Part 2, Chapter 9
Chapter 23
Something was in her mouth. That was all Rainbow knew; something was in her mouth, and the rest of her body was in pain. Her strength was coming back, so the Kryptonite had been flushed out of her system, but that offered little immediate comfort. She tried moving, but her legs and wings were unresponsive. And there was still the issue of the thing in her mouth.
I flew right into that, didn’t I? she thought as she tried to regain motor function. I should have seen that guy coming... Doesn’t matter now; I need to find Brainiac... Where am I? Somehow, Rainbow managed to open her eyes. It took a while for them to adjust to the poor lighting, but soon she was able to see.
She was lying on her back, in a black room with only a few dim lights. Around her were what looked like ponies, but closer examination revealed that they were robots of some kind rather than real ponies. The robots seemed to be conversing in some language she did not yet understand, passing various tubes and wires amongst each other. She looked down to her mouth, and saw a long black tube leading from her mouth.
Instincts took over, and the sudden rush of adrenalin gave Rainbow the strength to move again. She yanked her right hoof upwards, snapping several wires and catching one of the robots in the face. The metal shattered beneath her strike, and as the first robot staggered away the other two reached out to restrain Rainbow Dash. With her free hoof she struck out, knocking the robots away while she broke free of her remaining restraints.
The robots regrouped and advanced towards her, but now that her forehooves were free, she could strike back. She lunged forward as best she could, grabbing the robots and slamming them together. The robots destroyed, Rainbow Dash broke free of the remaining restraints before tugging at the tube in her mouth, wincing as tiny barbs dragged along the inside of her throat. She coughed up several mouthfuls of black liquid once she was free, collapsing to the ground and gasping for air.
“Oh Celestia...” she moaned, pulling herself up from the ground. “Where am I? And why was that thing in my mouth?” She looked around, scanning the room and shifting through her different visions. She saw more wires and machinery, but other than that she found nothing to tell her where she was. Shifting back to her normal vision, she took off and began to fly down one of the corridors, moving slowly just in case she was spotted.
The hallway she was flying down opened up into a large atrium. Exact dimensions were irrelevant to Rainbow, but she guessed that it was nearly the same size as Canterlot Castle. On the walls of the room were giant sacks, each one holding some kind of creature hooked up to the same tubes that those robots had tried to hook her up to. Some resembled different species she had encountered in Equestria, while others were completely alien in design. She flew up to one of the sacks, inspecting it closely.
The creature inside was still alive, trapped in some kind of trance state. For a brief instant Rainbow considered trying to set the creature free, but she had no idea of knowing whether or not her attempts would end up killing the thing instead of freeing it. That black stuff in my mouth probably wouldn’t have been good either.
She turned around, and it was now that she saw the lights. Dozens of them, all hanging from wires leading off into the darkness, dangling over her head. The lights had been hung at varying heights, all radiating away from a chair-shaped structure in the center of the room. Rainbow rose up towards the lights, inspecting them closer.
Now she could see that they were not lights, but jars. In each jar was a city, many of them highly advanced. They appeared mostly undamaged, but Rainbow guessed that there was more to the cities than she could see. She drifted from city to city, inspecting each one as she passed.
Kandor should be one of these... I just need to figure out which one. She kept drifting until she spotted one city that was held away from the others. The design of the buildings was crystalline, similar to the Crystal Empire, but it was not an Equestrian city. The artificial lights provided by whatever technology Brainiac was using caused the city to sparkle, and Rainbow had to blink a few times in order to adjust her vision. She flew in closer, and she could pick out miniature Kryptonian glyphs that had been carved into the buildings.
Here it is. She smiled and reached towards Kandor when she heard an alarm sound. Like birds avoiding a larger flyer, the cities were yanked up and away from Rainbow, leaving her alone once more.
“I must advise you to leave my specimens alone, Kara Jor-El.” Brainiac’s monotone echoed through the room.
“Is that what you call them, Brainiac? Specimens?” Rainbow landed near the structure in the center of the room, searching for Brainiac.
“Everything you see in this room is merely storage for the information I have collected over the years. All of these creatures and cities you see before you are remnants of long dead civilizations, eras that only I have been able to preserve.”
“I’d be impressed, if you weren’t insane.” the cities had returned to their previous level, but they had parted to reveal a large screen, Brainiac’s face projected onto it.
“None of this is fueled by insanity.” Brainiac said. “It is all simple logic; a planet advances to it’s peak in physical and technological evolution, and I arrive to preserve it for eternity. Every piece you see here is a perfection of a design, and once added to my mainframe I advance even closer towards perfection.” Brainiac’s face was replaced by images of his ship over several worlds.
