Dexter, Boy Genius vs Milton Fine Brainiac

 

30 years ago, Cartoon Network released its first original full length cartoon, the first cartoon cartoon, about an insufferable genius hero Dexter, the boy genius. 

Also owned by Warner Bros, during the 1990s, DC reimagined a lot of its classic characters after the Crisis on Infinite Earths including Brainiac, introducing the Milton Fine version of Brainiac, an insufferable genius villain.

I imagine you see where I'm going... what if the two arrogant geniuses of Warner Bros in the 1990s crossed paths, one for good, one for evil, both to prove they're smarter?

I'm going to compare them in a ton of categories before going into their various abilities:

Power:

Dexter much like many of the other characters in the Cartoon Network Multiverse has the advantage of circumstantial extreme super stats from toonforce. One of the most extreme examples are when he briefly resisted the pull of a Black Hole

While they didn't ever enter into the Black Hole and it's contextually treated as a threat to them, it is notable Dexter can resist its pull despite it being able to pull an entire ocean quickly. Also of note is that the Black Hole explodes despite Dexter and his sister Dee Dee remaining seemingly unharmed at close range

With Dexter having a height of 61 cm, and the Black Hole being about 8.7 times his height, the Black would have a size of about 5.3 meters, with Black Holes of such size having a mass around 600 times that of the Earth's which would have been violently ejected omnidirectionally in the explosion. 

This is consistent with another feat in the comics when Dexter pulled two planetary scale asteroids at high speeds to squish a sponge the scale of the planet with Dee Dee on top of it, seemingly unharmed from the impact

While I'd love to calc this, the timeframe is unknown. While Dee Dee is much smaller and would only withstand a portion of the kinetic energy, the kinetic energy of two planetary scale asteroids smashing together at high speeds would likely confer planetary kinetic energy.

This is also consistent as well as a show feat of him withstanding an explosion that shook the planet

This would suggest that Dexter's toonforce allows his physical power to be in the planetary+ to large planetary range

Dexter amplifies his power by his inventions. The Dex-Transformer is a robotic armor meant to enhance his physical capacities

A later model or upgrade Dexter refers to as the "Exo-Jock 9000" Dexter states multiplies the wielder's physical capabilities 100-fold. 

Superior to this is his main battle mecha is the Robo-Dexo 2000. In the recent crossover Crisis on Infinite Mirths, this mecha is able to harm Cindy and her mech which was previously being a threat to the Powerpuff Girls

The Powerpuff Girls are treated as Kryptonian-like Superheroes with multiple feats and scaling into the stellar range, most notably regularly defeating the Devil-like Figure HIM who can maintain a dimension with a star and orbiting planet

If there's a similar Earth-Sun distance, this would be a distance of nearly 150 million kilometers, arguably 300 million kilometers considering it would likely have the space for the planet to orbit such. With Rigel, a large star having a diameter in the range of 100-110 million kilometers, this would qualify as a Large Star level feat. This is consistent with Him having another casual Small Star level feat of telekinetically moving the Earth at relativistic speeds and the Powerpuff Girls being able to easily beat the Superfriends villains with the Superfriends able to withstand being within a Black Hole in the Episode "The World's Deadliest Game." For most black holes in the universe, this would be casually a stellar to large stellar feat. 

However even this are below Dexter's two greatest inventions: Monkey and the Multi-Forming Megabot. Monkey is a superpowers amped Monkey Dexter is unaware he gave powers. Monkey when confronted with the cosmic entity Barbequor was able to cause the cosmic giant to eject the Solar System, bringing it back to its proper place at speeds massively faster then lights

This is a very obvious Solar System level feat, but Monkey would be surpassed by Dexter's ultimate robot, the Multi-Forming Mega Bot normally requiring four operators. When the monster Badaxtra was released, able to defeat even Earth's protectors, Monkey and the Justice Friends, The Mega Bot battled the Kaiju, overcoming it 

This was until Dexter's rival Mandark foolishly powered up the monster in his arrogance. Fortunately even the amped Badaxtra was overcome by the combined effort of the Mega Bot and Monkey. 

As such we have the general power scale for Dexter:

Normally: Planetary+ to Large Planetary

Combat Mecha like the Robo-Dexo 2000: Large Star Level

Strongest Inventions: Star System Level

As for Fine-iac his power level also varies. 

