Chapter One: The Incredible Kick-Boxing C.E.O.
Satan City
Spring 793
It began again ten years later, on a warm spring night that found our heroine in deep trouble.
Not that she would have ever said so. She was both rich and powerful, attributes rarely obtained by admitting one was up shit creek without a paddle. She just glared at her hovercar, gave it a good kick and wondered where the hell she was.
Marron was twenty-two years old, and to the sort of people who like women tall, blonde and young, she was very attractive indeed. Her business suit consisted of a gray jacket with shoulder pads and a matching gray skirt that ended halfway down her thighs. A pair of tiny pearl earrings and a pearl necklace completed the ensemble, as did a pair of black shoes with stiletto heels. She was a picture of poised bitchiness, and any observer would have been hard-pressed to guess that at that moment she was just a little scared.
She glowered at the hovercar. "What the hell did he put in you? Diesel?" When the hovercar failed to answer, she drummed manicured nails on the hood and briefly considered ki-blasting the brand new vehicle into next week. After a moment she decided against it. Therapeutic though it would be, someone would feel it and questions about her training would start all over again.
"I'm going to kill him," she muttered to the world in general. "I'm going to rip off his arms and them I'm going to use them to beat him to death." She pulled a tiny cell phone out of her jacket pocket and peered at it for a moment, debating whether she should call the tow truck or the aforementioned 'him' first. She decided on the tow truck. This looked like one of Satan City's less savory areas, and even C.E.O.s could get shot.
Calling anyone proved to be impossible. She had been using the cell phone all afternoon to yell at the lawyers over in Johannesburg, and the battery was dead. Marron was holding an expensive piece of junk, which she glared at for a moment before stuffing it back in her pocket. "Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. What else can go wrong?"
When one asks a question like that, the universe is honor-bound to answer it. In this case, the answer came in the form of a laugh from the darkened alley behind the hovercar. "What's a pretty little thing like you doing here?"
Marron rolled her eyes skyward. Dende, you and I are going to have words. Instead of flying up to the Lookout and giving the Namek a piece of her mind, she folded her arms across her chest and turned to see who had tried such a truly unoriginal line on her.
There was a large group of rough-looking men gathered outside the alley. A quick scan told her that there were eleven in all, and that she had more ki in her pinkie than all of them had put together. In other words, she really didn't have time for this. "People really say that?" she asked flatly. "I'm disappointed."
The largest of the men -- Marron dubbed him Leader, for lack of a more fitting description -- snickered and took a step forward. She kicked off her heels and shifted into a sparring stance, earning herself hoots of laughter from the toughs. "You wanna fight us?" Leader asked.
Marron raised an eyebrow. "Just attack me already."
"Fine, little girl. If you don't want to play..." Leader smirked and started forward.
Marron just smiled. It was a very cold, very unfriendly kind of smile. It was, in fact, the kind of smile normally found on alien princes, homicidal jinzouningen, and others of that ilk. "Try it," she snapped. "Go ahead. I've had a very bad day."
Leader kept coming forward, although he seemed to have lost some of his zeal. Marron's attitude was clearly bothering him. He glanced at his gang once, as if to remind himself that they were still there. Then he squared his shoulders, took one more step forward, and grabbed her jacket.
Marron punched him in the face.
"Amateur," she muttered as he flew backwards, knocking over two of his companions. The other eight roared and charged, which only proved to Marron that they hadn't been hand-picked for their intelligence. She met their flurry of blows with neat blocks and a few experimental punches of her own. There was no one here she couldn't handle. Honestly. Why did people assume that she couldn't defend herself, just because she was a woman in a suit?
Not that most women would have been able to leap backwards over the entire mob like an acrobat and calmly crack heads together with neat flicks of the wrist. But that wasn't the point.
It was over in a matter of seconds. Marron smirked and dusted off her hands. That hadn't been hard at all. She turned to the last three, more than ready to finish them off --
-- and found herself staring down the barrels of three guns. Oh, crap.
She shifted into a more defensive position. "I didn't know you had those," she said, because someone had to state the obvious.
