Naked And A Supergirl

This story is a fanfic of the TV show Supergirl, in which the title character is in her twenties.

*

If Kara had known just how adorable Alex could be about it—and Alex was always adorable, but this was another level of adorable, she was practically skipping—she would've insisted that Alex take her on a tour of her secret government spy workplace a long time ago. That sounded unfeasible, but still, Alex was clearly bursting to show her everything.

"And this is our Kryptonite Storage/Research Chamber," Alex said proudly, actually waggling her eyebrows at Kara as she led her inside.

It was the usual DEO set-up: a dense, dark room that reminded Kara a little of a walk-in closet. The narrow walls were lined with chunks of variously hued minerals. Most were green, some red, then blue, yellow, orange... all were encased in clear Lucite cubes that had to be laced with lead, since all Kara felt was a sense of trepidation at having so much anti-Kryptonian radiation around her.

Alex said as much, taking Kara's arm all friendly like as she explained the safety protocols that kept the Kryptonite locked away so thoroughly. "You know Superman's had a lot of problems with bad guys who get their hands on this stuff, so part of the DEO's job is to collect it, figure out ways to neutralize it, otherwise study it. We've found some very interesting clean energy applications to this stuff." She tapped on a sample of Green-K. "It's literally green energy."

"Uh-huh," Kara said, smiling nervously. "You know I never actually... went over what they all do. Superman just told me to stay away from the stuff. I mean, I know green Kryptonite weakens me, but what's red do? Just turn you into a lion?"

Alex laughed, picking up a red cube. It seemed to glow brighter between her two hands. "Red Kryptonite actually doesn't have a consistent effect. Every time it interacts with Kryptonian physiology seems different based on changing circumstances, and obviously we can't test it. It's possible it could even have some positive benefits, if we could find out how to apply it."

"Well, bigger boobs would be nice, but I think I'll just stick to the regular kinds of radiation for now!"

Alex smiled back at her. "A traditionalist. I can respect that." She set the Kryptonite back down. "Hey, do you have your own Bizarro yet? There's actually a whole array of Kryptonite that only seems to work on Bizarros..."

Kara wasn't looking at her. She was looking at the cube of Lucite, which Alex had set down just a little on edge. It was settling, shifting with a bit of a wobble, as if about to fall over. Kara reached to catch it, and in her panic, she actually slapped it away instead of being able to grip it.

The cube flew through the air. While the sturdy construction of the containment vessel would've been able to handle a fall to the floor, it couldn't take (effectively) a blow from Supergirl knocking it into a bulkhead. The cube hit the wall, smashed open, and the red Kryptonite spilled out. Without the lead-lined Lucite to blot out its radiation, its glowing light colored the entire room crimson.

"Kara, go!" Alex shouted, but it was too late. Kara felt herself changing—a profound itching sensation all over her body. She looked down. Her stockings were glowing ember red, like a battery pressed into steel wool, the fabric charring off her body into dissipating ash.

"Oh!" she cried, and then felt her top suffering the same fate. It was burning—flames racing over her sleeves and along her shoulders. It wasn't hurting her, but even Winn's durable fabric couldn't take it. It was flaring right off her, even her bra going up, the tingling feel of the heat leaving her nipples erect. That, more than anything, embarrassed Kara, and she covered her breasts with her hands before realizing that they, too, were bare.

Now her skirt and boots, thick and sturdy as they were, went up. Kara could already feel the lick of flames, sickeningly exciting, as her panties collapsed into sparks. Her heavy skirt was melting away into a sticky molten mess. She reached down between her legs to cover her pussy with one hand, reaching her other arm across both breasts to cover those.

Then she felt the air conditioning against her buttocks, almost teasingly, like someone was lightly touching her. Uttering a moan of dismay, she wiggled around, hiding her ass by pressing it against the wall. That, at least, did not burst into flame.

"Oh my God, Kara," Alex cried, taking off her jacket and offering it to Kara before anyone came to investigate. Almost tearfully grateful, Kara took it and shrugged it on, then wailed as the itching sensation began again. The zipper of her jacket sparked electrically, while the wool almost exploded with a series of small flames. Kara hurried to cover herself again as her new covering burnt away. And now she could hear footsteps approaching—the DEO responding to the contamination of one of their hazardous materials.

