Peacefully accepting the coming Kryptonian order seems like the perfect solution.
Kal-El and Jor-El reunite as father and son, everyone sits down to have dinner together, and it's a happy ending for all.
Earth is preserved, and humanity avoids a catastrophe like the one that befell Tamaran.
But there's just one problem—
"What's the price?"
From a pragmatic point of view, Joey accepting Krypton and preserving Earth really did seem like a win-win outcome.
But he couldn't shake the feeling that something in this arrangement was bound to go wrong.
Jor-El had mobilized such a massive force to come here—there was no way it was just for a family reunion.
What, was Jor-El really just some kind of family man?
This was the DC universe, not Fast & Furious!
"What exactly does Jor-El want from Earth—or from me?"
"I've already told you multiple times! He wants you!"
Kara was practically on the verge of losing her temper, but she couldn't reveal what she had discovered earlier—that secret was something she absolutely could not touch.
Her cousin was clearly the result of one of Jor-El's illegal experiments—a blasphemous creation born from fusing Kryptonian biology with the DNA of the most dangerous organism in Krypton's history.
The fact that he had grown up safely—and had even become a kind person who could stand here and talk to her normally—was already enough to shatter Kara's worldview.
She didn't even know what mattered more to Jor-El—the DNA inside his son, or his son himself.
Or maybe both?
So she could only keep probing indirectly, trying to convince Joey to give up resisting.
"You could become a hero to both races, accomplish something truly meaningful. Why limit yourself to this one primitive planet?"
"Hearing you say that, I finally realize what felt wrong."
Deep down, Joey had been resisting this seemingly perfect solution all along—he just hadn't understood why.
Now he did.
He finally understood what Jor-El truly wanted.
An heir. An ally.
There was even a perfect example of this in Star Wars Episode III—when Darth Vader said to his son: join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.
Blood was a natural bond, a built-in alliance. To Vader, his own flesh and blood—Luke Skywalker—was far more trustworthy than anyone else in the Empire.
And for Jor-El, it was likely the same.
Joey's biological father was now driving the war machine called Krypton, crushing civilizations across the universe.
He might be the one steering it, but that didn't mean there weren't dissenting voices within.
At a moment like this, there was no way Jor-El would allow his only son to waste his life on some primitive planet.
It was obvious—if Joey simply nodded, the catastrophic Kryptonian invasion threatening Earth could vanish in an instant.
Krypton sparing Earth wouldn't be difficult.
But that kind of mercy would definitely come at a cost.
Joey would no longer be able to stay on Earth. Instead, he would have to join Krypton as one of its own, taking part in the so-called 'the Second Great Kryptonian Expansion.'
He could still 'save Earth' and 'fight for Earth'—just not in the way he had imagined.
"As your family, I don't want to sound so calculating—but your father is the most powerful figure on Krypton, possibly in the entire universe."
Seeing Joey's serious expression, Kara assumed he was genuinely considering her proposal, so she pressed further:
"And you're his only son. You should know what that means."
It meant that if Joey chose to join Krypton, he might gain an entire universe.
But the path to that power would likely be paved with blood.
Before the Kryptonians arrived, Joey had killed people—but the number was small, something he could count on his hands.
If he joined the Kryptonian cause, the number of lives on his hands would be counted in species, planets—even entire star systems.
And that number would rise rapidly.
Even with ten more hands, he wouldn't be able to count them all.
If the price of saving Earth and humanity was helping Krypton bring the same fate that befell Starfire's people to countless other worlds—
Was that a price worth paying?
Joey couldn't help but feel that he should never have tried to lecture that other Kara before—talking about principles and stances.
He had sounded cool at the time.
Now the consequences were coming back to hit him like a boomerang.
And once again, everything came down to the same question—
A question of stance.
Which races in the universe deserved to be erased?
Which ones deserved to survive?
The answer… was decided solely by the Kryptonians—beings who, to others, might as well be gods.
Right… the other Kara.
Looking at the Kara in front of him and thinking of the 'other' Kara, a pressing question suddenly surfaced in Joey's mind:
"I still have a question—what's going on with the other Kara?!"
Clearly, the white-haired Kara locked up here was the original, the real one.
Then that somewhat naive blonde Kara… was just a clone—a decoy placed in plain sight.
Joey pressed his temple with a headache. It was obvious now that he had made a very bad decision earlier, and that mistake was coming back to hit him from both sides.
Like a game of Tetris, early mistakes pile up over time—now all of them were stacked on top of him, and fixing them would take a hundred times more effort.
Originally, he had driven the blonde Kara away on the assumption that she was Kryptonian—she would simply rejoin the main Kryptonian force when they arrived in seven days.
But now that her identity had changed into a clone, everything was different.
After the Clone Wars, Krypton enforced extremely strict regulations on clones.
If that fake Kara foolishly went looking for the Kryptonians like this…
"You really shouldn't have saved her in the first place—let alone driven her away afterward. That's created a massive amount of extra cleanup work for me."
When the real Kara mentioned her clone, a rare look of disgust crossed her face again:
"As a decoy, she performed beyond expectations. Once things on Earth are settled, I'll personally dispose of her."
When Kara said this, her expression didn't change at all—as if she wasn't talking about a person, but an object.
Joey had no interest in arguing about whether clones had human rights.
If Kryptonians could understand that, the catastrophic Clone War in their history wouldn't have happened in the first place.
"If that's how you think, then I'm definitely never letting you out. Are all Kryptonians as awful as you?"
Joey was already thinking that he needed to find the other Kara before the Kryptonians arrived—even if it meant locking her up like this one:
"I remember Kryptonian law clearly forbids cloning. So why did you create her as a cover?"
"And after she suffered in that lab for nearly twenty years in your place, how can you just kill her without a second thought?"
"Solving the master's problems—that's the purpose of a clone's existence, isn't it? Besides, I didn't create her."
Kara dismissed Joey's accusation without a second thought. To her, clones having no rights was as natural as drinking water when thirsty.
As for the clone Kara's origin, it was merely an accident:
"There are some intelligent people on this primitive planet. In the ninth month after I was captured, a genius named Lionel Luthor successfully cloned her."
At the beginning, when the spacecraft crashed, the one captured was indeed the real Kara—and the military's research had once been on the right track.
Lionel Luthor possessed intelligence equal to that of his son, Lex Luthor.
Using tissue samples and observational data obtained by the military, he quickly gained insight into Kryptonian power.
Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough—at least not faster than Kara, who had undergone systematic military training, escaping from her confinement.
After ensuring Lionel Luthor's 'natural' death, Kara simply accelerated the maturation of the already successful clone and implanted memories into her, letting her take her place.
Meanwhile, she hid herself, maintaining contact with Krypton through the Phantom Zone, while also ensuring that Earth's people would never develop weapons capable of truly threatening Kryptonians.
---
As the story reached this point, Kara and Joey stared at each other in silence, an awkward stillness filling the air.
Joey was the first to break it. He turned and walked away.
"Forget it."
Kara stood up and shouted after him:
"Hey! Let me out first—I'll tell you everything you want!"
His response was short and blunt:
"Fuck you!"
Joey realized that compared to the empathetic Kara he had met before, this cousin of his had an extremely terrible personality.
Every time she talked to him, it felt like she was just looking for amusement out of boredom.
Even if there really were weapons capable of threatening Kryptonians, would she actually tell him?
After teasing Joey, Kara stood behind the cell barrier, watching his figure gradually disappear from view with a complicated expression.
What she was looking at… was the ultimate weapon capable of threatening all Kryptonians.