“It took nearly a year to assimilate the first world I encountered.” he continued. “It took six months to assimilate the next four. With every planet I draw information from, my power grows. Soon I will be able to strip an entire galaxy of information in only a few hours.”
“And what happens to the planets once you steal their citizens and cities?” Rainbow asked. Brainiac’s face returned after a brief pause.
“They are of no more use to me, and any continued advancement would prove threatening to the information I have gathered. Planets I take information from are destroyed, so that they may remain forever in their perfect status.” Rainbow looked around the room at the hundreds of different creatures and cities.
“I suppose Equestria is next on your list?” she asked.
“No; this planet has not advanced far enough along to be considered for harvesting.”
“Then why did you come here?” there was silence as Brainiac’s image shifted once more, this time showing a picture of what Rainbow assumed was Kandor.
“When Krypton was destroyed, I had thought that I possessed the only source of Kryptonian DNA left in the universe. However, I picked up a signal of some kind of Kryptonian technology transmitting from this sector, and though it went dead soon after I had arrived, I continued my search and discovered you instead.” the screen shifted back to Brainiac’s face.
“You are the final piece of lost Kryptonian knowledge.” he said. “You will be preserved, as will the rest of Krypton. Your memories, your experiences, all will be preserved in me. Would you not want that, a chance to be reunited with the survivors of your race?” Rainbow looked up at the cities, then back to Brainiac.
“No; not if I have to give up protecting the ponies I love.” she said. Brainiac frowned, an impressive feat considering his previous lack of expression.
“You will not comply?” Rainbow glared up at Brainiac.
“Read my lips: go to-”
“I predicted that you would answer in such a way. Fortunately, I planned for such a reaction.” there was the sound of sliding machinery before a glass pod rose from the floor at the other end of the room. Rainbow scanned it and found Scootaloo hanging in an anti-gravity field, asleep and unharmed.
“This is the filly designated Scootaloo. As you know, I scanned her memories and found that she is close to you.” Rainbow stepped forward to retrieve Scootaloo, but another warning bell sounded and an energy field tossed Rainbow back. “I am not finished speaking.” Brainiac’s face disappeared, replaced by an image of Cloudsdale. “From scans that I have performed on your brain, this is where you were raised, was it not?”
“What does Cloudsdale have to do with-”
“I am not finished.” the image zoomed in to the center of the city, where several heavily armed ponies stood in a circle around... something. “My associate Alexander Silversmith has had a bomb planted in the center of the city. The panel you are standing on is a pressure plate, designed to trigger one of two reactions depending on which decision your mind makes.”
“What are those?”
“Should you go and try to stop the bomb, a power surge will destroy the filly’s brain. Should you try and save the filly, the bomb will detonate and kill every single citizen in Cloudsdale.” Rainbow’s eyes widened.
“What happened to trying to preserve information?”
“As I have stated before, Equestria is of little interest to me. I would have just captured you and worked out a more suitable plan to assimilate you, but Alexander Silversmith convinced me of this plan.” Brainiac returned to the screen. “What is your decision, Kara Jor-El?” Rainbow thought for a moment before looking back to Brainiac.
“What if I decide to just sit here and wait until you give up?” she asked, smiling smugly.
“The bomb will detonate regardless. You have fifteen minutes to decide.” any sense of accomplishment Rainbow had before vanished. She looked to Scootaloo, then back to the screen.
If she saved Cloudsdale, thousands of ponies would live. She had said it was her duty to protect Equestria, and Cloudsdale mattered more than one filly, right? But then Scootaloo would be dead, and her friends, the Crusaders, most ponies she knew, all of them would hate her for it.
I’m a hero; I can take the hate... can’t I? She looked to Scootaloo. If she saved her, then while her friends would not turn on her, Cloudsdale would be destroyed, and Silversmith would win. She could see him now, standing triumphant over the ruins of Cloudsdale while she was seen as a traitor. She frowned and looked down at her hooves.
“Why?” she asked, looking up at the screen.
“Why what?” Brainiac responded.
“Why are you doing this? Why not just take me now and leave Equestria alone?”
“Because you are free.” Brainiac's face moved off to one side, and Rainbow could see a brief clip show of her career as Supermare. “You have spent your entire life uninhibited by control or order. I cannot properly assimilate an individual like you, what with your corrupted mind and soul. Frankly, you disgust me. You are a perversion of your Kryptonian genes, an unbridled hybrid with Equestrian ideals. This is designed to break you.”
