Imagine Alex’s plane isn’t brought down and Supergirl never comes to be.
J’onn is firmly Hank Henshaw, known alien opponent.
Kara is Cat Grant’s assistant with aspirations to, uhhhh, figure out her aspirations.
Kara’s on a coffee run when she hears something she hasn’t heard in a decade, a spoken word that shocks her so deeply she drops her coffee cup on the cafe floor. It’s a young voice screaming “help!” but the word is screamed in a language she learned as a child, one spoken on a planet light years from here.
She’s sprinting out the door before the barista is even done scolding her for the spill.
There are three people – well, two humans and a small, greenish creature Kara recognizes from her childhood textbooks – fighting in an alley. It’s clearly young and terrified, and the black-clad humans are rough as they pick it up and throw it down hard, earning another garbled scream.
Kara’s punching him before she can even really think about it, sending him sprawling into the trash. The other one pulls back from where he’d been holding the creature down to gawk at her only to snap back as well from her lightly placed kicked. They’re both out cold.
The creature stares at her and backs itself away, crawling on all fours and trembling, it’s gill-like facial features flaring up in an attempt to intimidate. Kara squats down low and holds her palms up, submissive, and says, “I’m not going to harm you,” in it’s language. Her words are rusty – it’s been years and years – but the creature perks up and lets out an excited trill. Much to her surprise, it latches on to her hand and begins dragging her quickly down the alley.
Kara just follows along, confused and increasingly concerned about who she just beat up and where she’s being taken, and soon finds herself in the middle of a very sketchy warehouse in an even sketchier part of town.
The critter begins to chirp away again, calling out words Kara’s childhood vocabulary don’t quite catch, and all at once the walls seem to shift around her and the empty place she was before is now swarming with aliens.
There are dozens of them all around her, some holding guns and knives, some just watching, and Kara realizes with a gasp just how much she messed up.
She shakes the critter’s hand off hers and moves to run only for her entrance to be blocked, and she wants to fly but she’s not even sure if she still knows how and now all of the aliens are continuing to speak in dozens of tongues she only vaguely recognizes and she’s about two seconds away from rushing the smaller one near the window when a loud voice calls in English,
“ENOUGH.”
Everyone goes silent, and an alien approaches her that looks almost human. There’s something off about their eyes, though, which give them away.
“You saved her from the feds,” the creature says. “You’re one of us, then?”
Kara’s mouth stutters a bit but no words come out – her instinct is to deny deny deny, but it’s been so long since she could just talk about her actual, real self, so she nods. The alien smiles, a smile too wide and sharp to be human.
“Thank you for doing that. Are there more from your planet here?”
She shakes her head, whispers, “all dead,” and the alien puts its slightly too large hand on her shoulder.
“We understand. Most of us came to escape death and inprisonment only to find the cycle continue on earth. But we can protect you, like you protected ours. We are a community. A resistance.”
Kara nods, her heart beating fast as the idea of a community, and says, “what are you resisting?”
“Those men who attacked you are from an evil group that tries to snuff out all aliens on this planet. They’re called the DEO.”
Kara can feel it in her pulse as it beats faster and faster, that feeling of purpose and meaning coming in to play. People like her are here and they need her help.
A depressed guy moves into a haunted house with 7 demons, each corresponding to a deadly sin. But, they’re all trying to help him get back on his feet; Pride helps with self confidence, Lust helps him get laid, etc.
I would watch the crap outta this like wow
Envy: “Glut, back off the guy, okay?”
Gluttony: “I’m just saying he could stand to gain a few pounds! I made spaghetti!”
Sloth: “After we eat, it’s gonna be time for a nice nap. We’ve earned it!”
Pride: “Damn right we did!”
Just imagine the Catholic Church making a statement regarding this new tv show.
Wrath does nothing but encourage him to punch assholes.
“You deserve better! That was YOUR parking space!”
“He’s like three hundred pounds of muscle, Wrath.”
“And you are 165 pounds of RAGE!”
Wrath’s advice isn’t great, but he means well.
Greed spends his days trying to help him manage his budget and put money on the side
“Bro check this out i’ve got the sickest retirement plan, technically it’s tax evasion i guess but fuck those guys, right?”
Ok but imagine someone finds out that some journalist for a gossip website is writing an article on Kara and the DEO tries but they can’t get access to it and they’re all freaking out thinking it’s a Supergirl reveal and the article comes out titled ‘Who the hell is Kara Danvers?’ And it’s got a series of photos of her with Clark Kent and Lois Lane, her following after Cat Grant and interacting with Maxwell Lord. There are pictures from her college internship working at Wayne Enterprises – including candids of her eating lunch with the elusive Bruce Wayne himself. There’s a photo from years ago when she met Diana Prince while visiting Clark. A picture of her and Lena Luthor sitting close, leaning in to each other and whispering. There are excerpts of her quotes from supergirl, someone she seems to know personally.
At no point does the article mention her possibly being supergirl. It only talks about how this seemingly plain, average 20-something from a coastal small town is somehow connected to many of the most powerful and influential people from coast to coast. And thanks to the DEOs attempts to get the article before it’s published, there’s an editorial addition at the end that says after announcing plans to write on the reporter, their servers were attacked and nearly hacked in to in an attempt to stop its publication.
“So I ask you,” the article ends, “who exactly is this Kara Danvers?”