#i guess jor el eventually finds them and thats a whole new drama unlocked

[spidey-webs]

ok ok hear me out

Things go slightly differently. Just slightly. Kon doesn't settle down in Gem World and decide to wait. Maybe he just doesn't meet fake wife. Maybe he impulsively whoops ass before Evil Gem Dude even thinks of grabbing some Kryptonite. The council still goes, "wow thanks but also please leave". Kon says, sure, if you have a way to send me home.

And that's how Kon finds out his universe is gone. Erased. Wiped out. There's nothing left--if it exists at all still, it was remade into something completely different, different enough that there's no identifying it from any of the other worlds in the multiverse.

He's not from anywhere still in existence.

Right. Cool. Kon can be so cool about this. He is not going to be all Superboy-Prime about this. He's cool. Everything's cool. Maybe everything and everyone he's ever known is gone but it's fine. He'll figure something out. There's gotta be a way to fix this.

So, they send him to an Earth. Any Earth is fine. Because he's got this.

It's Earth-3.

And instead of a way back home, Kon finds a kid trapped in a volcano.