Note: This time, I fully apologize for how long this update took. I did take some time off from, well, everything, partly because I needed it after last year, and partly because I also still had to plan out exactly what would happen here. I had a bunch of major moments down in stone, but the path between them wasn't in place. Still isn't entirely, if I'm being honest. Which I am. But anyway, now we're into the meat of things. Forewarning, this chapter'll be extra long (basically a three-in-one chapter, possibly even four), to get in a lot of key moments at once, and to make up for the gap between updates.
I do not own Young Justice, nor any characters therein. Please review, comment, or criticize constructively. Most of all, enjoy.
The Last Daughter
Chapter 9
War
They'd been half right, and half wrong, M'Gann decided. Supergirl hadn't been giving all of them, from the Team to the League, enough credit in the sort of threats they'd stopped. And they hadn't been giving Supergirl enough credit when she kept warning them about how dangerous Brainiac would be. It was a strange mix of everyone being right and wrong all at once.
Earth's conventional forces could only do so much against extraterrestrial threats. Or even threats that came from Earth. At the moment, they were doing an adequate job of making sure the League wasn't completely swamped and unable to help where things were worst. But that was all they could do. At least, all they could do safely.
The League had tried handling things like they had the countless invasions they'd dealt with over the years. Keep major invading forces as bottled as possible while they tried to figure out how to target the main leader. It was unfortunate, then, that Brainiac seemed immune to those strategies. No matter how many drones or scout ships they destroyed, more always replaced them. And the areas that were getting the worst of the invasion seemed to change by the hour. Everywhere, from what she'd heard, was getting hit, but focus seemed to follow Brainiac's personal ship. A vast, skull-shaped craft that hung in low orbit, spewing out an apparently endless supply of drones and ships to analyze and harvest and destroy.
The ship itself posed the second problem. Usually, they'd find a way to break inside and take down either it or Brainiac. But they couldn't find a way inside. Shielding technology that even the brightest minds on Earth couldn't adequately describe blocked any sort of external entry, such as Zeta beaming or just punching through the hull. They'd tried targeting it with the Watchtower when it had passed over an uninhabited region of Earth, just in case they missed. While they had managed to punch a hole in the shield with the station's lazer, the breach had resealed itself before they could take advantage of it.
Supergirl had suggested looking down the path her father had claimed he'd been pursuing; using signal networks to try and disrupt Brainiac's control of his minions, force him to leave his ship. Work on that angle was, as far as anyone knew, ongoing.
She heard a shifting of metal plates behind her, before a loud burning and rushing sound drowned it out. As she turned, she saw Supergirl hovering before her, clutching the half-melted head of a drone in one hand.
"You alright?" She asked, tossing the head away and reaching with her other hand. M'Gann still wasn't quite used to the armor Kara had donned, but she couldn't deny that it suited the girl. She nodded. She looked down, could see the red and yellow blurs of Flash and Kid Flash speeding through the streets, knocking down drones and running civilians to the few safe evacuation checkpoints that had been established in every major city, mostly on the word of Supergirl about the fate of Kandor. Everyone else who could fly or reach the rooftops was trying to keep a handle on the ships.
Supergirl's head snapped in the direction of the Daily Planet. A second later, Conner's voice sounded in her head.
Superman's in trouble. I need help at the Planet.
Superman was tenuously hovering in the middle of a pack of a dozen drones. And while she didn't have Kryptonian super senses, M'Gann could tell that they were doing whatever it was they'd tried to do to Conner. She could just make out dozens of metal strands through the gaps, stabbing into Superman. She fought down the cold feeling that started gathering in her stomach. If these things could actually hurt Superman… Conner, after all, was only-
Her train of thought broke as she saw him leap into one side of the pack, punching and grabbing and tearing as hard as he could. Supergirl picked up speed, leaving her behind. She could see the glow of her heat vision blasting into the back end of the pack.
Their interference seemed to give Superman the breathing room he apparently needed. Several shakes tossed several drones against the sides of buildings, or down to the street. Conner and Supergirl double-teamed the last few still hooked into him; she burned away the strands, Conner tossed or punched them across several blocks as he occasionally leapt up to regain height.
