Chapter 4.2 – Rewrite
The oldest looking girl recovered first, she shook her head and looked at her own hands in wonder before releasing a laugh.
"Ahahahahahaha, I beat Captain Marvel, I actually did it! How cool is that?!" Pointing with her hand, she released another thunderbolt towards an empty car and caused it to explode. "And this power, we had never absorbed so much power before!"
Kara's stomach dropped, she could put two and two together and come to a terrible conclusion. Somehow, this Livewire wannabe had absorbed Captain Marvel's powers.
Discarding her half eaten ice cream, Kara flexed her foot and tried to alpha strike the oldest girl by going as fast as she could. Somehow, the girl caught her movement, her eyes widened and she released another thunderbolt right at Kara.
The strike hit her in the chest with the power of a truck, arresting all her momentum and sending her flying back to hit a car, causing the metal to bend around her. The impact drove the air out of her lungs and sent a jolt of pain all through her body, somehow bypassing her natural resistance. Worse, it carried enough of a charge to fry the electronics on her leg, despite the amount of isolation she had on it.
Crap, Captain Marvel's powers were magic weren't they?
"Ugh." Kara grunted, grabbing the metal around her, Kara pushed, freeing her body from the car and glaring at the girl.
The little shit just laughed and lifted one of her arms, releasing another bolt.
Kara wasn't fast enough to dodge lightning, but she could certainly dodge someone aiming at her. Flying aside, she watched the new attack hit the car and make it explode before having to fly up in order to dodge another bolt.
"Will you just stay put!" The girl screamed, stomping on the ground from anger and aiming another bolt towards Kara.
The Kryptonian dropped down from the air, letting the thunderbolt pass harmlessly over her head while taking the opportunity to charge right at the girl.
Before the brat could gather another bolt, Kara was close enough she could slap some sense into her.
"Ack!" The girl screamed, her eyes going wide from fear and, just before Kara could hit her, disappeared in a flash of thunder, hitting the clouds above them and discharging thunderbolts towards all directions. Even Kara's enhanced senses couldn't see which one was the real one.
With the immediate treat gone, Kara grabbed the unconscious 10 years old boy in the middle of a charred street. She first checked his vitals and released a breath of relief, then turned towards the other three girls.
They all looked like different versions of the same girl, one of them was crying in a sitting position, her heart beating like mad from fright, she had slightly longer hair and no piercings or tattoos. The second had short spiky hair and used the same piercings as the original, but had a wild look in her eyes and seemed very angry. The last one was still trying to recover, wearing the destroyed suit.
Kara guessed she was the original, since there was nothing different on her body.
"Ugh… what happened?" The boy in her arms asked, holding his head in pain. Kara laid his body on the ground and prepared herself to fight. The little brats weren't that powerful, but she was still wounded, and they were damn fast.
"I… I was… wait Captain Marvel is a kid? Wha… how!?" The original girl asked, dumbfounded.
At her side, the wild looking girl started flashing before turning into a stream of electricity and flying into a nearby energy cable, her travel so fast Kara was unsure she would have caught the girl, even if she didn't have to protect the unpowered boy. At least she didn't seem to have been supercharged like the older clone.
"Kara? What are you doing here?"
"Hi, fancy meeting you here Cap." Kara said and smiled in relief, at least the boy didn't seem to be damaged in any way.
"Oh crap!" He scrambled away from her before taking everything in, then he lifted an arm and shouted. "Shazam!"
Nothing happened, he tried jumping up and screaming the name again, but his body refused to change, then he noticed all three of them looking at him and scratched his neck sheepishly. "Can we just pretend that didn't happen?"
"Suure." Said the original girl, then she looked from Kara to the Captain, and her still crying doppelganger before sighing. "Shit, I didn't even want to do this, but the others convinced me and now I'm hurting children. Ugh, I knew it was too good to be true."
The girl let herself fall on her ass and crawled closer to her double before putting an arm around her for comfort and covering her own eyes with a hand.
Kara didn't know how to deal with one crying preteen, much less two. Giving a glance to Cap's civilian identity just to make sure he wouldn't break out in tears on her, Kara approached the twins and said the first thing that came to her mind. "Come on; let's go before someone else gets here. I have cake at home."
Flying while carrying three kids was kind of awkward, but Kara managed it fairly easily and, soon enough, the more childish of the girls was giggling in her grasp with both arms open wide.
"Weeeeee!" She screamed and almost wiggled free of Kara's grasp. It wasn't the stealthiest thing to do but, at this point, Kara was beyond caring.