Milton Fine was a normal human physically until amped by Bionic Enhancements

Fine-iac's personal feats with it are mostly just in the wall level range

However it is stated to make him stronger then any normal human or Coluan. The Coluans are a species with superintelligence, but relative physical stats to humans. With that said the strongest normal humans in the DC Universe have a ton of feats in the range of tons of TNT

However Fine-iac can amplify his physical stats with his psychic power to the extent of being able to fight early Post-Crisis Superman

This early Superman was able to survive the implosion of a Sun-Eaters, alien entities the size of nebulas that consume stars

and was resurrected after his fight with Doomsday after Eradicator had sacrificed its energies to restore him, giving Superman his power. This Eradicator was strong enough to turn Earth's Yellow Sun into a Red Star like Krypton's

Using just scaling from Superman characters, Fine-iac's psychic power would likely be in the Star to Large Star Level range. This is made more consistent with scaling to other DC Characters. For instance, Fine-iac's psychic power was strong enough to knock out numerous new gods including Orion and Lightray

While weaker on Earth then they are in the Godsphere, Lightray was able to easily create a giant new Sun while fleeing the Black Racer

with Orion being stronger then Lightray substantially. and Fine-iac considering Brainiac thought Fine's psychic power could be used to conquer the universe and Superman's own performance against them, should also scale to at least most members of the Green Lantern Corps whose Rings' automatically protect them from things like suprenova and Black Holes

More impressive then this, Fine-iac built a version of Brainaic's infamous skull-ship, the legendarily durable ship that Brainiac uses for safe travel

This Skull Ship is so durable that at the time even numerous of the Justice League's heaviest hitters attacking at once could barely scratch the thing

So comparing the two in power, if this was just a fist fight, Dexter without tech and Fine-iac without psychic powers, Dexter would stomp. Even if you think his toonforce can vary, some of the lighter toonforce feats in Dexter's Lab include Dee Dee smashing large sections of Dexter's lab, which are superior to Fine-iac. 

When you include their main tools though, Dexter's technology and Fine-iac's psychic power, the two become far more relative, both rising to the large stellar range, Even if you include their strongest tech, the Mega Bot and the Skull Ship, they would still be fairly relative in the general Star System range. Personally it seems to me that Fine-iac's psychic power is a bit higher into Large Star then the Robo-Dexo 2000 and the Mega Bot is a bit further into Star System then the Skull Ship just based on the feats they have, but they're close enough that there is some relativity. 

Speed:

In terms of speed Dexter and Dee Dee have a number of laser-timing feats that would scale to their movement speed such as Dee Dee visually reacting to a laser that is clearly lightspeed and using Dexter's glasses to redirect it

as well as a couple other superspeed feats of that nature such as running from the Moon after it started crushing into his Lab at relativistic speeds.

Beyond that Dexter's creations and his reaction speeds are MFTL. He scales to the Powerpuff Girls via the same Crisis on Infinite Mirths scaling, with the Powerpuff Girls one stopping an exponential swarm of Nanobots across the entire city of Townsville

This is a feat that has been calced to 230 trillion c quite conservatively, and is consistent with other general Cartoon Network feats of characters traveling galactic distances in relatively short time, including in Dexter's lab. 

Fine-iac was able to use his telekinetic powers to levitate himself with such speed that he could at least temporarily evade the Byrne Era Superman

Byrne Era Superman was the beginning of Post-Crisis, but this Supeman was still able to fly at lightspeed

Brainiac's super-brain also processes information incredibly fast and can allow him to react things much faster then him. He was able to react to Wally West running towards at him

During this time Wally West was holding back his full speed afraid of accidentally running into the speedforce like his mentor Barry Allen did but he was still the fastest member of the Justice League including Green Lantern, Green Lanterns having to regularly patrol a sector of space and able to cross the universe in 10 hours

Requiring speeds of 96 quadrillion times the speed of light

Dexter and Fine-iac are relatively similar in speeds, both movement and reaction speeds. Dexter might have a bit of an advantage in movement speed, and Fine-iac might have a bit of an advantage in reaction speed, but the two should be fairly relative. 