Supergirl held their arms, floating down to the roof of the nearest building, and threw her arms around Superman. M'Gann slowed, drifting into the mental link to see how everyone else was doing. Her vision refocused on the three Kryptonians on the roof when Supergirl went flying and-
A beam of energy swallowed Superman and Conner, quickly dissipating and leaving only glowing stone. She was numbly aware of her gaze following the last remnants of the beam, to one of Brainiac's attack ships that had fired on them from behind.
A red and blue blur smashed into its side and tore through the other end. Again and again, it shot through, until the ship was reduced to chunks falling towards the ground. M'Gann heard a dull roaring sound in her ears, before she realized where it was coming from. Supergirl, floating above the roof, right where they'd been. She drove her fist into the roof, and it crumbled beneath her blow. Her head turned up, towards the sky, towards Brainiac's ship, and she screamed something in Kryptonian, screamed so loud M'Gann thought her eardrums might burst. Then she was gone, a colored blur tearing through the sky and through Brainiac's forces.
M'Gann numbly realized that she'd let the mental link shut down.
General Eiling reflected that things seemed to have calmed down, relatively speaking, in the last half hour. The drones and ships were mostly milling about, for whatever reason, giving the League easy targets to mop up. Which some of them apparently really needed; he'd seen Wonder Woman furiously tackle an entire ship into the side of a building earlier.
He didn't know exactly what had happened, but rumors circulating from the teams who'd come in from the downtown section of Metropolis said that the robots had taken out Superman and his kid brother, or whatever it was Superboy was. Eiling had made sure to clamp down on those rumors, making sure nothing spread any farther than it already had. Even the insinuation that the big guy in blue was gone was enough to give Eiling pause. He didn't want to think what would happen at the other evacuation checkpoints if the rumor started spreading. Mass panic and a lot of people crushed to death, he guessed.
He looked up as some of the junior Leaguers came in. The girl martian, the blonde with the orange suit and crossbows. He had to shake his head at that. Crossbows. Along with the Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl, and the kid he assumed was Batman's latest sidekick. The martian seemed off. Almost in shock, despite the fact that Eiling had seen her pull apart a dozen drones just by looking at them, and crossbow girl had an arm around her shoulder, hand squeezed tight.
Eiling felt his ears pop and was slightly defeaned by a sonic boom, felt the ground shake beneath his feet. Supergirl had slammed down at high speed behind the others, feet gouging wide gaps into the street. Blue Beetle coughed and pointed at her. She looked down, and noticed that a drone head was stuck halfway up her left arm, through a hole driven in its forehead. She reached with one hand and tore at its jaw, tossing the half of the head off into the street as the top half fell away. Eiling sadly realized that if anything confirmed the rumors, Supergirl did. Her wild face was streaked with dust and tear marks, and he guessed her shaking shoulders were either because she'd been fighting so hard she'd actually gotten tired, or she was grappling with the fact that the only family she had left had been killed.
"Contact!" one of the perimeter guards called.
"How many?" Eiling yelled back, taking care not to move too fast or too close the Leaguers who turned and started raring themselves back up.
"One." Even the guard sounded uncertain.
The figure floated in, standing on a bright purple disk of light. It stepped down, and Eiling could hear the rubble crunch beneath metal plates. It didn't look like any of the drones. It was far taller, for one. Nearly seven feet. Actually colored, too. A mix of green and purple metal made up most of it, along what almost looked like green flesh, or something close to it, in several spots. It also had an actual face. Which was apparently locked in a permanent glare of superiority, even though its mouth didn't seem to curve in any particular direction. It was more an intrinsic thing about it. Three large, red lights glowed in the center of its head. It looked over the checkpoint with glowing red eyes, its gaze quickly resting on Supergirl.
"I am Brainiac," it called out, sounding… slightly less robot-y than Eiling thought it would. "Recent events have led me to-"
He didn't get to finish. In fact, seconds later, Eiling couldn't even see him. The only clues he had to what had just happened was the trail of dust and rubble streaking back into the city, the rage-filled scream still ringing in his ears, and the fact that Supergirl was gone.
She didn't even know how many buildings she'd flown him through, smashing through steel and glass and concrete. She also didn't care. Brainiac was here. Finally, he'd left his Rao-damned impenetrable ship. And she could finally kill him.
A jolt of painful energy ran through her, and she stopped blasting forward. She felt hands tighten around her waist, and suddenly found herself turning end over end then slamming into the ground. She pulled her head out of the street and saw Brainiac, perfectly righted, step down from another platform of what she assumed was hard light. He turned and fixed his eyes on her.
