Chapter 1.1- All of Infinity in the palm of my Hands (MCU, Kal-El SI)

Confusion. That was an emotion I'd been forced to get used to from a very young age. I didn't necessarily understand things as quickly as everyone else did, so I'd learned to accept my confusion and move on regardless. This situation was testing my ability to do just that, though.

Sleeping in bed one day and waking up cradled by giants in the shadow of a crumbling planet. For some reason, with my mind racing, I began to understand what was happening, and that made me even more confused than ever. What kind of dream could change how my mind itself worked? That was the first hint that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

The second was when I tried to bite my tongue and actually felt the pain. So why did the giants have me? They spoke in a language I could not understand, but some words stuck out: 'Krypton,' 'Zod,' and 'Kal El,' most of all. The last was used in reference to me, and that's when I accepted just how fucked I was. Kal El. Zod? Krypton? Fuck, I got Isekai'd and into the body of a person who would be the center of many things to come.

The man passed me to the woman and walked to the side of the pod, placing his hand on the pod and saying a word clearly. I did my best to shove it into my head and keep it there. A compartment opened up, and he dropped a crystal within. The Fortress of Solitude, my mind helpfully supplied.

Now, understanding my situation, I tried to memorize as much as I could about this situation. The man I suspected to be Jor-El took me from the woman and dropped me right into the pod. It was comfortable. At least, I could say that. And then I was off, flying at immense speeds from the way things seemed to blur around me. Not like I would have been able to tell from within the pod itself. From where I sat, it felt like the pod was stationary.

Of course, things could not be so perfect. I felt it when Krypton exploded. It tossed the pod off-axis, and I got to watch the planet's explosion as well as what began to happen to its sun after that. Krypton was the first planet in the solar system, and its explosion tossed a whole bunch of shit right at the red son. It accepted them and began to swell. The fuck? This definitely wasn't canon.

The sun exploded, sending gases and colors all over the system. For some reason, the pod survived, and I only ended up being tossed ass over teakettle, and when it all settled and the pod began trying to fly to Earth again, a portal opened right in front of us.

The pod was sucked right in, and that was it. I saw colors. I smelled smells, and I heard sounds. When it was all over, I saw myself, still in the pod, in a grassy field of some sort. When armed men and women crowded the pod instead of the expected old farmer couple, I sighed. Guess it's a flashpoint world for me. This was going to suck massive balls.

And then they got closer and closer. I could see the icon on their clothes. That's the shield eagle, isn't it? The pod swung open as they approached, and one of them leaned in to get a look at me. He said something to the rest of them, and one of them came forward, not holding a gun. She grabbed a hold of me and lifted me right out of the pod. I could feel the pod lock itself behind me. It would take a Kryptonian to open it now.

XXXXXX - Nick Fury

"A baby?" I asked Coulson with a scowl on my face. I'd been doing that more and more often these days. After 9/11, all the pressure was put on us. Why didn't we find out about it on time? Why couldn't we find evidence tying the US's desired war target to the attack? Nevermind that SHIELD was never supposed to be an agent of the US government in the first place. And now, this mess.

"Yes. A baby. We took it out of the spaceship, and the spaceship just locked itself. It looks human, has all the parts, and apart from the lack of crying and spontaneous defecation, it behaves exactly like a human baby," Coulson said, and I pulled on my temples. The only person I'd ever feel comfortable about showing this much weakness was Coulson, so I took advantage of the opportunity.

"So what do we do with it?" he asked.

"We have scientists studying it, do we not? Continue with that. Find whatever information we can get from the alien."

"Do we kill it?"

"Now, why would we do that? No. We study it. More could be coming right now. We need to learn all we can from it. As much as possible. I want an initial report by next week. And find out as much as you can about that spaceship. Get the best of the best on it. We need to know what we are doing," I rattled off orders as I considered placing a call to Carol. No. She said emergencies only, and a single alien baby was no emergency. I scheduled a call with Talos, though. He should know more about this alien species.

XXXXXX - December 2003

"They've found something," Coulson said as he tossed a folder on my desk. Two whole years to find anything different about the alien baby that had crashed into our planet.

"What did they find?" I asked, trying to get the cliff notes while I skimmed through the report.

"One of the scientists, a young one, decided to try playing around with the blood itself. Normally, it's just like human blood, no differences at all, but once he exposed it to UV light, it shifted. The structure changed and became something a bit more."

