DC

"Girl, we need to talk." I said to Kara Zor-L as I darkened her door once more.

These words spoken would have put any woman's metaphorical balls somewhere around her throat, and for good reason. I look something like Gene 'The Demon' Simmons had a baby with an actual demon that spent its youth boosting test and GH and lifting and eating and nothing much else.

Not that Power Girl showed any sign of bother or letting me in.

"Then talk." Kara spoke tersely.

"Hmmmm…" I hummed as I looked her over, "Can't pretend like I don't know about the boy any longer." I chuckled, "The other kids know about him, want him around. I personally think Kal was doing a fine job, but Kal's on the bench right now."

The sound of Kara's fists tightening played out loud enough for a normy across the gilded high rise apartment hallway to hear.

"Didn't know or didn't think I knew about the crystal fort up in the Arctic?" I asked the heated woman, "Assume I know everything. At this point that's more likely than not."

"What exactly do you want here, Mark?" Kara inquired with her arms crossed over the god given fleshy watermelons she calls breasts.

"I want to talk to my boy. Tell him about his options." I informed her.

"Mar doesn't have options." Kara denied with a shake of her head, "He goes to school, gets good grades, and comes home. He plays piano three nights a week, and does ballroom dancing two nights a week. On Saturdays we watch movies. And on Sundays he goes to Church with me, down the street."

"The Baptist place?" I scoffed then shrugged, "Well, at least the boy will learn to sing."

"You're cool with that?" Kara's eyes widened in surprise.

"Yeah." I grinned, "I got no beef with JC. I do think the guy is going need to get back out in the streets or I'm gonna have the game on lock by twenty twenty just off hustle and a more user friendly product."

"You are a more user friendly product than Jesus?" Kara couldn't fight the smile down successfully as she bit back her laughter, the corners of her mouth kept tilting back up as her teeth shined white between her pink lips.

"Of course!" I smiled as I put a forearm on top of her door frame to rest my head as I leaned forward, "I do everything he does - Heaven, Hell, spiritual support, moral guidance, social fabric - and I don't move in mysterious ways. I'm right here, ask me what you will. Plus I beat down alien invaders. My boy better take up his cross and beat Darkseid over the head with it, otherwise that ashy fuck is a walking talking advertisement for Grayson Fundamentalism."

"What do you want, Mark?" Kara asked again, "Why are you here? Why are you even in this universe?"

"Playing hardball." I mused, "I embraced the inherent cynicism of the universe I was born into. My multiverse is young and unafraid to answer the questions posed by the older, more cyclical multiverses. Our solutions work, but does that mean that there is no inherent value in the narratives of these other multiverses?"

"You all look so silly to an outsider looking in." I continued, "So naive and innocent. So unabashedly optimistic. Sure there are some versions of this universe where things are even more cynical and twisted than in my own, but that isn't what this multiverse is about at its core. So I am here to experience a universe alongside people who are sincere in their intentions and beliefs. Who can tangle with themes such as power and fear and not be diminished by them, but rise up greater than before. I don't want to just observe it, but feel it, live it, see if this universe mired in forgiveness and the moral high ground can actually change the way I view things. Maybe at the end of this journey I will have discovered nothing new except some cool new powers, but I am willing to see where things go."

Kara and I remained quiet for a time looking into each other's eyes.

The silence didn't break until I said, "How about it then?"