Contributions to society

chapter 1: contributions to society (part 1 of 3)

"Kara Danvers?" Kara whipped around to find herself face to face with a handsome gentleman in a dark red suit.
"Lenny Thorul?" she guessed. The man smiled in return, an obvious "yes".
"Pleased to meet you," he said, extending a large hand. Kara shook it willingly, wearing a smile to match his own.
"Likewise!" she said. "Shall we take a seat?" she gestured to one of several empty tables behind them. They were currently standing in the doorway of a quiet little bar towards the edge of National City.
"Of course," Lenny bowed his head in a playful politeness. Kara laughed a little before leading him towards a table in the far back corner.
Kara and Lenny had been in correspondence for a few months now and it was all thanks to their mutual friendship with Alex Danvers, Kara's older sister. Apparently, Lenny was a fellow DEO agent, though he was serving at a different base. But even though he and Alex were serving at different DEO sites, they had worked together on a mission once and been friends ever since. It was only recently that Lenny learned that Alex had a younger sister, and even more recently that said sister was also the famous Kryptonian hero named Supergirl. Kara had been a bit surprised to hear that Alex had told Lenny her secret identity, but Lenny was able to assure her that Alex had only told him, and this was because he was an old and trusted friend. No one else at his DEO site knew the truth about Supergirl's civilian identity, only him.
Shortly after Lenny realized who Alex's younger sister truly was, it became his biggest dream to get to meet her in person.
"Isn't it everyone's dream to meet the legendary Girl of Steel?" he asked playfully as he and Kara sipped on their beers. "I'm just lucky that I had a direct connection to you," he added with a chuckle, raising his bottle slightly.
"Well, normally I wouldn't meet just anyone that Alex happened to know," Kara laughed back as she raised her own bottle. "You just seemed like a nice guy and I figured that it wouldn't hurt to finally get to meet you face to face. It's a pity Alex couldn't come along though…" just for a moment, Kara's face grew sad. She had wanted this little outing to consist of three people and not just two, but the way schedules worked out, Lenny was only available during the time when Alex wasn't.
"I can see her another time," Lenny said casually. "I've met her in person several times before, actually," he added. "We may have only worked together once before, but we certainly are not strangers. You and I, however…"
"Not anymore," Kara replied with a smirk as she took another sip of her beer. "Now you can cross "meet Supergirl" off your bucket list!"
"I wonder if I can cross "get her autograph" off the list too?" Lenny asked with a laugh.
"Oh, I suppose I could do that…" Kara replied, pretending as though Lenny had asked a great burden from her.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly, the two simply laughing and chatting over DEO life, and Alex. But somewhere into Kara's third beer, she began to feel a bit woozy. In the minutes to come, the wooziness got stronger and stronger.
"I think I might be drunk!" she giggled, looking very uncoordinated and silly.
"Maybe it's time we get you home then, huh?" Lenny asked warmly back. "Can't have your sister raking me across the coals for keeping you out past your bedtime and then bringing you home White-Girl Wasted, right?"
"It is not past my bedtime!" Kara tried to whine back, but when she tried to point an accusing finger at Lenny, her arm dropped to the table.
"Drunker than I thought!" Lenny laughed again, but to Kara, it sounded like she was listening to him speak while she was underwater. How odd!
For just a second, Kara felt a flash of fear and she went to shake her head to try and wake up a little bit, but it suddenly felt immensely heavy. Even that one simple gesture made her feel weak and tired. Her entire body felt as though it were melting, and no part of her body would physically respond to her. She couldn't even shake her head, or raise her arm! Before she could realize that this was beyond a typical drunkenness, though, her mind followed in her body's footsteps and it too stopped responding.
The next time Kara woke up, she was in glass chamber full of some sort of liquid. She was also totally naked. The only thing on her at all was a face mask, hooked up to tubes that vanished through the ceiling of her glass tank. She shot awake with a muffled scream and she began to thrash around in a wild, violent panic. Her eyes flashed with anger, confusion and raw desperation as she flailed around in her tank, trying furiously to escape. She punched and clawed as the glass that encircled her, but she was unable to even scratch the surface. It was like all of her powers and strengths had gone. Her freeze breath wasn't working, her laser vision wasn't working, her super-senses weren't working. For all intents and purposes, she was a normal human. She continued to scream, but even she could hardly hear herself just because of how tightly the mask was strapped to her face. As helpless as she was, though, she continued to thrash and panic.