"Cease this-" She dove forward and punched him in what should've been his stomach. As hard as she could. He smashed through the small store behind him, and clearly carried on. She flew up into the air, following the path of wreckage.
"I told you." She yelled, assuming he was advanced enough hear her. "I told you what would happen if you came here." She saw movement a few buildings down, and let her heat vision loose. Strangely, she felt resistance.
Then she saw Brainiac calmly walk out of the melting front of the building she'd hit him into, a disk of light projecting from one of his palms, stopping her heat vision dead in its tracks. With a cry, she broke off the beam and started to bank to one side to pick up speed.
A white, jagged beam of energy, almost like a lightning bolt, struck her. She couldn't move, she could barely think, the pain was so intense. She dropped like a rock and felt the beam fade as she landed heavily on her side.
"Kara Zor-El," his voice rang out, and suddenly he was much closer than he seemed a second ago. "I do not-" She threw herself at him, spinning on her right side and driving her elbow into his face. To her surprise, she didn't knock him straight through the street. He held his ground. Ground that cracked beneath his feet, admittedly, but ground that was still held.
She felt something strike her stomach, heard the metal of her warsuit crack, and had to drop to her knees as the breath was forced out of her. Nothing, not Zod, not any of the supervillains, nor even Kal in the practice bouts, had ever hit her that hard before.
"This exercise is pointl-" She interrupted him by coming back with heat vision, that he again simply blocked with a disk of light. She saw his other hand reaching, and swung out, knocking it aside. The energy bolt blasted the crumpled remains of a car, leaving the metal of the entire vehicle glowing red. She followed up. Quick shots to his gut and a temporary increase in heat vision to try and attract his full attention. She let it die out as soon as she saw one of his eyes focus on hers; she didn't want to know what would happen if he pushed close enough with the hard light and her heat vision was still going. A quick kick to his right knee, punch to his face. She dashed around him as he seemed to stumble, and grabbed the plates of his back. She threw him, and watched him sail through a skyscraper. She took a moment to catch her breath, taking in a few great gulps of air, before taking off again.
She dove through the buildings, trying to follow the trail like she had before. She thought she saw his landing point. Then the side of the building next to her exploded outwards and one of Brainiac's metal knees was driving into her face. She, again, had a moment to reflect on how much that hurt, before she was tumbling through the building opposite her. She briefly recognized how much tumbling through the building, the actual experience of it, sucked. She honestly didn't realize it was this unpleasant. The constant smashing against things and everything she could see being a rotating jumble of bits and pieces.
After what felt like forever, she felt herself smash through glass and hang in open air. She started to right herself before something slammed into her chest. She looked up and saw Brainiac's back, his feet planted firmly on her warsuit's chestplate, somehow driving himself and her down.
She made a crater in the street on impact, and she could again feel the metal of the warsuit crack beneath the sheer force. She drew gasping breaths as Brainiac stepped off her. She thought she saw a dent in the knee he'd hit her with.
Then he nailed her with another blast, and she couldn't think at all.
The blast died quickly, and the pain went with it. He raised the hand he'd blasted her with.
"As I have tried to-" A series of metallic thuds sounded out. Kara, from her perspective, could see something like half a dozen batarangs at least, all lodged in the plates of Brainiac's right arm. He turned his head and raised his arm to inspect just what had hit him.
And then the batarangs exploded in clouds of smoke and shrapnel. Kara felt herself lift off of the ground and move quickly. Not under her own power. It took her a moment to get her bearings and realize Kid Flash had snatched her out of the crater, carrying her away from Brainiac. She watched as everyone else dove at him. He seemed hardly the worse for wear from the team effort by Batman and Robin and Batgirl. He also didn't seem incredibly bothered by the massive team of superheroes attacking him.
More shields of hard light formed around him, blocking Tigress and Green Arrow, while he moved with blazing speed to bat away attacks and people coming in close. Wonder Girl tried to rope her lasso around him from behind, but he seemed to see that coming. He reached behind his back and seized the loop, and his torso seemed to spin on top of his waist, smashing her through buildings until he released his grip. Aquaman, Aqualad, and Wonder Woman dove at him from all sides. He sidestepped Aquaman's stab and pushed the trident forward, ramming it against Wonder Woman's shield. He spun on his feet and went around Aquaman, slamming his fist into the king's face and knocking him off his feet. A blast of energy from his left hand floored Aqualad while his right parried each of Wonder Woman's strikes. She was shoving him with each connection, but that was all she was doing. Brainiac finally used both hands, and batted Wonder Woman's sword and shield aside before delivering a swift kick to her midsection, followed up by another energy blast as she slid backwards on her knees.
