“...ugh…my head is killing me…”, Aultcray groaned as he opened his eyes and looked around, “What is this place?”
“Sweetheart you are in our bed chambers.”, Mirellia said drawing his attention to her as she held his hand tightly, “Other than your headache, do you feel pain anywhere else?”
Taking a second to process what he was seeing, Aultcray blinked several times in quick succession horrified by what he saw. Sitting up in bed immediately he reached over and grabbed her shoulders tightly.
“Dear Lord, please do not tell me those bastards got you too!”, Aultcray swore as a scowl formed on his face, “I swear I will make them pay dearly for laying their hands on my beloved wife!”
“Dear it is alright, we are not dead.”, Mirellia laughed as tears of relief ran down her cheek, “Cole found a method for fixing your soul, you are among the living again. Not only that, our baby girl Malty is with us again. Medea’s vile claws are no longer sunk into our daughter’s soul!”
Releasing her shoulders, he turned around and saw my family and I standing there. Giving him a firm nod, I told him that he could take better care of his family than I ever could. Leaping into his arms Mirellia held him tightly as he returned his attention to his wife. Realizing that things could go from zero to a hundred really quickly now, we excused ourselves and headed home for the day.
—Two Days Later—
Helping the League out for the next few days, Ciri and I helped make serious progress in rebuilding their Earth. Introducing Ciri and others to Building Restoration Magic, something I developed myself, structures were being reconstructed in minutes instead of months. Getting them well on their way to normality again I broached the elephant in the room with them as we had to get moving on it.
“We need to begin focusing our attention on the Brainiac and Eridin problem.”, I spoke up at the morning League meeting, “Based on what the telemetry I got from Constantine’s spell and Power Girl’s mission log, Brainiac’s base is somewhere in this Asteroid Field.”
Pulling up the same star map I used several days prior, I highlighted the area in question. Wanting to track down Eredin and the Wild Hunt as quickly as possible, our best lead was Brainiac’s Base. If we could lock onto his ship’s unique energy pattern, tracking it across the Omniverse would be substantially easier.
“I can take you out there.”, Power Girl offered rising from her seat.
“You sure, Kara?”, Superman inquired with a worried look, “You should not push yourself too hard after enduring what you did on Apokolips.”
“I am fine, Kal.”, she assured him with a grateful smile, “I want to help bring this to an end as quickly as possible. It is my fault for not properly surveying the asteroid field to begin with. Even though I was not the one who teleported the Wild Hunt there, it is still partially my fault.”
“How many bloody times must I say sorry for everyone to let it go?!”, Constantine shouted slamming his Irish Coffee onto the table.
“Probably till you stop getting riled up about it.”, Zatana snickered, “No one here blames either of you for this, these things just happen.”
Muttering a few choice curse words under his breath, Constantine took another sip of coffee and cooled off. Wanting to speed things up before something bad happened, Green Arrow chimed in to move things along.
“So what exactly are you expecting to find out there?”, Green Arrow asked out of curiosity, “When he showed up, he brought his main ship and the Wild Hunt with him. There should not be much left out there for you to find except maybe an ion trail leading back to Earth.”
“You are not looking for traces of his ship or him out there, are you?”, Batman said already having his own ideas in mind.
Nodding my head in response, I gave them my theory on the asteroid field.
“The nearest celestial body is several hundred light years away, and the nearest inhabited one is further still. Based on the information I have available, this asteroid field should not exist at this location…someone relocated them to provide cover for something.”, I stated, “My suspicion is that Brainiac created this artificial asteroid field to hide a storage depot. I know for a fact that he makes regular backups of himself in the event his body was to be destroyed. He has had far too many close calls with the League and other races to not have backups in place for himself.”
“That would explain how he is able to quickly recover after engaging us.”, Martian Manhunter agreed, “How many backups does he have?”
“Do you really want that answer?”, I inquired.
“Yes.”, Superman answered for him.
“There are more copies of him out there than there are members in the combined Lantern Corps.”, I responded, “That said, in several thousand years he will not be the menace you know him as today. He will be a full-fledged member of the JLA, have changed from a mechanical being to a biological one, and have normal emotions. By that point, he will have gone through so many revisions that you would never recognize him if not for the Brainiac symbol on his forehead. His reasoning for joining the League will be to atone for the crimes he commits during this time period.”
After finishing what I had to say, I looked around to see everyone’s reactions. As expected, everyone was stunned to hear that Brainiac would eventually become a Hero. I was not entirely sure what made Brainiac change, but I suspected it was something he found out there among the stars.
“Believe it when I see it.”, Green Arrow laughed, “Anyways I do agree with your assessment that it is artificially made. We should send a team out there to investigate instead of having three of you go out alone. Once you get what you need, the team can do a more in-depth review to hopefully locate other storage depots out there.”
“I will go along with them.”, Wonder Woman volunteered.