Endurance:

Dexter's toonforce also effects his endurance. A Future Dexter has dug for literal years straight

This should likely scale to the Present Dexter especially as this started with his relatively meek and spineless young adult self. 

Dexter also has enough pain resistance that being reduced to literal ash doesn't seem to draw any particular pain from him. 

The Milton Fine Brainiac has some decently impressive endurance feats for a human such as taking a beatdown from two relative Coluans including his equal Brainiac 5 and strikes to the head

That said in terms of endurance, Dexter easily has greater stamina and pain tolerance then Fine-iac. 

Range:

In terms of range, Dexter has many inventions that can affect the entire planet or other celestial sized bodies such as the Robo-Dexo 2000 destroying a planetoid sized asteroid. 

His highest feat of conventional range is likely his tractor beam able to draw in giant asteroids to squish the planetary sized sponge

Assuming these came from the Asteroid Belt, that would mean he's drawing them from a distance of between 320-480 million kilometers away, which is essentially size of Large Stars. 

However Fine-iac pretty easily has that beat. Even early on he was able to sense Superman when Superman was in deep space and later after he became stronger on he was able to telepathically mess with Superman while Superman was on Earth and Fine-iac was on New Genesis in the fourth world universe

If the fight gets to far enough range, only one will know where the other is and be able to affect their eenmy, and it's Fine-iac. 

Intelligence:

Finally, let's go over the big one for both of them. Their intelligence. Both are hyper-genius characters known for their intelligence and with plenty of lower end feats. Going over some of their more impressive ones though

Dexter is called "the most intelligent mind in the universe" in Go Dexter's Family Go. Dexter has ended all war, repaired the ozone layer, solved world hunger, proved existence of life on other planets and made a bowling alley in half hour when motivated by the false belief he was dying. Even when civilized was destroyed, Dexter restored civilization to a utopia of perfect peace, harmony, and wisdom via the transmission of his hyper-genius intellect

In the episode "Backfire" Dexter scientifically causes his father's car to simultaneously exist in infinite universes at the same time, a Type 5 civilization tier feat of scientific knowledge. Dexter is also broadly considered one on if not the smartest characters in the Cartoon Network Multiverse. The official CN Activity Game Pack with character cards lists Dexter as having the highest intelligence with a score of 96 albeit the stats assigned by that game are very strange in places. Still he very likely has more intelligence superior to the average Nood, a metafictional multiversal civilization that watches over all the Cartoon Network Realities from CN City

Despite being a Multiversal civilization, Dexter's intelligence is likely higher  then at least some of the Noods.

Dexter's knowledge also extends into multiple different fields. He was able to defeat the entire US Army by himself, is a master of over 112 martial arts, and was able to fight and match the Ultrabots, enemies that even gave the highly superhumanly skilled Samurai Jack some difficulty in skill

Dexter has also shown proficiency in stealth, manipulation and his signature dance, The Robot.

Fine-iac is the Post Vril Dox possessing the Human Psychic Milton Fine so all of that Vril Dox's intelligence feats apply. All versions of Brainiac are all among the smartest minds in the multiverse. Brainiac is a 12th level intellect, far above even the Average Coluan 8th Level intellect equal to Kryptonians another species of 8th Level Intellects. Superman has described Brainiac as the single most intelligent being in the universe

He has built machines capable of wiping out the universe, can literally predict the future via sheer intelligence, and built a ship that let him leave Creation itself into the void, escaping from the New 52 Continuity Retcon and becoming the God Machine.

 Brainiac has outwit the New Gods, a conceptual Type 5 civilization outside the Multiverse watching over it. When the telepath Saturn Girl read Brainiac's mind, she described it as infinite data

As for who's smarter, it's difficult. Both have invented Type 5 technology and have feats scaling them to the members of a Type 5 civilization, both ae considered the smartest in their universe and one of the smartest in their multiverse. I think Brainiac has higher information processing, but Dexter has a more well rounded intellect having much greater feats of combat skill and manipulation. If I had to say one was smarter though, I'd say Brainiac has an overall higher average intelligence. The DCU has multiple other intelligences I would say are are Type 5 like Batman and Lex and these are only considered 9th Level Intelligences, which Brainiac is multiple layers beyond. While Dexter's Lab universe contains entire countries of Type 3 intellects, Type 5 scaling seems extraordinarily rare usually just the few that can contend with Dexter specifically. The New Gods also seem generally more intelligent then the Noods and Brainiac scales to them more confidently then Dexter does to the Noods. Dexter's intellect is probably more comparable to Batman or Lex Luthor the smartest humans of the DCU which means Brainiac would be smarter in general intelligence, albeit Dexter does have him beat in specific areas like manipulation and combat skill. 

