pulled through space; she's actually so taken in by the sights around her that she can't even do that. Seeing the world for the first time, though...

When Leah's turned toward Earth, her hand on Kara's tightens so much that she's in danger of rupturing a seal. And when Kara sees inside her helmet, well. The tears on Leah's face speak volumes.

But when Leah does talk, it's simple. 'Thank you, oh god thank you,', not sure what else she could possibly say, as she's pulled to the side of a satellite.

Kara Zor-El sits down on the satellite with Leah, putting her arm around her friend and resting her head on Leah's shoulder. She says into the mic, "I'm really happy you did this. I didn't think I'd get to share this with any of my friends, and now I get to share it with my -best- friend."

Leah points to a swirl over Italy, a storm forming there, and gasps in astonishment, then turns suddenly to look at Kara. Her face bright, she says, "It's all so...so clear! I can see everything. The stars," she says, gesturing upward. "They don't twinkle. And there's so many more!" She blushes, realizing that she's babbling, and visibly decides to chuck that emotion and goes with it.

"You did this too, I was..." A pause, and Leah squeezes Kara's hand. "I wasn't brave enough to do this until you came into my life. That's why I was really upset when you made it easy for me. It was sooo hard, but oh my god, worth it." She leans back onto the satellite, leaving a shapely butt-print on the metal.

Then pauses and winks, then signs her butt-print with a fingertip. "Cosplayer in space."

Kara Zor-El smiles, watching Leah. She really sometimes didn't appreciate how beautiful the stars were. When she was up here, she usually focused more on looking back down at Earth, not out at the stars. She'd been out there her whole life, after all. And it just reminded her of one particular star that wasnt there anymore. She giggles a bit at the signature. "Well... I knew you could do it. I'm sorry for trying to make it too easy though." She pauses. "After we go back to the space station, and before I go back to Earth, I'm going to take the wreckage of one of those robots and try to figure out what they were trying to do. Looked like something that I read in the Oracle Files 2.0."

Kara then pauses. "wait... I have a great idea!"

Kara then puts her hand in her dimensional pocket, pulling out her homemade cell phone...

And takes the most unique selfie in Leah's life. Leah and Kara, with the earth itself as a backdrop. "Smile!"

One pic, posted even before the girls get back to earth. It hits the forums, the message boards, twitter, and the entire internet gets to see. Two people, one a devastating blonde with her hair floating in zero-g, and one in a spacesuit with the best. view. ever. behind them both.

The only things that the world doesn't see is the tears of joy in Leah's eyes, the whispered cries of wonder over her microphone, and one thing even more important:

The warmth growing in Kara's heart, that might someday help her soul to heal. Because of a friend.

GIRL POWER!