“Same, if there are that many backups out there the Green Lantern Corps needs to know what to look for.”, Green Lantern said, “I will arrange for additional assets to meet us there.”
—Asteroid Field—
Teleporting us to our destination after the meeting, several Lanterns were already on site searching for the depot. Seeing several faces I recognized among them, one of the most annoying members was with them…Guy Gardner.
“Took your sweet time getting out here.”, Guy snickered, “Hey Ciri, how have you been?”
“Doing good Guy, glad to see you are doing well.”, Ciri replied with a cramped expression, “Any luck finding the depot?”
“You guys showed up right as we found it.”, Kilowog said flying over to share the good news, “We are having some problems getting into it though, the system is secured with Quantum Passkey. Our rings do not have the processing power to breach the security.”
“Show me.”, I requested.
Guiding us over to the depot, several Lanterns pulled it out of the asteroid field to work on it easier. As we drew near I stepped out of Hal’s shielding and zipped into the depot’s computer systems. Severing remote access to the site first I quickly assumed control of the depot and opened the doors for them. Kicking on the lights so they could see the full size of this place, most of them were left speechless.
“How is this possible?”, Guy asked doing a double take, “The space in here is probably five times greater than the asteroid’s size.”
“Clearly you slept through several of our morning briefings…”, Kilowog sighed, “Many races in the cosmos have this technology, it does not surprise me Brainiac does. Be mindful not to touch any buttons, if the field collapses while we are inside we will all die.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever.”, Guy remarked shooting off toward the entrance.
Slamming the door in his face, Guy ran right into it with a loud bang. Howling in pain as he rubbed his face vigorously I reopened the door for everyone to come in.
“Watch your tone hotshot, if I feel like you are a liability I will send your ass back to Oa.”, I warned him, “Before you run your mouth to me next, Darkseid did not lay a finger on me when I killed him. How do you think you will fare?”
Opening his mouth to give me a snarky remark, Guy quickly closed his mouth and continued on like nothing happened. Realizing that Guy was not going to say anything, his colleagues were left in disbelief as no one had managed to shut him up before.
“Nice one!”, Ciri and Power Girl whispered with smirks on their faces.
“I am going to dig through the database here and see what I can find.”, I informed the team, “Let me know if you need access to places in the depot.”
With that, I began the tedious process of scouring through the brontobytes of data Brainiac had accrued over his lifetime. Hoping to stumble across more recent backups of his Omniversal Travels anything I could find would help narrow my search radius greatly.
“...ugh…my head is killing me…”, Aultcray groaned as he opened his eyes and looked around, “What is this place?”
“Sweetheart you are in our bed chambers.”, Mirellia said drawing his attention to her as she held his hand tightly, “Other than your headache, do you feel pain anywhere else?”
Taking a second to process what he was seeing, Aultcray blinked several times in quick succession horrified by what he saw. Sitting up in bed immediately he reached over and grabbed her shoulders tightly.
“Dear Lord, please do not tell me those bastards got you too!”, Aultcray swore as a scowl formed on his face, “I swear I will make them pay dearly for laying their hands on my beloved wife!”
“Dear it is alright, we are not dead.”, Mirellia laughed as tears of relief ran down her cheek, “Cole found a method for fixing your soul, you are among the living again. Not only that, our baby girl Malty is with us again. Medea’s vile claws are no longer sunk into our daughter’s soul!”
Releasing her shoulders, he turned around and saw my family and I standing there. Giving him a firm nod, I told him that he could take better care of his family than I ever could. Leaping into his arms Mirellia held him tightly as he returned his attention to his wife. Realizing that things could go from zero to a hundred really quickly now, we excused ourselves and headed home for the day.
—Two Days Later—
Helping the League out for the next few days, Ciri and I helped make serious progress in rebuilding their Earth. Introducing Ciri and others to Building Restoration Magic, something I developed myself, structures were being reconstructed in minutes instead of months. Getting them well on their way to normality again I broached the elephant in the room with them as we had to get moving on it.
“We need to begin focusing our attention on the Brainiac and Eridin problem.”, I spoke up at the morning League meeting, “Based on what the telemetry I got from Constantine’s spell and Power Girl’s mission log, Brainiac’s base is somewhere in this Asteroid Field.”
Pulling up the same star map I used several days prior, I highlighted the area in question. Wanting to track down Eredin and the Wild Hunt as quickly as possible, our best lead was Brainiac’s Base. If we could lock onto his ship’s unique energy pattern, tracking it across the Omniverse would be substantially easier.
“I can take you out there.”, Power Girl offered rising from her seat.
“You sure, Kara?”, Superman inquired with a worried look, “You should not push yourself too hard after enduring what you did on Apokolips.”
“I am fine, Kal.”, she assured him with a grateful smile, “I want to help bring this to an end as quickly as possible. It is my fault for not properly surveying the asteroid field to begin with. Even though I was not the one who teleported the Wild Hunt there, it is still partially my fault.”
