Brainiac 5/Reboot
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Contents
Biography
Birth
At the moment of his birth, Brainiac 5 experienced what would be his last truly happy memory before his Legion membership: his mother holding him, for what would be the first and only time, before she realised she didn't care about him, like everything else she had done. She summarily left Colu immediately afterward, and the scandal resulted in all records of her being purged.
From childhood onwards, he was forever impatient and superior, babysat by robots while politicans planned to use him to their own ends - robots which he would take apart to study. At night, bored by the Sleepnet, he would lie awake, thinking of the mother whose face he could not remember.
At the age of eleven, he would reach what the Coluans decided was the final straw - he was undertaking an unapproved energy experiment, when his overseers discovered this and intervened. Despite his warnings, they had their robot guards pull him away and attempted to shut it down, despite his warnings, leading to the death of one of them and the explosion of the experimenting chamber - albeit high above Colu after the survivor belatedly allowed him to shut it down as safely as he then could.
They then "donated" him to Brande Industries to be rid of him. Eight months, five laboratories and a seven-figure repair bill later, even R.J. Brande had to admit he couldn't afford him, and found him an internship at the Time Institute's training centre on Talus alongside Rond Vidar.
Legion
There, a few years later, he would receive his Legion draft notice - and promptly ignored it, slapping it into his mounting pile of unread correspondence. His absence was only noticed after Kid Quantum's death, and Brande needed to make at least two calls to him to finally have him report.
Even when Brainy had relocated to Legion Headquarters, he spent his first day there locked up in his lab, ignoring his teammates. Invisible Kid and Cosmic Boy even thought he was a lab technician at first! Due to this, he was left behind when the team went to the Moon to save Leland McCauley from Mano. However, Brainy still played a vital part in Mano's defeat; Invisible Kid called him up in the middle of an experiment, and Brainy figured out that Mano was just waiting for his power to charge itself to high enough levels to destroy the whole Moon. This spurred the team to locate Mano and efeat him.
Rivalry
Lyle's interrupting of Brainy's experiment was not without consequences. Brainy had inadvertently created a floating metal because of the interruption, and was going to discard it when Lyle saw its potential - he used it to create the Legion flight rings, which allowed the Legionnaires to communicate with one another and to, of course, fly. This earned Lyle the admiration of his teammates - and Brainy's jealousy. This professional rivalry would come into play on Planet Hell, where it was Lyle who figured out how to repair the forcefield that kept the prison planet from being destroyed despite being located inside the Sun. However, Brainy's superior intellect would still serve the Legion many times, most notably by recreating his ancestor Vril Dox's anti-lead serum for Andromeda when she had been poisoned by the White Triangle. At first, Brainy refused to give it to her because he wanted her to admit his race was superior; when she wouldn't, he told her to look him in the eye and state that his race was inferior. Andromeda not only wouldn't, but couldn't say this, and Brainy gave her the serum.
Brainy's intellect would play a big role again when the White Triangle ravaged Earth. Brainy built a miniature stargate, and when Saturn Girl telepathically lured the Daxamites to Legion HQ, Brainy activated it just as Jan Arrah transmuted the tarnium needed to make the Stargate work. They had saved Earth from the Daxamites.
Time Travel
Their victory was marred, though, by Andromeda's supposed death. Brainy was heartbroken, as he had developed a crush on Andromeda. He started to seclude himself in his lab, despite Cosmic Boy's frequent summons. Unbeknownst to anyone, though, Brainy had developed a working time machine, which he used to visit Guy Gardner's bar in the 20th century. When Saturn Girl sensed Valor in the Phantom Zone, Brainy was able to contact him for a limited time, and learned that he had been sent their by Superboy in the 20th century. A group of Legionnaires then traveled there to enlist Superboy's aid in freeing Valor.
Brainy and Superboy did not get along well at all, and an insult by Brainy caused Superboy to attack him telekinetically. This caused Brainy to develop a forcefield belt for his own protection.
After Valor had been freed, Brainy sent Superboy back top the 20th century and tried to track XS down, since she had been lost in the timestream on their first trip. However, he himself was trapped when the villain Chronos destroyed the time machine. Despite Invisible Kid's efforts, the time machine was beyond repair.
Imprisonment
At least, it was until Brainy's old colleague Rind Vidar was able to tap into the timestream again. With aid from Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lori Morning, they were able to push Chronos into the timestream, merging him and Brainy. Brainy was then able to use Chronos' costume to send the villain back to the 20th century and return himself to the 30th. His freedom was shortlived, however, when Science Police sent by President Chu arrived to arrest him for unauthorizewd time travel.
Unknowingly, the development of the time machine also spurred Chu to destroy the Legion, as she was afraid they could use time travel to undo all her political machinations. This led directly to the Sun Eater hoax, the brainwashing of Jan Arrah, the framing of Winema Wazzo and the formation of the Fatal Five.
Brainy, though, did not really mind imprisonment, as this allowed him to think without any distractions. When the warden brought in renegade telepath Nara Minsork to retrieve the time travel secrets from Brainy's mind, she was bounced out by his superior mental control. She then used forbidden technology to empower herself and reenter Brainy's mind, though this carried the risk of permanent mental shutdown to him. She found out that Brainy was motivated to build the time machine not to undo Andromeda's apparent death, but to see his mother;s face again - a memory that Brainy had unknowingly suppressed. Brainy, though, sent Nara out of his mind again, without the knowledge she had gained.
Pardon
When the Fatal Five attacked the Legion, Violet went to borrow Brainy's forcefield belt so she could enter Tharok's body safely and shut him down. Brainy told her the belt was too complex for her to use, and deactivated his own cell by figuring out its security code! He saved Invisible Kid in battle, but his arrogance caused him to fall to the Persuader. When the Legion regrouped later, Brainy was part of the group which exposed President Chu to the whole United Plantes. He would then be pardoned by RJ Brande when the latter became president, and rejoin the Legion.