For lack of anything better to do, Alex stood between Kara and the door, her arms spread wide as a phalanx of DEO Security crammed through the doorway—Kara sure that Alex's petite body and her own strategically positioned arms weren't doing much to hide her long, bare legs. Feeling eyes on her slender shoulders, something she'd never been ashamed of, suddenly made her feel actively self-conscious.

"We have a situation here," Alex said. "Inform Director Henshaw and clear the area."

***

Alex was, to her credit, amazingly proficient at improvisation. After trying to dress Kara once more in a lab coat and one of the security guards' jackets—to similar fiery ends—she brought some rolling screens down from med-bay, the kind used to separate beds and give patients at least the illusion of privacy. With four of those boxing Kara in, rolled by the admittedly professional guards, they transported Kara to the lab.

She still felt overwhelmingly exposed, walking around naked, her bare silhouette obvious through the light and flimsy-seeming screens. She kept her arms over her crotch and cleavage, but that somehow made her feel even more shamefully nude, like people weren't just whispering about her situation, but it was being broadcast across the globe, cameras covering every inch of her body, people in Bombay able to zoom in on her butt with their tablets.

Finally, her bare feet paraded her into Alex's lab. They left the guards at the door and Alex closed the door, bolted it.

"Don't worry," Alex said. "I've already shut down the security cameras."

Kara blushed fiercely, suddenly aware of the possibility that her bareness really could've been recorded, broadcast everywhere, scrutinized like she was some kind of... porn star. Even if Alex would never ever let that happen, the very possibility made her wilt.

"We're just going to run a few tests," Alex said. "And if there's any way to reverse this, we will."

"It doesn't make any sense!" Kara wailed, picking up one of Alex's beakers. "I don't burn up anything I'm holding! I don't leave scorch marks on the ground! I don't understand!"

"It could have something to do with how your mind processes stimuli. Wearing clothes is a fairly recent development, evolutionally speaking. It seems natural to us because we're raised that way, but you know how dogs and cats hate being dressed up. With the Red-K radiation playing havoc with your bodily functions, it could be that this has triggered an immune response to what your body now registers as an attack. This could be some latent superpower—a vestigial Kryptonian defense mechanism for use against predators that's now reemerged."

"So I can't put anything on if I think of it as clothing?" Kara asked, agape.

"If you think of it as hiding your nudity, yes. Your skin will—have that reaction. It really is amazing how this mutation seems to have short-circuited your conscious response to the tactile stimuli of clothing, skipping straight to some genetic instinct. I don't think it'd be possible with a human."

Kara pried her hands away from her privates to run them through her hair. "How will I go to work? How will I fight crime? I can't do anything like this!"

"Well, with Superman, we've noticed the Red Kryptonite effects tend to last twenty-four hours. Something to do with the circadian rhythm. Just call in sick to work. You wouldn't even by lying..."

"Call in sick? Have you ever met Cat Grant?"

"Okay, okay—" Alex put her arms on Kara's biceps to calm her down, momentarily thinking better of it in Kara's current condition, before Kara gave her a piteous look—like if Alex took her hands away, it really would be too much; she'd just throw herself on the floor and wait there until the Red K wore off. "There is a disaster scenario where a hostile actor uses Red Kryptonite to disable Superman, and while he's affected, stages a terrorist attack or major crime. With that in mind, STAR Labs was working on a contingency plan to counteract the effects of Red K radiation. We confiscated it. They never got it to work right, but I could take a look at it—"

"Oh please!" Kara begged, putting her hands on Alex's arms in turn. "Oh please, please, please—" She felt better just knowing there was hope, a possibility for her big sister to swoop in to save her, and giddily she bounced up and down like they were having a sleepover again and she was trying to draw Alex into jumping on the bed.

"Uh, Kara?" Alex said. "That's a little different since you got breasts. And nudity."

"Sorry," Kara said, drawing Alex into a hug. Then pulling away from her. "Sorry!"

***

Alex found some towels for her before looking for the machine. Kara couldn't wrap them around herself without setting off her skin-burning power, but she could sorta drape one over her ass and hold the other in front of her full frontal nudity. That way she at least felt better about being a nudist camp of one. More like she was posing for Vogue or something. She imagined a tasteful but intimate photo shoot that maybe showed a little of her butt or something. That wasn't so bad.

