THE SUPERWOMAN FROM KRYPTON

THE WOMAN OF STEEL. CHAPTER III

December 5, 1949

Ogasawara Islands.

Superwoman flew around the scorched and cracked round volcanic island. She stood upright, levitating, and took a deep breath. Mist surrounded her, and a long red bright cape floated on her back. The island was a two-thousand-feet-high dark volcanic mountain nestled in the sea. It was called Kurokame, or Black Turtle Island. A thousand miles south of Tokyo, atomic bombs theoretically prevented it from becoming the site of a bloody battle between Americans and the Japanese Army...But just a few weeks earlier, the volcano had awakened. Superwoman had combined her super strength, super speed, cooling breath, and ability to create whirlwinds in the air by spinning like a top to prevent the eruption from spewing millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere with who knows what consequences. Japan was a rebuilding country with millions of people homeless, and the last thing it needed was a rain of ash ruining crops. Thanks to Superwoman's intervention, the eruption's cloud peaked at just over two miles high, with all debris confined to the island and its adjacent waters, preventing widespread dispersal. Japanese and American cameras had captured it, and the images went around the world. But Kurokame had one last challenge for the Last Daughter of Krypton.

A few days earlier, the U.S. military, working with a tousle-haired Japanese scientist, had discovered that the magma chamber had emptied after the eruption. Its weak walls were now piled high with the millions of tons of ash and rock that Superwoman had prevented from entering the atmosphere. It was only a matter of time before the volcano island collapsed, creating a gigantic tsunami that would sweep not only the coasts of Japan, but those of the Philippines and Australia, and perhaps even cross the ocean to California and Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake.

In a collaborative command center staffed in a nearby island by Japanese civilians and U.S. military personnel, Superwoman had just been briefed on her mission. The instructions came from a kindly Japanese scientist, with tousled grey hair, with his urgent message conveyed through the translation of an anxious American officer. Surrounded by maps, mathematical equations, and diagrams of volcanoes and tsunamis, the gravity of the situation was clear.

"Lady Kala-El, the southern slope of Kurokame will give way," the scientist explained while bowing his head, "We're looking at a land mass close to thirty square miles in size, amounting to countless millions of tons, set to plummet. The ensuing landslide will be swift and catastrophic, generating a tsunami that will radiate swiftly across the water. At all costs, this tsunami must be neutralized, forced to collapse and dissipate, just as you achieved in Hilo back in 1946, leveraging the kinetic energy you can generate with your super-powers. However, the scale of this tsunami dwarfs that of the 1946 event. The tidal wave could reach two hundred feet high upon Tokyo...and maybe the half in San Francisco or Hawaii. We implore you to circle the wave at your highest speed, utilizing your heat vision and cooling breath intermittently. Your objective is to induce rapid whirlwinds and thermal shocks, a technique you've applied to hurricanes, typhoons, and even volcanic ash clouds previously. Your goal this time is to create concentric circles at a velocity surpassing the tsunami's own, generated by the landslide's millions of tons of rock. Failure to do so could result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Additionally, we ask you to employ your immense strength to mitigate the sediment waves that might arise."

The words echoed in her head and made her heart shrink with fear, but she had done it before in Hilo in 1946, and she had done it with hurricanes. The island had been shaking for hours, its black cliffs were falling into the sea, but the great landslide had not yet begun. She waited, and soon after, with a strange rumbling, it seemed as if the southern half of Kurokame simply turned into a kind of black sand wave that quickly fell over the sea, creating waves a thousand feet high. Now! Clara, you can do it!