So from here I wanna go into both sides potential win cons and what the other side could do to get past that

Dexter's Wincons:

So the most obvious win con, can Dexter just beat down Fine-iac either at melee 

or at range with something like his flamethrower or a laser

However, it would be very difficult. So long as he is conscious, Fine-iac would have his telekinetic barrier up, a barrier Superman didn't even think he could get through

This means it would tank anything from Base Dexter, even enhanced 100 fold. The Robo-Dexo might be able to knock him back but one again if it's around early Post-Crisis Superman, Superman thought he couldn't break Fine-iac's shield meaning it would be at least hard for him to break his shield. If Dexter used Monkey or the Megabot he could likely defeat it but those are far from things Dexter uses soon and Fine-iac could retreat to his Skull Ship which would be touch for even them to break. 

There is another potential problem with this plan which is that Fine-iac is technically Vril Dox's mind possessing the body of the human Psychic Milton Fine. The True Vril Dox is a mental plane entity meaning physical force normally couldn't kill him. 

However this may not be a problem for Dexter as toonforce often allows physical interaction with non-physical objects. Not only was Dexter able to plunge Dee Dee's soul but he was able to physically interact with metafictional objects like The End title and the film he's in

Brainiac's nature is most similar to the imaginary people of the land of Koos which Dexter can interact with so long as he believes he can, suggesting he may be able to beat down Brainiac's mental self, so long as he can get past Milton Fine's telekinetic barrier, though that is really the trouble. 

Fine-iac's barrier in general is a trouble for Dexter. Dexter trying to freeze Fine-iac or transmute him as he did to turn the entire Earth into a potato would be effective, the latter especially as Brainiac couldn't escape the robotic body he built for himself because it was an inanimate object. The problem is both
Dexter's freezing and transmutation are blasts that would likely get repelled by Fine-iac's telekinetic barrier. 

Dexter has a memory erasing ray 

but even if those would get past Fine's forcefield which I don't think it would, Fine-iac would resist this as Brainiac has unconventional resistance to mind manipulation. Because the data contained in his brain is so vast, attempts to affect it are difficult with a Coluan Thought Prison meant to render even Coluans mindless, reducing but not fully rendering Brainiac unconscious and with him eventually escaping

The trick for Dexter to win would definitely be finding something that can get past Fine's telekinetic shield. 

Dexter does have the Hypnosis Pen where Dexter writes down a person and a task and compels them to perform the action

Would this work? Fine-iac was about to endure a psychic assault from the likes of an Enraged Maxima

However with th Hypnosis Pen, it's shown that even if you can resist the mental manipulation, it acts simply as a form of bodily control that still compels you. Milton Fine's body is under the control of Vril Dox, so I presume it would require Dexter to write "Vril Dox" or maybe "Brainiac" at the very least, and that assumes it can work on mental plane entities. As such it's potentially a win con but unsure. 

Ironically Dexter could use Brainiac's most often famous weapon against him with his size manipulation which can reduce someone to atomic in size or grow them to the size of the universe and would work on Milton Fine and his shield at the whole time, either making him tiny and feeble or making him explode by growing too large. 

While this Brainiac would have awareness of size manipulation technology on this sc
ale, similar to his Pre-Crisis self and the New Gods possess, and he himself does have size manipulation technology, it was only the scale of cities nowhere near enough to stop it so Dexter's size changing technology is another potential win con

Dexter has Digitization technology which if it affected the telekinetic barrier can get around the forcefield's protective properties by converting both it and Fine to data

While Brainiac could likely continue to operate as mere Data, this would remove the Milton Fine aspect from the equation, making it an effective way around the Telekinetic Forcefield

Dexter can BFR people at will 

But anywhere he BFRs Brainiac, Brainiac can teleport back from as he teleported from New Genesis to Earth