"Alright," Alex said, wheeling the machine in: it looked like an overhead projector that could also play Xbox One games. "Now, they never got a chance to test this, but I looked over all their notes and it should work just fine. Uh, as long as you haven't eaten radishes in the last four hours. Have you?"

"I would've remembered," Kara said certainly.

"Alright then." Alex dropped her hands from the cart's push-bar, instead kneading them together in worry. It was a gesture Kara well-remembered from their mother. "Are you sure you want to do this? It'll wear off in a day anyway; Cat Grant will understand. We can fake a car accident or something, say you were in a medically induced coma—"

"And what if some alien goes on a rampage?" Kara asked. "Or Livewire escapes or there's a tornado?"

"Then we can use the machine then."

"And waste time that I could spend flying there and saving people? No, we get this handled now, keep me at a hundred percent peak performance."

"Okay," Alex said. "Let's get started then."

***

In the testing chamber, she insisted on spot-checking all the components, practically taking the machine apart and putting it back together before she would turn it down. Then, after one last try to talk Kara out of it where Kara just had to put her foot down, she retreated to the bunker, leaving Kara alone in the dubious blast pit.

Kara knew they'd tested weaponry and rocket engines in there—it still didn't make her feel too good about all the scorch marks on the sandy ground or concrete walls. Nor did having to set aside her towels so they wouldn't interfere in the procedure. She took a little comfort in knowing that Alex would absolutely positively not let anyone anywhere near her while she was afflicted.

"Ready?" Alex asked over the loudspeaker.

Kara gave a thumbs up to the reinforced Plexiglas of the bunker, knowing Alex was behind it with safety goggles over her eyes—and feeling a momentary flicker of doubt that maybe there were other people with her, seeing her naked. Kara resisted the urge to cover herself with her hands. She didn't want to give Alex the impression she doubted her.

"Is there something wrong with it?" Kara asked a few moments later. The door to the bunker opened and Alex emerged, safety goggles down around her neck.

"We used it. You didn't feel anything? Well, we got you with plenty of zeta particles, so—" She held out a fresh lab coat. It was the whitest white Kara had ever seen.

"I want to wear that more than I wanted that Mano Belkin dress for prom!"

"Try it on!" Alex cheered, goofily going along with the farce that it was some high fashion outfit.

Posing playfully, Kara played her arms through the sleeves, then struck a gallantly chic stance—only to feel an itching all over her body.

The lab coat burnt right off her.

"That can't be right," Alex said, a lump in her throat forming as she saw how Kara desperately tried to pat out the fires raging on her clothes. She took out her PDA and extended the antenna to scan Kara.

"Why didn't it work, Alex?" Kara asked plaintively, looking at her sister as she blinked back tears.

"It, uh—seems to have set off a chain reaction. I'm reading an increase in Red K radiation."

"More? What's that mean?"

"Assuming my math is right," Alex said, stumbling over her words as if the longer she held them back, the longer she could keep them from being true. "Then the effect won't last for twenty-four hours. It could last up to two weeks."

***

Kara let herself cry a little bit—just a little bit—in the bathroom before she flew home as fast as she could. She'd have to quit her job. There was no other way. She sent a resignation letter, effective immediately, to Cat Grant. And whatever her faults, Cat was extremely lenient about the two weeks' notice stuff. She tended to run through personnel too fast to stick to the letter of the law in that case.

Winn called her shortly afterward, insistently on an explanation in that almost demanding way of his. It all spilled out of her—how could it not, he was her best friend?—she told him how the clothes had practically peeled off her body, how she'd inadvertently destroyed the beautiful suit he'd made her, all the shame and embarrassment she'd felt being paraded around DEO headquarters totally nude. In a choked voice he said he understood and to tell him if there was anything he could do to help.

(Kara was blissfully unaware of Winn's sudden, desperate need to masturbate.)

She couldn't bear to tell Jimmy, though. Shamelessly, she texted Alex to cook up an explanation for her. She knew Alex blamed herself for all this and so would do whatever it took to make nudist life easier for Kara. Kara mollified herself by thinking that giving Alex something to do to help would make her feel better about the whole situation.