“‘Break’ me?”
“To show you that you are not as ‘free’ as you think. Here, I am in control. Every action you take from now on has been perfectly doctored to my design. You are under my command, Kara Jor-El, and there is little you might attempt to break free.” Rainbow tensed up, her teeth grinding together as she tried to hold back her anger.
“That’s it?” Rainbow glared up at Brainiac. “All of this, all of the abuses you’ve put me and my friends through, was about control?”
“There is little else that can be considered important.” Rainbow’s glare intensified, her eyes glowing as she restrained her heat vision.
“You really don’t understand anything about ponies, do you? You can’t control everything, Brainiac. For instance,” She looked down at the ground. “I think I found the wires that control the pressure plate.” Two red beams ripped through the floor as Rainbow sliced through wires and microchips with her heat vision.
“What are you doing?” Brainiac asked, still as monotone as ever. “This is an illogical set of events.”
“Wake up, Brainiac; not everything is based off of logic. You’re so wrapped up in what you think will happen that you’ve completely forgot that we ponies tend to do things that make no sense.” Once she was sure the pressure plate was disabled, Rainbow shot forward towards Scootaloo. The force field popped up once more, stalling Rainbow's flight and pushing her back towards the now ruined pressure plate.
“I will not allow attempted deviations from my set program.” Brainiac said as the force field pushed Rainbow back further. “You will comply with my commands.”
“No... I... won't!” Rainbow Dash pushed back with all of the strength, the panel beneath her bending under the strain. Finally something gave and the force field cut out, and Rainbow flew into the containment unit that held Scootaloo, smashing the glass and freeing the filly from her trance.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT UNIT BREACHED.” an announcement rang throughout the ship. Rainbow ignored it as she tried to revive Scootaloo.
“Scootaloo, wake up... Listen to me, wake up.” the filly blinked a few times as she looked up at Rainbow Dash.
“Supermare...? Where am I?”
“I’ll explain later.” Rainbow scooped Scootaloo up in her hooves and looked up at the bottled cities, racing upwards once she spotted Kandor once again.
“You cannot do this.” Brainiac said.
“Watch me.” her heat vision flashed again, and she caught Kandor in her free hoof before passing it off to Scootaloo. “Hey, can you hold on to this for a little bit?”
“Uh, sure.” Scootaloo took the city in her hooves as Rainbow looked around for an exit.
“Your little act of defiance is in vain, Kara Jor-El.” Brainiac droned on. “The bomb will still detonate whether you break out of here or not. You are still under my control.”
“Really?” No exit... guess I’ll have to make one. “You think that you can just keep everything contained, that you can just put the universe in a bottle? How does it feel, to know that you really don’t have as much control as you would like to think, to know that you found somewhere that won’t play by your rules?” she fired her heat vision once more, slowly melting the hull of the ship and allowing Rainbow and Scootaloo an escape route.
“Welcome to Equestria, Brainiac.”
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So we moved from Man of Steel to Superman Unbound, surprisingly much more seamlessly than i thought. nice work!
Btw last line, bad ass
>No romance tag
Okay
Life doesn't give us the option for true control Brainiac. You're not that smart if you fail to realize that. Someone, or in this case, somepony will come along that can overcome your sense of control.
Welcome to real life dumbass.
This reminded me of an episode from Superman the animated series. Nice.
Also is it alright if I played that same series intro in my head when I saw this was updated.
2737636
Sorta, Though I was referring to how he beat the tar out of Darkseid in JLU mostly.
Okay, now all she needs after this, assuming she doesn't simply beat him for good next chapter (fat chance of that, because no killing), are Twilight Sparkle, who is so smart, she could predict every move that he'll make,
and Pinkie Pie, who could hit him with a MASSIVE Logic Bomb due to her ability to defy the laws of physics with feats including Breaking the Fourth Wall!
Or, if this takes place after Keep Calm and Flutter On, she could get Fluttershy to convince Discord to help Supermare out instead! After all, he's the only force in existence that has Reality Warper powers beyond Pinkie Pie's!
Here, have some badges!
jmcdavid.deviantart.com/art/Rainbow-Dash-Approved-260976927
jmcdavid.deviantart.com/art/Scootaloo-Approved-288106357
And let me just say, I totally called it! Silversmith said at the end of the previous chapter that everything was going even better then planned, so I immediately realized that this meant that things would start going wrong for them this chapter! I'm just Genre Savvy like that!