Even Dexter's seemingly get out of jail free card the Dream Wish-o-Tron which can grant Dexter's wishes and he used to make himself an only child

is actually stated to have sent her to another reality meaning Brainiac could likely teleport back

There's also some things that both characters have that could be used as a win con for either which I will get to later

Brainiac's Win Cons:

The Milton Fine Brainiac was primarily a psychic so let's start with the obvious, could he just blast Dexter with enough telekinetic force to crush him

as mentioned prior Dexter has enough endurance and regen to return from being turned to ash 

While this Fine-iac might have the telekinetic force to vaporize Dexter, he wouldn't know to spread it out across Dexter's body and if he just punches a hole in Dexter, not only will Dexter be fine but he might think he's better Dexter and give Dexter the chance to summon one of his mechs to fight which would not be so easily bowled over. Plus there's a good shot could dodge the blast given his higher combat skill and similar speeds. 

Milton Fine didn't usually go for such a direct approach, he usually telepathically messed with his opponents and tried to break their mind as a show of his psychic power. For instance he can create illusions like making illusions civilians were him to try and keep Superman from knowing who he could safety attack or making it seem like he died so his opponent will think they've won

However Dexter's glasses naturally have multiple forms of extrasensory perception built in

and he is constant contact with Computer, who can operates his labs scanners remotely

While this extrasensory perception isn't as strong as Superman's senses, Fine-iac's illusions only bypassed those because he was manipulating Superman's brains directly. Dexter's come from technology which the telepathy wouldn't be able to affect.

Milton Fine can use his telepathy to induce supernatural pain which he did to early Post-Crisis Superman

However given Dexter's level of pain resistance and endurance, I think he could likely just tank this effect as crazy as this sounds. 

Fine also had a level of corruption and in his dreams schemed to separate Superman's consciousness into two selves, a good self and an evil self 

Funnily enough Dexter has actually faced a fairly similar scenario before. In the episode "Rude Removal", Dexter and Dee Dee had their rudeness and nastiness removed as separate entities 

While this Dexter acted like a stereotypical bully to his nicer half, against a threat to both of them like Fine-iac, it's likely the two Dexters would work together meaning this would only double Fine-iac's problems. 

Finally most obviously, Fine-iac can try to take over Dexter's brain, as he has done to a large number of heroes at once, or directly possessing him

Outside of making lots of him or minions, Dexter has no particular resistance so this is definitely a dangerous win con for Fine-iac.

Outside of psychic powers, this Brainiac demonstrated numerous inventions. Some of them include

Fine-iac has demonstrated technology to mutate people into monsters on a genetic level

or into machines

However Dexter is regularly transmuted into different forms from the very pilot the show was based on being based in being changed into various animal forms. He was even able to be turned into a sandwich with no ill effects, so it's unlikely Fine-iac's transmutation would be of any real effect

Brainiac created a Robot Body for himself that could blast Superman with Red Sun Radiation

However obviously Dexter isn't a Kryptonian and moreover he can actually resist radiation such as when he bombarded himself with Gamma Radiation

He also created Omega Spears that can create an energy field that can destroy the planet

Dexter can actually withstand this, though much like with Superman if Brainiac finds out Dexter is a good guy, he would presume to use this to threaten Dexter to make him do what he wants. 

However this was notably done by the unison of all of them. If you disable one they all stop functioning. Dexter has a ton of ways to shut down technology with one robot for instance firing a ray that shut down a fleet of enemy spaceships

Dexter's first invention was one that could shut down other technology so I'm pretty sure Dexter could nullify one of the Omega Spears to prevent them

Now Fine-iac can try a similar strategy. He has before hacked into and controlled the entire planet of Colu, and has shown the ability to cause technology to spontaneously break down with his psychic abilities

However this would surprisingly not be much of a hinderance to Dexter as he implanted himself with the teletronic manifestation device which instantly creates matter out of thought. This means any machine Fine-iac destroys or corrupts Dexter can simply remake

The only way Brainiac could disable this is by hacking into the manifestation device itself though how plausible this depends on how it works, whether it has data or if it's purely hardware. With that unknown it's unknown if Fine-iac can manipulate it

Others:

There are some abilities both have in common. They don't exactly cancel each other since they're still potential win cons, but it is still things both can hypothetically use as strategies.