“How many bloody times must I say sorry for everyone to let it go?!”, Constantine shouted slamming his Irish Coffee onto the table.
“Probably till you stop getting riled up about it.”, Zatana snickered, “No one here blames either of you for this, these things just happen.”
Muttering a few choice curse words under his breath, Constantine took another sip of coffee and cooled off. Wanting to speed things up before something bad happened, Green Arrow chimed in to move things along.
“So what exactly are you expecting to find out there?”, Green Arrow asked out of curiosity, “When he showed up, he brought his main ship and the Wild Hunt with him. There should not be much left out there for you to find except maybe an ion trail leading back to Earth.”
“You are not looking for traces of his ship or him out there, are you?”, Batman said already having his own ideas in mind.
Nodding my head in response, I gave them my theory on the asteroid field.
“The nearest celestial body is several hundred light years away, and the nearest inhabited one is further still. Based on the information I have available, this asteroid field should not exist at this location…someone relocated them to provide cover for something.”, I stated, “My suspicion is that Brainiac created this artificial asteroid field to hide a storage depot. I know for a fact that he makes regular backups of himself in the event his body was to be destroyed. He has had far too many close calls with the League and other races to not have backups in place for himself.”
“That would explain how he is able to quickly recover after engaging us.”, Martian Manhunter agreed, “How many backups does he have?”
“Do you really want that answer?”, I inquired.
“Yes.”, Superman answered for him.
“There are more copies of him out there than there are members in the combined Lantern Corps.”, I responded, “That said, in several thousand years he will not be the menace you know him as today. He will be a full-fledged member of the JLA, have changed from a mechanical being to a biological one, and have normal emotions. By that point, he will have gone through so many revisions that you would never recognize him if not for the Brainiac symbol on his forehead. His reasoning for joining the League will be to atone for the crimes he commits during this time period.”
After finishing what I had to say, I looked around to see everyone’s reactions. As expected, everyone was stunned to hear that Brainiac would eventually become a Hero. I was not entirely sure what made Brainiac change, but I suspected it was something he found out there among the stars.
“Believe it when I see it.”, Green Arrow laughed, “Anyways I do agree with your assessment that it is artificially made. We should send a team out there to investigate instead of having three of you go out alone. Once you get what you need, the team can do a more in-depth review to hopefully locate other storage depots out there.”
“I will go along with them.”, Wonder Woman volunteered.
“Same, if there are that many backups out there the Green Lantern Corps needs to know what to look for.”, Green Lantern said, “I will arrange for additional assets to meet us there.”
—Asteroid Field—
Teleporting us to our destination after the meeting, several Lanterns were already on site searching for the depot. Seeing several faces I recognized among them, one of the most annoying members was with them…Guy Gardner.
“Took your sweet time getting out here.”, Guy snickered, “Hey Ciri, how have you been?”
“Doing good Guy, glad to see you are doing well.”, Ciri replied with a cramped expression, “Any luck finding the depot?”
“You guys showed up right as we found it.”, Kilowog said flying over to share the good news, “We are having some problems getting into it though, the system is secured with Quantum Passkey. Our rings do not have the processing power to breach the security.”
“Show me.”, I requested.
Guiding us over to the depot, several Lanterns pulled it out of the asteroid field to work on it easier. As we drew near I stepped out of Hal’s shielding and zipped into the depot’s computer systems. Severing remote access to the site first I quickly assumed control of the depot and opened the doors for them. Kicking on the lights so they could see the full size of this place, most of them were left speechless.
“How is this possible?”, Guy asked doing a double take, “The space in here is probably five times greater than the asteroid’s size.”
“Clearly you slept through several of our morning briefings…”, Kilowog sighed, “Many races in the cosmos have this technology, it does not surprise me Brainiac does. Be mindful not to touch any buttons, if the field collapses while we are inside we will all die.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever.”, Guy remarked shooting off toward the entrance.
Slamming the door in his face, Guy ran right into it with a loud bang. Howling in pain as he rubbed his face vigorously I reopened the door for everyone to come in.
“Watch your tone hotshot, if I feel like you are a liability I will send your ass back to Oa.”, I warned him, “Before you run your mouth to me next, Darkseid did not lay a finger on me when I killed him. How do you think you will fare?”
Opening his mouth to give me a snarky remark, Guy quickly closed his mouth and continued on like nothing happened. Realizing that Guy was not going to say anything, his colleagues were left in disbelief as no one had managed to shut him up before.
“Nice one!”, Ciri and Power Girl whispered with smirks on their faces.
“I am going to dig through the database here and see what I can find.”, I informed the team, “Let me know if you need access to places in the depot.”
With that, I began the tedious process of scouring through the brontobytes of data Brainiac had accrued over his lifetime. Hoping to stumble across more recent backups of his Omniversal Travels anything I could find would help narrow my search radius greatly.