Kara started to rise, but Kid Flash set a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, we're all here now. Take a minute. We got this." He said.
Kara's gaze drifted towards Brainiac's knee. The one he'd managed to dent hitting her. Wonder Woman came back while he was distracted dodging a hammer summoned up by Green Lantern and grazed his face. She could see the synthetic flesh break around the blade.
"No," She said, pushing Kid Flash away. "He's mine." Kid Flash looked a little scared of her just then.
She shot forward, flying low to the ground, heat vision building in her eyes.
She came under the hard light shields, as he turned and threw Wonder Woman towards Batgirl, who was swooping down from one of the rooftops. Kara clenched one hand into a fist and held it, recognizing that this would probably hurt.
She aimed and flew, fist-first, into the dent in Brainiac's knee, while letting her heat vision blast up into the general area of his opposite shoulder. Brainiac yelled in pain along with Kara as his knee caved inwards, the metal stabbing into her fist. She was almost embarrassed at how pleased the sound of him crying out in pain made her. She tore her hand free from the nearly shattered wreckage of his knee and came up, driving her elbow against the small cut Wonder Woman had made. Brainiac reeled, as much as he had reeled at anything, which honestly wasn't much, and Kara reached around him. She lifted him up and turned, passing him over her head as she slammed him down against the street. She turned her heat vision back up, blasting at the back side of the shoulder she'd been focusing on. She watched the metal glow and start to melt and flake away. She stomped one foot down on his back, and set her other foot on his other wrist, holding his good arm in place as best she could.
Kara reached down and wrapped her fingers around Brainiac's head. Faces flashed through her mind. Tal-Vor. Her parents. Her friends from school and the military academy. Zod. Uncle Jor and Aunt Lara. Everyone else on Krypton. Rao only knew how many so far on Earth. Conner. Kal.
"I told you." She hissed down at him. And she pulled with all her strength. She wasn't sure how long it took, and she honestly surprised none of the League tried to stop her. But after another good tug, she felt something give, and pulled again.
The skin itself had long since broken; a long, metallic spine, snapped about a quarter of the way down its length, dripping… something with small bolts of energy arcing and fading along its length, slid out from between the plates covering Brainiac's neck. Breathing heavily, she tossed the head away, and stepped off the body. She finally looked around, taking in the shocked, and in many cases disapproving, looks of the League.
"I know that a lot of you-" Something seized her hair and yanked her to the ground. She saw a ruined metal leg swing over her, and felt a plated foot brace itself against her chest. Brainiac's headless body crouched on top of her.
"To think that I would allow myself to be hampered by the same flaws in design as you." His voice rang out. "I'm almost insulted, Kara Zor-El." His good hand clamped over her mouth. She saw his chest, focusing on it almost at random in her honest terror. She'd shattered some of the plating, and she could see liquid and energy leaking through the cracks.
"Should've covered my eyes." She said. Mostly for the pleasure of the comeback. It was completely unintelligible with his hand over her mouth.
She fired her heat vision into what looked like the weakest point, and she was swiftly rewarded. The up-close, nearly point-blank force, blasted through the weakened metal. She heard him cry in pain again, but she kept her focus, pouring more and more energy into the beam from eyes. It was starting to get painful when she finally saw that she'd managed to bore a hole through his chest. His grip loosened, and she shoved his body off her, keeping the heat vision on target, melting or outright incinerating as much of whatever his insides were that she could hit. His continued cry broke down, fragmenting like a bad audio file before stuttering out into silence.
"Whatever you did," the human officer said to her, "It worked. Reports are coming in from teams in the rest of the city. Bots everywhere are shut down." They'd taken it slow getting back to the main evacuation checkpoint for her sake. She was also grateful they'd decided to save the lecture.
"On that topic…" She heard Batman say. She sighed.
