Chapter 18

Cosmic Boy and his team were in the next solar system, fighting off Validus, Hunter, and about a hundred specialized battle bots, when the call came.

"All Legionnaires, return to Earth immediately! Brainiac 1.0 is attacking! Repeat, Brainiac 1.0 has arrived!"

"That's our cue", Hunter said to Validus, who nodded. "See ya, Legionnaires", he added. "We've got somewhere to be." Then he and Validus disappeared, teleporting away and leaving the seventy-eight remaining robots to battle Cosmic Boy, Superman, Phantom Girl, Sun Boy, Invisible Kid, Shrinking Violet, Nemesis Kid, Chemical King, and Wildfire.

Normally, Cosmic Boy could have handled all the robots with a few fields of magnetic manipulation, but, as he had discovered early in the fight, Brainiac had treated them so that they were immune to his powers, and so he had to rely on his combat skills.

Chemical King initiated a chemical reaction that disintegrated ten robots, and Wildfire eliminated several more with an intense blast of energy. By then, the other robots had retaliated with the vast number of weapons they had in their arsenal.

Nemesis Kid avoided a laser beam and kicked the robot that had fired it, banging its head together with that of another bot and neutralizing both. Superman wiped out an entire group of robots who had converged on him, laser-ing most of them, punching a few, and freezing a couple more. Around the Legionnaires, every so often, a robot would suddenly stop dead and shut down – courtesy of a microscopic-sized Shrinking Violet messing with the circuits.

Invisible Kid, however, was not so lucky. Though he turned invisible, three of the robots employed their heat vision and whacked him on the head as one, effectively knocking him out. Cosmic Boy caught him and dispatched his attackers with a swift, hard kick.

With twenty-two robots remaining, the tide was definitely turning in the Legionnaires' favor. Phantom Girl whacked the heads off four of them and Sun Boy torched their exposed circuits for good measure. Then a robot fired at Chemical King as he was setting off another reaction. Struck in the small of his back, Chemical King collapsed while the robot strode forward to attack Wildfire. Before it could get so much as a punch in, however, Cosmic Boy kicked it away, toward the laser beam Superman was emitting from his eyes to destroy more robots.

Within minutes, there were no robots left – at least none that were capable of doing anything but lying on the ground. The Legionnaires had quickly and efficiently overpowered them, despite being widely outnumbered, out of a need to get back to Earth as fast as possible. They climbed back into their cruiser, Cosmic Boy and Sun Boy supporting Invisible Kid and Chemical King.

"We'll never make it back in time", predicted Nemesis Kid.

"Oh, yes we will", Shrinking Violet said determinedly, marching toward the circuitry panel. Opening it to reveal the mass of wires inside, she proceeded to change them about, switching certain cables, linking several others, and completely unplugging a few. Closing the panel, she revved up the engine of the cruiser, which made a loud, rattling sound as it came online.

Alarmed, Cosmic Boy asked, "Violet, what did you do?"

Accelerating the cruiser into a dizzyingly high speed, Violet replied over the noise, "I switched all the energy from the shields, weapon, and stealth systems to the main power converter. Right now all the power is fueling the engine and speed of the cruiser. It might not be enough to get us back in time, but it could."

"That would explain why it's so dark, then?" said Sun Boy, holding up a ball of fire in his hand so that they wouldn't be in pitch blackness.

"Violet, you're a genius!" Superman said fervently.

"Come on!" XS yelled as she darted around Tharok at super-speed. "Catch me if you can!"

Growling, Tharok fired another blast at where he estimated XS to be, but she was moving too fast for him to think, and the shot missed.

"You bratty little –" Tharok barked, but he was cut off by the activation of all the Legionnaire's rings.

"All Legionnaires, return to Earth immediately! Brainiac 1.0 is attacking! Repeat, Brainiac 1.0 has arrived!" Lightning Lad's holographic image exclaimed before disappearing.

XS stopped short, as did the other members of her team, halfway through battling Tharok, Esper, and their one hundred battle bots.

"Oopsie", said Esper maliciously. "Guess you've got better things to do. That is, if you make it back on time." With a wicked laugh, she and Tharok vanished, but the robots did not, and these attacked the Legionnaires.

"Yikes!" cried Chameleon Boy, jumping out of the way as a robot came charging straight at him. Turning into a huge creature that remotely resembled a T-rex, he swiped at the robot with his tail, causing it to fly backward and crash into several others. Beside him, Karate Kid leaped into the air and kicked down six robots in quick succession, chopping the heads off another two as he came down.