I can imagine that, by the end of this, Brainiac will become Twilight's Library computer.
Twilight: Computer, please re-organize the books. Also, make me some coffee.
Brainiac: Somepony please put me out of my misery.
Spike: Weren't you supposed to be emotionless or something?
2738215 This does take place before Keep Calm and Flutter On, so no Reality Warping here (although, I do have an idea for a side story dealing with Discord=Myxlpkt)
2738279 Shame, Supermare teaming up with Discord would have been one of the best things that could ever happen, also he is one of the few foes that could shut her down compleatly hith minimal effort, he took her wings with a snap of his fingers once before after all.
2738279
That IS the obvious parallell, isn't it? (And then we can do 'Whatever happened to the Mare of Tomorrow?' 'Do you really think the Spirit of Chaos, Confusion and Evil would look like a comical mishmash of different animals?')
I'm actually shocked that Brainiac was so stupid as to not have a "dead pony's switch" in the pressure plate so it would activate automatically if damaged or disabled. He really is arrogantly over-sure of his intelligence isn't he? In that, he and Lex are strangely similar.
So, he waits until a race reaches perfection and then 'harvests' it, hmm...? I wonder if Harbinger and the boys know that Brainiac's stealing their groove?
Of course, the concept is pretty old in sci-fi; Brainiac wasn't the first and similar ideas have appeared since then too.
Sort will seems cloûdsdale will be saved and silversmith will have to deal with failure this time
Hey is braniac and silver smith gonna merge like lex and braniac did in jlu
Nice little Red Son reference there.
2740060 Most likely no; that was one of my ideas for the eventual Justice League crossover, but other plans came up
I have a question...
If superman can fly in outer space without a suite, and he's kryptonian. Why didn't everyone on Krypton evacuate the planet if they knew it was doomed? Why didn't his father?
if they could send a baby thousands of light years to earth in a small pod, why didn't they just do that on a larger scale?
Some super advance race they were....
2741451 Krypton orbits a red sun. Red suns negate Superman's powers, so everyone on Krypton was just a normal pony
Also, no one really listened to Jor-El when he said the planet was doomed, and by the time they actually got around to listening it was too late
2741587 huh, forgot about the red sun
well I think Brainiac would be a good follow up villain in the Next superman movie, what with all the activities of Zod and all that before hand, it would or should attract his attentions. I mean A civilization which was thought to have been lost suddenly making a resurgence in its technology? Investigation and possible elimination of new information. Yadda yadda, would make for a good follow up. and Kandor
Getting back some chapters, the Whole Mane Enterprises, and Fancy Pants is Batman... Fits, makes him interesting oh and that mustache must be a fake. Pretty cool to say the least.
2738188
It has paragraph spacing after the 15th chapter.
Def. needs to go back and add some to the old ones.
Superman Unbound was a good movie, and it seems to work well in this case as well. And, it seems the two villains haven't yet betrayed one another...so far... As for Brainiac, the idiot went and tried to repeat what Discord did with Rainbow. Heh, the same method of manipulation won't work twice on the disguised Element of Loyalty.
C&Cs:
The robots regrouped and advanced towards her, but now that her forehooves were free she could strike back.
> Comma after ‘free’.
“You really don’t understand anything about ponies, do you? You can’t control everything, Brainiac. For instance,” She looked down at the ground. “While you were busy gloating, I think I found the wires that control the pressure plate.” two red beams ripped through the floor as Rainbow sliced through wires and microchips with her heat vision.
> I think you may want to remove the ‘While you were busy gloating’ part, since from what I read, the only time you clued the readers that she glanced downward was within this paragraph. If you want to add that line, you need to give the readers the impression that she was looking around in some way or another. Capitalize ‘two’, since it seems rather more like a new sentence.
WEEEEOOOOOO, Superman/mare always finds a way to save everyone!
discord vs supermare thats a fight
2741451 no superman can only do that at a littel while and red sun thats negate it and the littel ship most have taken months so that gona be hard to do the make it bigger thing a no show.
Cue superman theme!!!
Whoohoo! Supermare always saves everyone! The dialogue between Rainbow and Brainiac was very nice, and the last quote ...freaking badass!
Because isn't the place you think it is Brainiac
, its EQUESTRIA! THE LAND OF MAGIC AND FRIENDSHIP
!!!
2741451
For one, no one listened to Jor el when he said the planet was doomed, secondly, Krypton had a red sun, which never gave the Kryptonians a lot of power, a yellow sun however, provides much better energy