Andromeda, though, would decide to leave. When she told Brainy about her decision, knowing that he had a crush on her, she was stunned when all he said was that it was a good thing M'Onel could replace her powers. She stomped off angrily after that.
Brainy would later almost quit the Legion when he felt that they were relying almost entirely on his intellect, leaving him little time for his own pursuits. Only a few promises, including the hiring of Dr. Gym'll by Violet to act as physician, did he consent to staying. Out of gratitude for his increased lab time, he would build Violet a special present - only to find that the Emerald Eye had granted his fondest wish by making everybody around him unable to notice his presence!
Team 20
Brainy was one of the Legionnaires who was stranded in the 20th century following the Emerald Eye's possession of Violet. He would be instrumental in coming up with the plan to save Earth from the Sun-Eater, but he would chafe at the lack of technology with which he could build a working time machine to return the team to the future. During this time, Brainy would also butt heads with Gates, but oddly enough, would start building friendships with Spark and Impulse, of all people! He would also be adopted by Koko, a white lab monkey which the team accidentally freed from STAR Labs.
Brainy would then put together a Legion omnicom, a Metal Man responsometer and a Mother Box from the Gods of New Genesis to create COMPUTO, a powerful living computer. COMPUTO would serve Brainy well at first, even creating a time portal fior the Legion to return home with but a thought! However, when the Metal Men Iron and Platinum insisted that Brainy deactivate COMPUTO and return the responsometer, COMPUTO was angered by what it saw as abuse and attacked the Legion.
Brainy was able to come up with a plan to stop COMPUTO, and with the help of the Justice League, Impulse, Superboy, Robin and the Legionnaires from the 30th century, they were successful and able to finally return home.
Upgrade
Shortly after their return, though, Brainy was part of the team which investigated a strange space-time anomaly which M'Onel and Andromeda, now a nun, had disappeared into. There, brainy was transformed physically and emotionally; his skin color changed, his forcefield became internalized, nad he became much more friendly and sociable! He even became good friends with Gates. However, this was threatened during the Dark Circle crisis.
During the Crisis, Brainy returned to Colu and made peace with the Coluans by showing how he had matured. He also convinced them not to join the Affiliated Planets. In gratitude for this, the Coluans showed Brainy a picture of his mother, and even summoned him when she had returned to Colu! Brainy was looking forward to a happy reunion with her when she attempted to kill him, and he was saved only by the intervention of Gates, Spark and Live Wire. This trauma caused Brainy to withdraw into his former cold state, but Gates talked him out of it.
Blight
Brainy was part of an away team, including Cosmic Boy, Apparition and Monstress, which had investigated a freighter hijacking in space. They found that it had been boarded by a robot who had come to retrieve the robots which had been used as ballast on the ship. Oddly enough, the robot had identified Brainy as a Brainiac and a "hated of Colu", and has tried to kill him. Brainy was left wondering how the robot could have known him.
He wouldn't be able to wonder long, though. The team found that the Stargate network had been shut down, and it took them a month to reach Earth. They returned to find it taken over by the Blight. The foursome regrouped with Chameleon, XS and Saturn Girl and were able to infiltrate the Blight's base and destroy them freeing Earth.
Lost
After the Great Rift Disaster, Brainiac 5.1 was one of the Legionnaires thrown through the Rift itself, and thus trapped in the Second Galaxy for a time.
During this time, he felt under great stress, as his teammates all believed he could devise a way of getting them home, in addition to all the other responsibilities forced upon him by their circumstances. As he eventually confessed to Saturn Girl however, he didn't have a clue how to get them home - or even where "home" was, relative to their location. In the same conversation, he also complained that he'd "always hated [his] name upgrade," and on the way out, as well as reassuring him, she made a point of redubbing him "Brainiac Five," and he dropped the ".1" from his name thereafter. Eventually, using his teammate Shikari's tracking skills and an interdimensional doorway they'd earlier found but been forced to leave, he did get them home.
Son
Brainy continued to be active in the Legion, providing Invisible Kid and Gear with the blueprints for the interdimensional doorway, that had brought them home. This technology would be recreated on legion World and called Threshold. He was also part of the team which rescued Gates and delayed Ra's al Ghul long enough for the other Legionnaires to stop his terraforming of the Moon.
Brainy nominated himself for Legion leader, and was noticeably miffed when he lost to Kid Quantum II. He, Shvaughn Erin and Kinetix were trapped on Earth, though, when Robotica invaded, and he was captured to find that Robotica's leader was COMPUTO! COMPUTO had apparently been reactivated centuries ago, and had lived on the edge of the galaxy all this time, gathering robot life into an army to destroy all humans. COMPUTO had gone to Earth to "hijack" the evolutionary process that Ra's al Ghul had started, and Brainy helped him to the dismay of his fellow Legionnaires. However, Brainy knew that COMPUTO would become peaceful after it evolved, and so the Robotican threat was defused.
Brainy also built the Threshold that Shikari and Sensor used to retrieve Karate Kid and Ferro from Steeple, which had been cut off form the galaxy due to a nearby black hole.
Powers and abilites
Brainiac 5 possesses a "twelfth-level" intellect, placing him well beyond double the intellect of humans. This manifests himself partially as twelve parallel thought-tracks, meaning he can concentrate on multiple topics at once, or bear an even greater level of intellect on a single problem.
After his "upgrade" by the Anomaly, his force-field apparatus was bonded to him, allowing him to control and shape it mentally.