Then—with her curtains very soundly drawn—Kara set about waiting out the Kryptonite poisoning. At least it didn't seem to be triggered by her wrapping herself up in an spare blanket, for whatever reason—maybe because it was so thin that it just glazed over her body, making her appear more naked than naked when she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. It was the lingerie of blankets, seemingly to cling extra tightly to Kara's perky breasts or pert buttocks, at least to her eye. It made her wish she had a Snuggie.

For two interminable days, she watched TV, surfed the web, got into way too many social media discussions of the new Star Wars movies, worked out a complicated system of paying for delivery food without answering the door that compelled her to tip twice as well, and hoped really really hard that no aliens would attack the city.

Was this what it was like when Earth women got periods? How awful.

Cat called her, half to demand an explanation for her absence (and passive-aggressively tell her to get her ass back to work) and half to vent about her new assistant, a college graduate who was adamant that Cat talk to him in his native Spanish when he was at his desk, since it was his safe space and he found being spoken to in English a colonialist 'mislanguaging'.

Even getting whisper-threatened over the phone like she'd butt-dialed Batman was better than lying in bed all day, so Kara listened attentively and agreed with all Cat's points and went over Alex's hermit cover story—Alex had practically written a dissertation for her on it—and it finally got to the point that Cat promised Kara her job back so long as she promised never to work for someone named Jack Ryder.

Kara couldn't really backtrack the turns in the conversation to where they'd reached that point, but she agreed. Upon which Cat acidly 'apologized' for the building's custodial staff disposing of all her personal belongings when she'd quit. Kara nodded to herself. Working for Cat, she'd long ago left all sentimental items at home, where they were out of range of frustration-induced crushing.

Then, four days in, it happened. She got a call from Henshaw.

"One of our Fort Roz escapees gave up the goods. We still don't know the General's plan, but he fingered a Carggite refugee who would know more. Apparently Astra did some business with him, and he's somewhere in Bludhaven. If you could find him—"

Alex's voice took over the line. "We can find him, Kara, we just want to talk to him, there's no need for superpowers—"

"We can't know that," Henshaw retorted. "If the Carggite talks to us peacefully, that's one thing, but he's a triplicate hive-mind, able to shift energy between all three of his forms. That's power we'd be hard-pressed to deal with."

"So we'll just find him once Kara has—recovered."

"And give the enemy additional time to enact her plan? Whatever she has planned, it could already be an active threat!"

"Guys!" Kara interrupted, feeling a migraine headache beginning. "I'll do it. Henshaw's right, we don't have time to sit around and... anyway, it's nighttime, I'll just fly high, move fast, no one'll see me."

Alex's voice went as strident as their mother's. "It's an unnecessary compromising of one of our top agents—"

"You're telling me she can't do her job if someone sees her naked? Never seemed to stop Jennifer Lawrence."

"It will impact her morale!"

"And whatever Astra's planning won't?"

"Alex, I said it was fine," Kara interrupted again. "Superman wouldn't let himself be too embarrassed to do the right thing, and neither will I."

She could hear Alex sigh heavily, right over the line. "You know Mom'll kill me if so much as your bare back turns up on TMZ?"

"I'll be faster than a speeding camera phone. Promise."

***

Kara flew high above Bludhaven, telescoping her vision down to the city streets. The Carggite wouldn't be easy to spot—three identical men moving in lockstep, maybe. She almost hoped she wouldn't find them, have to confront them, but she did her best regardless. The DEO couldn't afford to let General Astra get the drop on them.

After a few hours of prowling the skyways, Kara was almost comfortable with her public nudity. The darkness hid her body well, while the waning moon gave her nice enough light to see by. Really, it was silly that they'd even debated this—Alex being overprotective. So what if people saw her naked, so what if it ended up on the internet even? Why should she be ashamed of embarrassment in pursuit of a worthy cause? Would Superman care about getting photographed from a bad angle while he dug out a collapsed mine? No! Why should she?

She spotted them just before morning, midway through a dark alley. The triplicates had a street walker boxed in like that Night At The Roxbury sketch, teasing her, feinting at her scant clothes. She wasn't unreceptive, but she was holding back, making some kind of argument that frustrated them. Supergirl flew down, taking refuge behind a big cypress bush growing alongside the mouth of the alley—some kind of ill-fated beautification effort. It, and the darkness, would shield her from prying eyes. She sent a line of heatvision cutting between the sex worker and the Carggite(s), getting their attention.