The Rainbow Connection
is a 9-chapter Dark Fic written about Rainbow Brite.
After Murky and Lurky unleash a tornado at the yearly Sprite Fair, it causes a disaster like nothing Rainbow Land has never seen before. The worst case scenario happens when Skydancer is killed in the debris and Stormy is swept up in the tornado.
Full of self-doubt, Rainbow Brite decides to leave Rainbow Land to return to the human world. She renames herself "Alice" and begins living a normal, mundane life.
Years later, the now-adult Alice must return to Rainbow Land upon finding out that Stormy didn't die all those years ago. She's very much alive. Stormy's also very bitter for being "abandoned" all those years ago and is ready to inact revenge on her former allies... Violent revenge.
The Rainbow Connection provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: In canon, it's unknown if all the Color Kids renamed themselves or if they were always named their names. Here, it's shown that Stormy was named "Trista" by her parents.
- Alice Allusion: Though Alice's hair is dyed brown, Wisp's hair is naturally blonde. She also goes to a mystical land similarly to Alice.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Stormy crushes Yellow Canary's pet bird in her hand before killing Yellow herself.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Alice and Brian are a couple, but Brian doesn't know that Alice is his former friend Rainbow Brite. She eventually tells him, right before returning to Rainbow Land permanently.
- Dark Fic: Rainbow Brite abandons Rainbow Land after a disaster but comes back years later to stop Stormy during her murder spree.
- Dies Wide Open:
- Skydancer was killed by debris. Stormy found him this way.
- Twink dies this way, prompting Alice to close his eyes.
- Disabled Badass: As an adult, Stormy is blind, but she's still a threat with her katana.
- Distant Finale: The epilogue ends fifty years later with Brian's funeral.
- Eye Scream: Stormy was blinded when heated rods were pierced into her eyes.
- Finale Title Drop: The ending has a flashback where Stormy asks Rainbow "Do you ever wonder, Rainbow, if something terrible ever happened? What would you do if someone tried to break the Rainbow Connection?"
- A God Am I: Stormy wants to kill all humans and rebuild Earth from the ground up as a God.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Skydancer pushs Stormy out of the way of a falling pillar.
- Meaningful Rename: Rainbow renames herself from "Wisp" to "Alice". She later goes back to "Wisp" upon returning to Rainbow Land, and eventually goes back to just "Rainbow Brite".
- Karma Houdini: Despite the fact that they’re the ones that caused Stormy to snap, it’s never made clear what happened to Murky and Lurky.
- Kill the Cutie: Stormy brutally murders all of her former friends, the eternally youthful and innocent Color Kids.
- Named by the Adaptation: Brian is given the surname of "Redfield".
- Oh, My Gods!: The Sphere gets used in this manner.
- Sanity Slippage: Stormy's descent into madness and murderous rage was spurred by years of imprisonment, abuse, and Cold-Blooded Torture.
- The Shut-In: After the tornado dies down, Rainbow locks herself inside her room for a week thinking about the lives she couldn't save.
- Survivor's Guilt: Rainbow feels guilty about letting Stormy try to calm the tornado herself. She wishes that she had gone instead.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Stormy was tortured for two decades by people wanting to use her powers for evil.
- Stormy slaughters all the Color Kids. She lampshades the amorality of it in her dying speech:
"I slew innocent children, I destroyed your home, and I attacked a defenseless man you preciously cared about. Don't you wish to end this all right now?"