She entered her apartment and dropped all three of them on the ground before throwing herself face first on the sofa and releasing a loud groan.
"So… what now?" Whispered the boy beside her head and she waved him away like an annoying fly.
Turning in place, Kara started fiddling with her fried leg. Taking off her boot, she tried to manually disengage the locking mechanism with one hand while waving the boy away with the other. "You're the hero, you find out what's going on."
In frustration, Kara managed to get a nail between the jammed locks and rip them free, finally getting the destroyed leg out of her body. The prosthetic itself seemed to be a total loss, but at least the port seemed to be salvageable, so she wouldn't need a new surgery.
15 minutes later, Kara pinched the bridge of her nose and could already see the headache coming. Long story short, the girl was called Amy and she could absorb electricity, but hadn't been able to truly use her ability until someone made her a power suit and told her to fight Captain Marvel.
Damn, and the stupid girl actually did it, thinking the worst that could happen was she lost and, as a minor, would get a slap on the wrist.
To make matters worse, the girl suffered from multiple personality disorder and, when she absorbed the Captain's power, her body had split into four. "So… who are those personalities again?"
"Ah… only Amber has a name, really." Amy told her while trying to appear smaller by keeping her head down.
"Amber is the mad one, right?" Kara asked while massaging her aching stump in annoyance.
"She's… she's not mad! She's just… angry." Amy protested and took another bite of her sandwich before grumbling. "She's the one who always protects me."
"Fine, so we have the 'protective one', the 'childish one.'" Kara pointed towards the other girl who was happily eating cookies in the kitchen while swinging her legs on the stool. "And the one who ran away was what?"
"I - I don't know, she just… always wants me to do dumb things, like… she's kind of impulsive."
"Errr… turns out everyone in the League is busy right now." Billy told her as he finished texting on his phone. Kara released another groan, a louder one this time; she just knew it was gonna be her problem to fix this. "So, I think I know why I can't transform. I think Amber absorbed the power of Zeus, so I can't use the magic lightning to summon my transformation."
Kara looked from Amy to the little boy and lifted an eyebrow. "And it has to be magic lightning, normal lightning won't do?"
"Still can't believe Captain Marvel is a kid." Amy whispered to herself and finished her meal. Licking her fingers, she asked. "Can… Can I have another one?"
Kara nodded and Amy eagerly started opening the fridge. Looking closer, Kara noticed the girl was far too thin, her ribs visible under her suit and her limbs more like sticks.
Damn her bleeding heart, she was gonna have to do something about that too wasn't she.
"I don't know. This never happened to me before." Billy said and dropped down beside her on the sofa. "I mean, we can try right?"
"I'm NOT hitting a ten year old with lightning!" Amy shouted in outrage from the kitchen before lowering her head again, as if afraid she was gonna get hit.
"Didn't seem to bother you when hitting Captain Marvel with lightning." Kara joked and the girl flinched.
"I… I didn't think I could hurt him." The girl confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. "And that was mostly Amber anyway."
"Well, thankfully, both missing personalities don't seem to be doing any damage." Kara said. "Amy, do you think you could face them if they make problems?"
"I… ah, Amber was-was the one who always dealt with problems." The girl said with a shaking voice. "I'm too weak, too ugly, too useless, I-I'm only good for my power."
The girl quickly started to tremble in place, her nails digging into the flesh on her exposed tight until they drew blood. Kara didn't know how to react.
"Amy!" Billy cried out and held her hands tightly with his own, snapping her out of her funk. "Amy, you're not weak or useless, you fought me, you defeated me, and nobody weak could do that! Besides, you're far from ugly."
Looking at Billy's eager expression, Amy couldn't help but take some deep breaths and calm herself, then she gave a little giggle. "I don't think heroes are supposed to cheer up their villains."
"Ugh, alright, enough sweetness already." Kara mocked them. She had lost a very expensive prosthetic, had a killer headache and was probably gonna have to fight someone with the power of Zeus; to say she was in a foul mood would be a huge euphemism. "Do you at least have any idea where your two missing doppelgangers would go?"
"I don…" Amy started to say when an enormous thunder interrupted her, rattling Kara's windows and causing every light in her apartment to go out.
Looking out of the window, Kara saw another ten meters wide thunderbolt hit the top of a building and blow every one of its windows, leaving a short, spiky haired teenager with several piercings on her face laughing maniacally on top of it.
With a maniacal laugh, the girl lifted both hands up and rained thunderbolts down on the streets at random. "Nevermind, I think I found her."