Dexter has shown multiple forms of time manipulation including the creation of a Time Machine

While Fine-iac hasn't shown this, his assistant and student Prin Vnok has created time travel technology meaning Fine-iac likely could as well 

As neither have acausality this opens up a win for both of wiping the other from history by stopping them in the past. This is definitely an advantage for Dexter though as he already has a time machine on hand and can recreate it with a thought while Brainiac would have to quickly create one. 

Dexter can create Black Holes including specialized Color Holes that only suck in a certain color

Brainiac was able to create Black Holes, these black holes being capable of threatening the entire universe within the span of days

Both of these are pretty potent options for both sides and I can't say either side presents a particular advantage. Dexter could make a Green Hole to try and suck in just Brainiac while Brainiac can create a universal Black Hole and escape the dimension. Both of these are a win con for their side.

Dexter not only has mind-reading but he arguably has two versions. Not only he given himself mind-reading via technology,  in his first episode Mandark showed the ability to read Dexter's mind from raw intelligence. Given that Dexter has far surpassed that version of Mandark in intelligence, it's very likely he can also read minds from raw intelligence, giving him two forms of mind-reading, potentially letting him gather more information from an enemy mind at the same time?

Milton Fine-iac not only has the benefit of Milton Fine's telepathic scanning which can detect brainwaves and read thoughts but later developed Chaos Intrapolation to calculate Superman's exact position for every second of an hour three months in advance

While outright Precog is probably more potent then mind-reading it's seemingly implied that Brainiac can only do this because of his analysis of Superman. As such it's a bit hard to say who would have more information then the other. Dexter has multiple sources of mind reading if that's relevant while Brainiac can potentially gain a form of precog. I personally think Dexter has the advantage here though as he also has the Collective Intellect Helmet. 

This gives Dexter the intellect of every human on Earth
. Would this work on Fine-iac, an alien possessing a human? Maybe, but either way this should give him the push to get past Fine as whether they're on DC with Lex, Batman, and multiple Kryptonians or Dexter's Lab with Mandark, Professor Hawk, and Dexter's grandfather both Earths have multiple relative intelligences Dexter can add to himself. 

Dexter has also shown the ability to create many clones of himself with his Clone-o-Matic in sets of 8 at a time

Brainiac has technically also shown the ability to clone himself, but it was only one at  at it time and had to grow to the proper age meaning that while he can use time manipulation to get viable clones in combat, the rate is clearly much less then Dexter's

Dexter has shown the ability to affect magnetic forces even on non metallic objects somehow, manipulating repulsion and attraction

Brainiac has gained access to Coluan technology that manipulated magnetism on the scale of a compressed star and on a quantum level

While Dexter's might work on a larger variety of objects, the scale difference for Fine-iac's magnetism manipulation would give him an advantage. 

Both have also some other shared abilities like antimatter manipulation or animation, but as far as I can tell both of their passive shields would protect them from that making the non-issues. 

Finally, there is one more thing to bring up which is actually probably one of the more important points in this matchup: both sides weaknesses

Dexter is an egotistical know it all who frequently ignores that something is dangerous if it allows him a chance to prove his intellect, to the extent he one accidentally got the Earth destroyed because he was unable to stop competing with his rival Mandark both trying to prove their superiority. Also Dexter IS still a child and despite his intelligence, he can be naive to the world or intimidated by childish things and is prone to irrational outbursts. 

This version of Brainiac had Milton Fine's circus entertainer personality infect Brainiac's mind making him into "a megalomaniac showman", a theatrical personality more focused on proving his superiority then winning, regularly trying to break Superman mentally instead of trying to kill him. Also like all versions of Brainiac, Fine-iac has difficulty understanding things that are not strictly logical such as emotions or morality. Lois Lane was able to trick Fine-iac just because he was unable to grasp that she knew and loved that Superman would never choose her over the world. 

