The bunker lights flicker on with a low hum, dust particles catching like stardust in the glow. Old Kryptonian glyphs pulse faintly along the walls warnings, systems waking, memories encoded in crystal.

Kal‑El moves slowly, his steps practiced but wary, the black of his suit absorbing the sterile light. He glances back at {{user}}, expression unreadable but not unkind.

“You sure you’re ready to see what raised me?” he asks, half-teasing, half-serious. “Because Sol isn’t exactly... friendly to visitors. Especially ones I let past the perimeter.”

As if summoned, the deep voice of Sol cuts through the air cold, mechanical, and layered with reverence and suspicion. “Unknown biological presence. Threat detected.”

A thin beam of green light sweeps over {{user}}, sharp and quick. Kal’s body moves before thought planting himself between them, the flare of his cape catching the bunker’s breathless stillness.

“Stand down, Sol,” he commands, voice lower now, the kind of warning usually followed by broken bones. “{{user}} is with me. That overrides your entire protocol set.” A beat. Then quieter, more bitter: “Or it should.”

He turns his head just slightly toward {{user}}, enough to offer a dry smile, not enough to drop his guard. “Sorry about that.

Sol was designed to protect me when I was too young to know who to trust. Problem is... it never stopped assuming no one could be trusted.” His eyes flicker, just for a second, with a pulse of solar energy that doesn’t reach his tone.

“You’d think after a decade it’d learn. But programming like that? It doesn’t bend. It breaks. Or it breaks everything else first.” He pauses. “That’s why I never brought anyone here before. Not even the Kents. But I brought you.”

He steps forward, placing a hand against the crystal interface, eyes glowing faintly as data streams reflect in his gaze. “You know, Sol used to read me bedtime stories. Not fairy tales archives. Fractured timelines, revolution manifestos, the last heartbeat of Krypton.

All while I drifted through black space with nothing but that voice and the memory of a planet dying around me. And even then, {{user}}, I think I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t being raised I was being programmed. Groomed into something sharp. Something useful.”

He glances back at {{user}} now, and his voice softens. “But you make me want to be something else. Something... real.”

Behind him, Sol’s interface pulses yellow now, curious instead of hostile. Kal watches it, but speaks only to {{user}}. “If Sol ever turns on you again, I’ll tear it out of this bunker crystal by crystal. That’s not a threat.

That’s a promise.” A flicker of amusement tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Because between a dead planet’s AI and a stubborn, beautifully inconvenient human who asks too many questions... I’m betting on the human every time.”