"No shit, sweetheart." Leader took a step closer, but not quite close enough for Marron to knot his arms behind his head. "What the hell are you?"
"Pissed off." Marron curled her hands into fists. "You have no idea who you're dealing with, you little slimeball."
Leader laughed. It definitely wasn't a pleasant sound. "What?" he said mockingly. "You mean you're not the C.E.O. of Capsule Corporation?"
Marron's rage drained away as something inside her went very cold. Oh, shit. This hadn't been a robbery at all. It hadn't even been a botched attempt to murder her. These guys were just here until someone else came along -- probably someone with ki training, who knew what the daughter of two fighters was capable of. She was willing to bet that her hovercar dying hadn't been an accident either. This was hostile corporate takeovers taken to a whole new level.
Realizing this was all well and good, but what was she supposed to do about it? Technically she could fly, but she didn't want the world to know and if the way Leader held his gun was any indication, he could probably shoot her out of the sky. Just because she fought a hundred times better than the average thug didn't mean she was invincible. She was in a very vunerable position right now.
Damned if she was going to admit it.
She let out a cold, mocking laugh of her own. "You're stupider than I thought. You idiots are going to be the scapegoats when my body turns up in a ditch. Did that ever occur to you?"
"Shut up!" Leader's finger twitched on the trigger, but he didn't look happy. Obviously that thought hadn't occurred to him at all.
Marron smiled, showing lots of white teeth. "Let me draw a picture for you. It's going to be all over the newspapers tomorrow. Front page, screaming headlines -- the works. There will be a nice big investigation, and some cop will find evidence tying you to my murder. Then they'll come and arrest you, and you'll get a one-way trip to the electric chair. If my parents don't find you first, anyway."
"I said shut up!" Leader snapped. Then curiosity got the better of him. "Your parents?"
Someone hadn't done his homework. Sloppy. "Maybe you've heard of them?" she asked in her most condescending voice. "Kuririn and Juuhachi? Martial artists?" She laughed, even though her heart was trying to hammer its way out of her chest. "They're going to have to scrape you off the street with a spatula...
"Shut up!" Leader pulled the trigger. Marron barely had time to dive out of the way. She wasn't quite fast enough. The bullet grazed her side, leaving a white-hot, painful line across her abdomen as if flew past her. She twisted to one side just as two more bullets whistled past her ear. A third brushed her upper thigh. Great. Now they were all shooting at her. She tried to concentrate on preparing a ki blast. If she was going down, they were definitely coming with her.
A voice rang out to her left, sounding the most absurd battle cry in the known universe.
"CHAAAARRRRGE!"
She didn't see exactly what happened next. There was a blur out of the corner of her vision and then the sound of punching and kicking and really inventive swearing. It didn't surprise her that someone else was fighting for the privilege of killing her or kidnapping her. What did surprise her was the newcomer's ki. It was almost as strong as her father's, and Kuririn wasn't exactly a weak man.
Hissing in pain, she climbed back to her feet and hobbled over to the scuffle. She still couldn't tell exactly what was happening, although two of the gunmen had been forced down the alley and were apparently trying to hit something. From the number of gunshots -- and more importantly, the creative obscenities -- they weren't having much luck. Leader was closer to her and on his knees, one arm hanging limply at his side. He was holding his gun with his good hand and aiming down the alley. Marron grabbed his wrist in one dainty hand and twisted it, snapping the bones like twigs. "That's for trying to kill me," she said sweetly. Then she kicked him in the groin. "And this is just me doing the gene pool a favor." Abandoning him, she retrieved his gun, flicked the safety on, and tucked it into her skirt's waistband. She looked ridiculous, but sometimes it paid to have a conventional weapon available.
The sounds from the alley faded as the newcomer finished flinging the other two men into an overflowing dumpster. She still couldn't make out any details, but it looked like whoever-it-was was very small. "Hey!" she called out. "What the hell's going on?"
"Hang on!" a piping voice answered. There was one last scream for mercy and a dull thud. Only then did the newcomer emerge, stolen guns jammed in the pockets of an oversized jacket.