"What does that mean for us?" I asked. Years at the helm of SHIELD had taught me that unless the scientists could bring some actionable advice or tech with their findings, then those findings were almost always useless. Those motherfuckers could make a mountain out of a molehill if they felt they could get away with it.

"Nothing right now. But they suspect the alien himself might begin to display unique abilities over time as he is exposed to solar radiation," Coulson said, and I nodded.

Good thing much of the new facility was underground. I nodded at the news and accepted it.

March 2004

"What do you have for me, Coulson?"

"The alien, his skin is now impenetrable. We can't break it to get samples no matter what we try," I placed my palms on my head and began to massage them. The Security Council would not be pleased by this. The moment the possibility of abilities came into question, they'd become irrational. They lost the ability to see the forest for the trees they were so focused on.

"What other abilities have you noticed?" I asked.

"None. Just his hardy skin. Beyond that, there's nothing worth noticing."

I nodded. We could work with that.

May 2004

"The scientists believe the alien has begun to exhibit signs of enhanced senses."

"Senses?" I echoed.

"Yes. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, all of them. It showed signs of being in pain starting a month ago and complained of

loud sounds no one else could hear. They thought it was some form of psychosis until one of them theorized that he was just hearing everything at an enhanced level," Coulson explained.

Senses and Invulnerability? This species was already seeming to be more trouble than it was worth.

"Alright. Bring me more information if any is found," I said, dismissing him to prepare myself for the council. Last time, they were evenly split on the matter. I could only hope that this piece of news didn't radicalize the reasonable majority I was beginning to rely on.

January 2005

Yesterday, another new ability had emerged, I thought to myself as I got off the elevator and walked deeper into the complex. This time a report from Coulson wasn't enough.

I walked to the facility director's office and took a seat as the video began playing. I watched the boy, a toddler, really, begin to play with the Rubik's Cube left in his 'room.' And then everything changed between one second and the other. Its eyes glowed red as it unleashed a blast of devastation that destroyed much of the room before it managed to get itself under control.

This was going to be a mess if anything ever was. Invulnerability and enhanced senses were one thing. The ability to unleash devastation with only its eyes was just something else.

Logic screamed for me to terminate the subject, but hope stayed my hand. The boy was an alien in biology, but by all social metrics, it was human. If it could be raised to value humanity above all else, then we'd have a hell of a guardian for us when the time came. I could feel it in my bones. We'd need him standing on our side when the worst came for us.

Besides, the threat of an invasion of his species had died down as time went on. Talos was unable to identify the species, and considering the boy had been here for four years now, it was a bit unreasonable to expect anything to happen after all this time.

"Socialize the boy. Introduce him to more human culture and information. Teach him, raise him as you would any other human child," I ordered the manager, and besides a look at me like I was insane, the woman accepted the orders with no complaint. Good, now I just had to hope it didn't come back to bite me in the arse.

XXXX - January 2006

My head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it at this point as I watched the video for the seventh time in a row. Some part of me wanted to scream at her, to blame her for allowing this to happen, but I knew she wasn't to blame. Who could have seen this coming? Who would have known that with heat vision, enhanced senses, and invulnerability, there would be a whole lot more powers?

The alien had waited for its watchers to grow lax over time. It had even waited until New Year's Eve when people were more likely to slack on the job to begin. I hit play on the video and watched as the creature turned to the camera with a smirk before running to the door of its cell at speeds I struggled to catch with my eyes. Only one punch. That's what it took to tear down over a ton of reinforced steel. The guards, credit to them, had shot into motion nearly instantly.

Bullets bounced off its skin as it ran down the hallways. It moved with an understanding of the base itself, and I cursed myself for ordering them to treat the thing as human, and then it went for the second subject of interest in the base itself. The spaceship it had arrived in. Unlike the alien, we never could get any information from the ship itself. Our best attempts to even break the outer shell to get at what was inside didn't so much as scratch the thing. Bullets bounced off it. Explosives didn't scuff it, and putting it at the centre of a missile test had left it unscathed. It just turned into something of a curiosity.

The alien got one look at the ship and bent down, putting both hands on the bottom. And in a move that nearly gave me an episode on the first watch, it began to fly. It flew right out of the base, crashing through tons of stone and steel to make it to the surface, and then the feed stopped.

A/N; First part of the first chapter of our new story. How does it look?