Timber Wolf slashed viciously at any robot he could reach, effectively rendering them harmless with a few fierce strikes of his sharp claws. Blok proceeded in a more methodical manner, smashing his whole, rocky bulk into the robots that happened to get in his way as he ran, then doubling back in several other directions and repeating the same process. Matter-Eater Lad was pretty much running wild, biting huge chunks of metal off the robots' shoulders, arms, legs, and heads. XS dashed all around, slamming into robots before they even knew what was happening.

The robots did get some shots in, of course. Brainiac 1.0 had given them an enormous range of weapons, and they made good use of them. One injured Karate Kid, and another got a lucky shot in at XS' shoulder. Timber Wolf emerged from his most recent conflict rather singed, and Chameleon Boy got hit by a stray grenade.

Eventually, however, all hundred of the bots lay strewn across the ground of Mars, where XS' team was, and the Legionnaires hurried into their cruiser, which, once they launched it, they piloted at full speed toward Earth.

"Brainy!" yelled Bouncing Boy. "Are you done?"

"Yes", replied Brainy, emerging from the lab with Element Lad, a medium-sized cylindrical metal object in one hand, a basic teleporter in the other. He looked at Bouncing Boy, who nodded once, and quickly and deftly affixed the teleporter to the apparatus.

"What exactly does that do?" asked Ultra Boy apprehensively.

"This has been built, with Element Lad's help, to collect certain molecules and atoms from the air and store them as energy, which will hopefully be enough to power this teleporter to transport us through an alternate dimension to New Metropolis", replied Brainy.

"I'm not even going to ask for a simplified explanation", muttered Star Boy.

"What, exactly, are we doing discussing the properties of this device?" asked Dawnstar pointedly. "Who cares how and why it does what it does as long as it gets us back to Earth like it's supposed to, like right now?"

"Dawnstar's right", said Triplicate Girl's Orange Body, helping Purple Body support White Body, who was still queasy from the jarring, jolting bucking of the cruiser just a few minutes before. "We should go now."

"Just give me a minute", said Brainy as he fumbled with the combined technology. "Ready?" he asked the assembled Legionnaires. They murmured disjointedly, but their heads bobbed tersely downward. Brainy activated the teleportation device, and the planet Neptune and deep space suddenly vanished, to be replaced by New Metropolis, as the cruiser and everyone in it was transported to Earth by the combined teleporter and power-supplier.

Lightning Lad ran out to join his teammates after sending a swift, urgent message to all the Legionnaires, only to behold a fearsome scene.

Brainiac 1.0, now in his full Brainiac 6 technology and twice the height of Legion HQ, was advancing on them. Marching beside him were Tyr, Esper, Hunter, Wave, Ron-Karr, Emerald Empress, Persuader, Tharok, Mano, and Validus, and behind him followed an army of about a thousand battle robots in full armor and equipped with deadly weapons.

In front of the massive crowd of villains, Kell-el, Dream Girl, Colossal Boy, Porcupine Pete, Stone Boy, Night Girl, Color Kid, Infectious Lass, Fire Lad, Chlorophyll Kid, Double-Header, Antenna Lad, and Polar Boy, led by Saturn Girl, stood facing Brainiac 1.0.

"Holy –" Lightning Lad exclaimed in dread.

"Surrender now and your lives may be spared", Brainiac's booming mechanical voice proclaimed. "Disband the Legion and interfere no more with the world that I and my accomplices shall create. Refuse, and I will show you no mercy, and you shall be crushed under my heel like the insignificant insects you are."

"Never!" cried Saturn Girl defiantly, her eyes flashing a bright, intense pink. The additional voices of the other Legionnaires and the Substitutes echoed her sentiment. Lightning Lad watched with trepidation. He admired Saturn Girl's courage, and he himself added his refusal to the chorus of voices, but he feared for every Legionnaire, Substitute or not, who was there today, and for all the others who were not here – yet.

Brainiac 1.0 glared down upon them with a cold, hard, merciless look.

"Then you have sealed your doom. Now, my assistants, ATTACK!"

A/N: Hehehe. Another evil cliffie. Well, tomorrow will bring another chapter with it, so don't worry. Thanks to Devilbunny, TheEclipse, Mirror's Mirage, and Lillywhitecherub for reviewing, and also The Violet Rose, who had yet another unfortunate episode with her computer.I appreciate all your feedback! =)

Disclaimer: Now, seriously, why on earth would I be posting on a fanfiction site if I could use this elsewhere?