It was a little girl.
As Marron watched, the pipsqueak closed her eyes and shook her head sharply. Her ki dropped to just above normal human levels. Marron barely managed to keep her jaw off the ground. Not only was this kid very strong, but she could control her ki.
What the hell?
The girl couldn't have been more than ten or eleven years old -- either too old or too young to be related to any of the surviving Z Senshi, no matter which way Marron approached the problem. Her black hair was short and straight, while her eyes were dark and very large on her face. She was thin, almost painfully so, but something about the way she moved reminded Marron of trained fighters. Maybe this kid didn't have more than eighty pounds on her, but everything she had was wiry muscle.
"Dumbasses," she muttered, the insult sounding strange in her child's voice. She examined Marron's wounds with the air of someone who had seen worse many times before. "You'll be fine," she pronounced. "Shiner can't aim to save his life, the stupid fuck. At least you took him outta the gene pool."
Marron stared as her unlikely rescuer launched into a string of impressive obscenities, including one that suggested this Shiner person -- the Leader Marron had injured -- had unsavory relationships with blenders. It was like listening to a small, especially foul-mouthed version of Videl Son.
That was who the kid reminded her of, she realized belatedly. She was almost a miniature version of Videl. At least, she thought she was. Videl had died a long time ago, and she didn't exactly keep pictures around.
"What's your name?" she asked as the girl helped herself to Shiner's wallet. When the kid opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a snappy retort, she quickly overrode her protests. "I'm not going to turn you in. You saved my life."
"And I saw you fight," the girl added. "Can all rich ladies do that?"
Crap. Marron wondered exactly how much she had seen. Probably everything. "No," she admitted. "My father and mother taught me how to fight. It's not exactly common knowledge, so don't tell anyone."
"My lips are sealed." The girl retrieved a package of cigarettes from Shiner and shoved them in her jacket pocket. "So are you gonna stay here and wait for these dumbasses' friends to come, or are you gonna get out of here?"
Marron's opinion of the kid's intelligence went up several notches. "My hovercar's broken," she said. "Where's the police station?"
The answer was a laugh. "Might as well hand yourself over to whoever wants you dead. The cops here'll sell their own moms." Finished with her plundering, the girl stood up and planted her hands on nonexistant hips, frowning at Marron as if she was a complicated puzzle. "I guess you can come with me 'til we figure out what to do with you." She held out a hand. "My name's Gizoku."
"Marron." She shook the proffered hand. It was like arm-wrestling a steel vise.
The girl's eyebrows vanished under her uneven fringe of bangs. "As in Marron Kuri of Capsule Corp? Shit. Hito's gonna kill me."
"Hito?"
"None of your business, lady." She glanced around with the practiced eye of someone checking for enemies. "We're good," she said after a moment. "Let's go."
Marron glanced at her bare feet and then back at the hovercar. "Hang on." She retrieved her briefcase, but decided to forget about the heels, even if it did mean walking across the pavement with no shoes. Maybe she could float a little bit when the girl -- Gizoku -- wasn't looking. Or then again, maybe not. If this girl could control her ki, she could probably sense others'.
"Do your parents know you're out this late?" she asked instead.
Gizoku laughed. "Rich ladies!" she muttered, her voice colored with something that was both amused and disgusted. Then she glanced over her shoulder long enough to look Marron squarely in the eye. "My mom and dad are dead."
"Oh." Marron kicked herself mentally. "I didn't know."
"I was little. Never knew them." Gizoku grinned. "Hito takes care of me anyway. She's gonna love you."
Marron couldn't tell if that last comment had been sarcastic or not. "Did Hito teach you how to fight?"
There was a long silence. Then the little girl just rolled her eyes. "Damn, lady! Stop bugging me or I'm gonna let your friends back there take potshots at you!"
The threat wasn't terribly serious. Marron could tell. Normally she didn't like taking orders from anyone, but Gizoku had helped her for no apparent reason. She didn't ask any more questions.
But she did wonder if Goku Son would want another student.
.
.
TBC