"I don't see why you insist upon wasting your time and energy. You're only going to make yourself upset, trying to do that. But you won't get out. I can assure you of that," an eerily pleasant voice behind Kara suddenly began to speak. She rotated her body around and then recoiled in horror as she realized she was looking into the sadistically delighted eyes of Lex Luthor.
"Impossible!" she breathed, so stunned by Lex's appearance that she forgot that she was totally naked.
"Ah-ah," Lex waggled a finger in mock chastisement. "Not impossible," he said. "Just improbable. But as low as the odds were, I still had a chance, and I know how to make the best of my chances," the smile he gave her was chilling.
"How?" she wasn't quite sure how Lex was able to hear her speak, unless he'd somehow hooked up a microphone inside her breathing mask, but she already knew she didn't have to speak above a whisper in order for him to hear every terrified word she said.
"How?" he asked back, showing off more of his teeth as his smile widened sickeningly. "Why, Ms. Danvers, I am so glad you asked!" then, he proceeded to explain, gloating over her as his sick and twisted plan unfolded before her very eyes.
Lex had been coming and going from his jail cell for months now, him having since bribed the guards into letting him leave every once in a while. During one of his many outings, he ran into an old friend and associate of his, Lenny Thorul. Lenny, like Lex, had been a vehemently anti-alien man. He still held those same hateful views, but he had been relatively inactive and underground ever since Lex was imprisoned. Now that Lex was free again, though, it didn't take much to persuade him to hop back onto the old bandwagon of attempting to wipe out every little last alien species from the planet until only a pure human race remained. During his time in prison, Lex had come up with an ingenious new plan that was far more subtle than anything he had previously concocted. All he needed to set that plan in motion was a human who was safely on the outside of things. That human was, of course, Lenny. Stupid, devoted, determined, and perfectly obedient, Lenny.
So while Lex still spent most of his time locked away, Lenny never rested, constantly out and busy, doing the Luthor's dirty work. He bought up an abandoned factory and fixed up the machines until everything was up and running again. This time, though, what used to be an old slaughterhouse for common farm animals was remodeled into a nightmarish laboratory that could contain and clone Kryptonians. As soon as that lab was done, Lex then commanded Lenny to go and find Supergirl and gain her trust in any way he knew how. He had chosen the lie that he was a mutual friend of Supergirl's' dear, beloved sister: Alex. The rest was history.
"And that's how he knew so much about the DEO!" Kara breathed in horror and disbelief.
"Correct," Lex said smugly. "He is quite the actor! I can't believe he even managed to get you to meet him up at a bar!" the mad scientist added with a cackle. "I thought for sure that a girl like you would've had the brains to avoid a first meeting like that, but I suppose that being an invulnerable, perfect little Kryptonian has given you a god-complex, a false sense of security. I like that," he paused to smile serenely at Kara.
"How deliciously ironic it is," he mused. "I was always told that my pride was what caused my fall. Had I not overshot and overstepped my boundaries, I would've been happy. But now look! Supergirl! The hero the country, second only to Superman, has made the very same fatal flaw that once ensnared me. You and I have the same foolish pride. The only difference is that your mistake will be much more permanent than mine…"
"You're crazy!" Kara tried to bluff bravely. "Someone will know that I am gone and they will come looking for me and once they do-"
"Ha! Oh, Kara, my dear, no one will come looking for you! Lenny has taken care of that," Lex turned his head to the right and Lenny himself stepped out of the shadows, grinning twistedly up at Kara. Kara felt an unspeakable fury start to burn in her chest the moment she looked into those warm brown eyes once again only to see a bragging sort of triumph within them. That sick, little-
"You see, Kara, it is very simple in deed!" Lenny began, voice suddenly cruel and demeaning. "That little bar I invited you to was no normal bar. Didn't you ever stop to ask even once why it was so quiet and clean? No normal bar is quite that empty! Especially not at night!"
"What are you talking about?" Kara snarled as it suddenly occurred to her that he was right. She had considered that bar to be quaint, charmed by its small and quiet group. She hadn't even thought that such a small number of people should've been a red flag.