"Can't we save the scolding for at least…" She saw something, in the distance, move. But with everyone standing in front of her, she couldn't be sure. "Move," She said, pushing, then outright shoving her way as best she could through the assembled superheroes. "Move!" She made it to the front of the pack and braced her hands on one of the dividing blocks the earth military had set up. She could see clearly now. But what she saw shouldn't have been possible. "No, that can't be." She said to herself. She could see drones, several streets down, moving towards the checkpoint. She vaguely recognized the same soldier from before call out incoming, heard the officer's radio come to life with reports of renewed activity.
She felt the ground shake, and saw a large shadow grow larger, reaching from behind her to, she realized, slowly blanket the city. She turned, and saw the giant metal skull of Brainiac's ship descending on the city. Swarms of drones, enough to choke the street and cover several small buildings, were flooding down the street.
"This isn't possible," She said. "I killed you." She looked down from the ship to see the approaching drones, then glared up at the ship and felt her heat vision burst to life on reflex. "I killed you!" She screamed at the ship, at the being who was somehow piloting it and commanding the drones before her. Who was, impossibly, alive.
"As I said, Kara Zor-El," The voice, his voice, grabbed her attention. The beam of heat vision broke, but she could feel the energy building in her eyes still. She tore her gaze from the ship and saw a burning doorway of energy resting in mid-air, an utterly alien room on the other side. "I'm almost insulted at the fact that you believe I would allow myself to be hampered by the same flaws in design as you." Brainiac, apparently untouched, stepped through the doorway.
So, yeah. Like, four or so chapters in one. I imagine some of you will be able to spot the points where individual chapters might break off, had I done this whole thing piecemeal. Also, on the topic of Brainiac; he must have a badass voice, and I'm honestly torn between Corey Burton (as classic as it gets for Brainiac), and Dee Bradley Baker (the man who'll be voicing him in the upcoming Injustice 2, and who has already killed it with just a single trailer monologue). In case it wasn't clear enough from the description of all the metal plates, this Brainiac is more along the lines of the one from Legion of Superheroes (damn that show was good) mixed with a dash of his more traditional, fleshy, body-suit self.
Anyways, the opening of this is why this took so frigging long to write. I had the Superman scene more or less planned out for a while, I had Kara vs Brainiac roughly planned out (mostly just: they fight and hit each other into/through stuff for a bit), the League coming to the rescue was a recent idea that I worked in, and Kara was also always going to straight-up kill Brainiac. In early drafts, she burned through his head with heat vision, but I thought I could go a little bolder. Those death-drafts were also before I hit upon Brainiac's quintessential line in this chapter; it's insulting to think he's limited by the same design flaws as organic life. Tear off his head and completely snap his robo-spine? Only organics need an attached head and unbroken spinal column to function. The pansies. Also, Brainiac is a hyper-advanced, hyper-intelligent life form. He's not going to die like the aliens in War of the Worlds, and the biological complexity of a swamp isn't going to make his brain explode. This Brainiac could comprehend the biological complexity of all the swamps on Earth in about ten minutes. Hence why he can leave his ship for attempted conversation and beat-downs without an issue.
But back on topic, I had no idea how to start this whole thing rolling. Then I thought; the Superman/Superboy scene is first. Let's start with a general perspective shifting to exacting from the one person who'd be about as devastated by the proceedings as Kara. M'Gann. Bam. Had my way to start. Was so happy that I could. Of note, on the beam-scene; Superman tossed Kara away (he was facing the ship, he could see it coming) and obviously would've tossed Conner too if he'd had the time. Just in case that isn't totally clear.
Also, anyone remember that bit right at the end of the last chapter, how Kara was going into this fight as Kara, not Supergirl? Yeah, that mental distinction in her head is a big point of insight, I feel, into her actions here. She's not a supehero trying to save the planet from invading aliens; she's the only other (and then only) survivor of a race and planet whose destruction she blames Brainiac for. She was also training for a good portion of her life to be a soldier. So of course she's going to kill the person she deems most responsible for the death/destruction of everything and everyone she ever knew. She swore she'd kill him or die to him back in Chapter 6, and she does not make threats. She makes promises.
Lastly, there's still more going on here than there seems to be, and there's another hint as to what is really happening in this very chapter. It's subtle, I'll say that. But there is more going on here than any character we've had a perspective chapter/section from so far knows. The only character who has even half of the full story at this point got his head ripped off.