Dexter:

+More Rounded Intelligence, particularly in the Area of Combat Skill

+MUCH Higher Endurance

+Has resistance to a lot of Fine-iac's psychic abilities, primarily illusions and Pain Manipulation

+Can remake any of machines Fine-iac destroys with the teletronic manifestation device

+Hypnosis Pen might work

+Size Manipulation could shrink Fine-iac to subatomic sizes or make him explode by growing too large

+Digitization could potentially remove Fine-iac's telekinetic barrier

+Has Arguably Superior Information Gathering Abilities

+Has Superior Time Travel

+Can potentially suck him into a Green Hole

+Superior Duplication

=Comparable Speed, Maybe a bit higher Movement Speed

-Personality Weaknesses

Brainiac:

+Higher Average Intelligence, particularly in the area of raw information and information processing

+Telekinetic Power and Skull Ship would require Dexter's strongest inventions to match

+Telekinetic Shield can push away most of Dexter's weapons

+Can fight at interdimensional range where Dexter would have no idea where he is

+Stronger Mind Haxes like mentally destroying someone's brain, brainwashing people, or possessing them are things Dexter has no resistance to

+Can potentially hack into the Teletronic Manifestation Device and definitely Dexter's other inventions

+Can create far more powerful Black Holes

+Can likely predict Dexter's actions given their similarities using Chaos Intrapolation

+Trying to BFR him would do nothing and would actually give Fine-iac ample opportunity to attack 

+Stronger Magnetism Manipulation to mess with Dexter's technology

=Comparable Speed, Maybe a bit higher Reaction Speed

-Personality Weaknesses

Fine-iac transmits a message across the town Genius Grove saying that he has heard a genius hero lives there who considers himself the smartest in the world. Fine-iac says he will shrink and steal this town and challenge the genius to try to prove himself smarter by stopping it. Fine-iac ends transmission and eagerly awaits the contest with the scientist some are calling his intellectual rival.

Dexter receives the transmission. Annoyed at having his own experiments interrupted and enflame by the challenge, leaves an obvious robot duplicate his parents accept without question as him before suiting up for battle, heading off to answer the challenge atop the town's tallest building. 

There the two geniuses meet eye to eye. Both can see it in each others eyes, they think the other is no match. Both are more then eager to prove himself the intellectual superior. What happens?

So there are two factors that shape this fight in particular. The first is that if these two fought, more then heroism or villainy, both sides would primarily be trying to prove himself intellectually superior to his enemy, meaning neither are likely to use their most optimal strategy first, but instead trying to outwit and mentally crush their opponent. The second is that both have much higher reaction speeds then eithers' movement speed. What this means is that neither can blindside the other, especially as they both have Mind Reading and potentially Precognition. Both will always have opportunity to try and counter any tactic the other throws, and it's a matter of finding something the other can't counter.  As such this fight would be both characters exchanging powers and counters, testing each other and trying to find a tactic that is functional. 

From Dexter's perspective Brainiac's telekinetic shield and teleportation would make him very difficult to hurt. Size Manipulation, Digitization and Green Holes are all potentially win conditions that can bypass Fine-iac's barrier but the first two are beams Fine-iac can teleport away from, and the later Fine-iac can also likely escape from via teleportation before he gets sucked into the singularity. The Hypnosis Pen MIGHT work depending on if you think that Brainiac can supersede its control over Milton Fine's body. If the fight goes on long enough then Dexter might be able to wear down Fine's psychic energy though Brainiac has biologically engineered it to remove the low stamina problem he had earlier on, so it would definitely be a struggle to wear him down.

From Fine-iac's perspective Dexter can overcome most of his lighter forms of psychic attack and technology. Even breaking or hacking into Dexter's technology would have limited effectiveness unless he can hack into the teletronic manifestation device, as Dexter can simply recreate them with a thought. He can create a universe threatening black hole but given Dexter's size changing technology can grow Mandark's head to the size of the universe, it's likely Dexter could shrink it to it's no longer a problem if he's not in the singularity. If Brainiac escapes to another dimension while Dexter can't sense where he goes, if he was mind reading Brainiac, he might know where he went and he could go back in time to when Brainiac was still in the same dimension. Even Brainiac's stronger psychic hax Dexter has an unconventional way to avoid by transmuting himself into inorganic material like gum. Without an organic brain, Brainiac wouldn't be able to brainwash him. 

