Kid ran into trouble. The cables inside Brainiac's ship could regenerate. When he plucked the "fruit," the cables on top of the miniature city domes hadn't been fully cleared. They grew back at frightening speed, wrapping around Kid.
'Tentacle play, really?' Kid grumbled in his head, watching the writhing cables. These cords constantly carried the knowledge extracted from the miniature cities, and now they were searching for the storage terminal.
On the outskirts of Metropolis, Kid and the cables were caught in a game of cat and mouse. The cords lashed at him like mad, their numbers multiplying nonstop. Unless they found the terminal, they wouldn't stop.
'This is bad,' Kid thought as more and more cables surged forward. 'What now? I've done it again—got myself into trouble.'
"They're looking for the knowledge storage unit."
Kid looked up to see Kara in her red cape. "So what do we do?"
"I'll go into Brainiac's ship and find one for you."
"Looks like you've stepped out of the shadows."
"I'm no longer just an ordinary Kryptonian girl. I'm Supergirl." Kara had thought it through back on the space station. She couldn't let Krypton's tragedy repeat on Earth. "I'll stop Brainiac."
She broke the sound barrier, vanishing into the sky.
Liu A'dou turned back to the data cables. He couldn't let them keep multiplying. He had to stabilize them somehow, or the entire area would be destroyed before the storage unit arrived.
He summoned the ring's power again. Kid conjured countless interfaces and, with quick thinking, came up with a solution. He created temporary storage units. Once the cables linked to them, they stopped spawning more, stabilizing for the moment. That bought time. The battlefield, though, was Superman's problem now. Kid had been planning to fight Brainiac, but—
"Superman."
"Kid, where are you? Brainiac's sent every robot to hunt you down."
"I'm fine, Superman. Just remember Brainiac's weakness—he only processes simple, uniform data. Throw him into a complex environment, and he won't handle it."
There was no time to ask how Kid knew that. "Thanks." Superman rushed back into battle.
Kid, meanwhile, felt no guilt about slacking off. The sky was so blue, the clouds so white. If not for the sounds of explosions in the distance, it would have been perfect. He decided not to worry. In the original story, Superman and Supergirl defeated Brainiac together. Now they had Batman helping too, plus Kid already knew Brainiac's weakness. This fight? It'd be wrapped up in minutes.
"Kid, oh Kid, no stage time for you today." He grinned. "Fine by me. Violence isn't good anyway."
While his thoughts drifted, Superman and Brainiac blasted into the distance.
Not long after, Kara returned. She wasn't carrying something—she was hauling the entire ship.
"I couldn't find the storage unit, so I just brought the whole ship," Kara said. Impossible to argue with that logic.
"Then let's reconnect these cables to the ship. My ring's temporary storage is about to overflow."
The knowledge inside was massive. Still, compared to the knowledge stored in Liu A'dou's Pandora's Magic Box, it wasn't as vast. But within Brainiac's storage unit, Liu A'dou discovered something special—formulas for organizing knowledge.
Brainiac's collections were vast and messy. While categorizing them, he had found a pattern, dividing the steps of knowledge development into major categories. From their interconnections, he'd created a formula linking all knowledge together.
Good stuff. Liu A'dou had always struggled with the mess of knowledge crammed into his head, never knowing how to organize it. Now he finally had a way. Even knowledge that seemed unrelated could be linked together.
It was like having blueprints for a flashlight but no battery. With this method, Liu A'dou could toss out the idea of a standard battery and swap in something wild—like an orange—as the power source.
The connections between different technologies appeared instantly. He realized much of the knowledge in his mind could substitute for other things. Say you wanted to build a Gundam. If you didn't have a nuclear reactor backpack, you could use a diesel engine instead. Why not a Gundam puffing black smoke? Or if you didn't have neural-wave controls, you could replace them with motion capture techniques.
The key was weaving different knowledge systems together organically.
"Now we can start removing the miniature cities." Seeing Kara searching for Kandor among the collection, he reminded her, "Make sure you take them completely. Don't leave any cables behind."
Kandor, Krypton's capital, had vanished for 40 years. Now, at last, it returned to the hands of Kryptonians.
Kara found her home city among the glass domes. She cradled Kandor in her arms, tears dripping onto the surface. This was her homeland, a piece of the place she remembered, the city where she spent her childhood vacations. So different from Earth, yet full of her memories.
Touched by the sight, Kid didn't disturb her. "Superman, how's it going on your end?"
"I've got him pinned down. Right now Brainiac is being overwhelmed by data overload." Superman had dragged Brainiac into a swamp, where bacteria, buzzing insects, flowers, swaying trees, sounds, scents, and colors all clashed together. The flood of natural data dwarfed anything a city could contain. Endless combinations and variations—add one detail, subtract another, and it became something new. Brainiac, who had always extracted only pure, isolated knowledge, had never faced this.
Superman even played dirty, dragging him deeper into the muck. The swamp's bacteria and viruses alone were enough to make Brainiac flinch. Add in the wild flood of creatures and plants, and the natural chaos poured into his mind. He couldn't separate or filter any of it.
"You've never dealt with something like this, have you?" Superman punched Brainiac squarely.
The ports on his body began to crack. His brain temperature climbed. In an environment like this, Brainiac couldn't stop the inflow of data. If he hadn't merged with a biological host, his artificial mind wouldn't have been so vulnerable to input through the five senses.
"Brainiac, welcome to the real world."
His heavily modified body still let him see and hear everything at once. But now even the sound of cars outside the swamp and the shouting of humans bled into his ears. Microbes, viruses, and bacteria danced across his body in a chaotic, living performance.
"No! Get away! Don't come near me!" Brainiac screamed in pain, smoke curling from his head.
Crack! Crack! Ports shattered across his skull, collarbone, and arms. His processors were overloading. He collapsed against a mossy tree, his whole body trembling as tactile input surged uncontrollably. "Enough… enough!" His processors couldn't keep up. His brain was on the verge of explosion, yet the flood of raw sensory data kept pouring in, drowning him.
With one last puff of smoke, the Civilization Raider—the artificial intelligence known as Brainiac—crashed, undone by Earth's natural world.