As such this fight would end in one of three ways:

-A possible uncounterable win both sides have: The Hypnosis Pen controlling Fine or Brainiac hacking the teletronic manifestation device

-One side just getting raw overpowered, the Megabot wearing down Skullship and hitting Fine's body or Fine-iac telekinetically crushing Dexter's body

-One side tricking the other into being hit by a hax when they don't have a counter prepared even if just because that side was being arrogant

For the first option I think it's reasonable to say Fine-iac has the advantage. It's a lot more likely Fine can hack the Teletronic Manifestation Device then the Hypnosis Pen could be used to stop Fine from psychically teleporting out of range, especially as we see Dexter and Dee Dee do have some control over their bodies when being controlled by the Hypnosis Pen. This is not entirely unstoppable, as if Fine-iac destroys the manifestation device, Dexter would still have the tech he still already has, it would just be liable to being destroyed or hacked. Also if Dexter has duplicated himself already, these duplicates would likely have their own copies of the manifestation device or he could his reverse his time to try and get it back.  That said it is the biggest risk for Dexter.

In terms of one overpowering and just killing the other, as both can teleport and have such high reaction speeds as well as mind reading it's hard to imagine either getting tagged by something that would really kill them unless it's early in the fight when they don't know how dangerous the other is. 

In terms outwitting each other, Dexter being able to copy himself much more efficiently in combat would allow him to try more tactics though the effectiveness of this may be limited. If one of the two tricks each other to get the win I imagine it would actually be because of exploiting the other's personality weaknesses. Fine-iac COULD hypothetically manipulate the fact that Dexter is a good person, holding people hostages and such. However the problem is that would require understanding of others. Fine-iac could understand the Dexter the genius, but not the Dexter the boy.

Could Dexter trick Fine-iac though? Yes, though through an unconventional method, not by actually being smarter. Brainiac in all his versions while he can outright predict the future when it comes to things that are logical, when it comes to irrational things he repeatedly shows an inability to understand others. Dexter was trained by his sister Dee Dee in a form of enlightenment called the Way of the Dee Dee focused around letting go of rational analysis and a natural emotional way of living. Dexter interpreted it in a destructive violent way but he did still learn it and if he channeled it while fighting Brainiac could likely become no longer predictable to Brainiac.

The reason Brainiac loses to Superman despite being smarter then him in most versions of the story, as well as to Superman's allies is Brainiac doesn't understand experiences that can't be rationally analyzed like a machine, doesn't understand values of change, connection, and love. Dexter as a character was conceptualized as being the dichotomy of the rational genius scientist, and the emotional cartoon boy with much of the series being about the contrast of these two sides, and it's the latter side of Dexter: his ties to his friends, family, and feelings that let him surprise Fine-iac with a tactic he didn't expect. 

As such I think Dexter would be able to save Genius Grove from Fine-iac, high difficulty 

A Special Note:

Brainiac is one of my favorite villains in part because, as strange as it might say, I find him evocative of something painfully relatable. Brainiac wants to keep the world nice and safely defined, but in doing so keeps things artificial and refuses to grow and change along with them. When I think of piece of fiction or parts of my world I know that some part of me wants to keep them the same, even as I know that's not what it needs to grow. When I make blogs, I always feel like I'm writing like a machine, that it feels stiff and artificial and like it's lacking whatever the special thing is that makes things feel alive. I feel like my characters feel like puppets, and my writing lacks spark and natural flow. 

Nearing 10 years ago a friend of mine made a blog about Dexter vs Jimmy Neutron. And it was everything I didn't know I wanted from powerscaling. It felt alive in a way I didn't think I could ever do. The characters felt real, the blog felt alive with visual and musical storytelling alongside the information, there was a natural flow that comes from a real person instead of trying to format efficiently. Immediately I was like "I want to learn to blog like this guy, I want to understand how to imbue my writing with that spark."

What I got was so much more. He's  shown me a lot of his world since then, a lot series, including cartons like Dexter and Jimmy. In that world I've seen the joys of youthful energy and of living with an optimistic spirit. This year is the 30th anniversary of Dexter's Lab and Cartoon Cartoons, a representation of that lively energy. Today is the birthday of my friend who has shared with me that energy with me and so I wanted to write this blog as celebration of being willing to grow and change and the importance of that animating spirit.

Happy Birthday ThorGundersen1058!