Chapter 52: To Timidly Go
Rejoice, for I actually managed to finish a chapter...
(And if anyone doesn't get the title reference, I can't be bothered to explain it.)
Lord Slug pulled himself shakily to his feet. No...no, I won't lose...to this child! Spotting his target, he swung his head forwards, unleashing a wide energy beam that flattened half the street in front of him. "RAAAAH!"
The dust blew away to reveal a crater several metres deep, stretching back half a mile and carving right through the river. A tiny figure faded into view—Kuriza hovered at the front, arms crossed in front of his face, scorch marks dotting his body. "Huh...huh...huh...not bad," he decided, lowering his arms and smiling behind his mask. "That could've seriously injured me if I wasn't ready. I guess I was wrong to let my guard down around you."
"Damn it!" Slug made a grab for Kuriza, but the young warrior was already moving, easily evading the attempt. Kuriza wheeled around, kicking Slug in the side of the head and knocking him off-balance, then following up with an uppercut to the chin that staggered the giant Namekian away.
"That's...it!" Slug threw his whole body forwards in a somewhat awkward lunging motion that would have caused Kuriza to break out into fits of giggles, if it weren't for the fact that the movement had launched a massive ki-enhanced shockwave that bore down on the frost demon like a tsunami, smashing him into the pavement. Sneering, Slug stomped up to Kuriza, lying somewhat dazed on the ground, and brought his foot down heavily, completely obscuring the smaller fighter from view. "Heheh...you're fast, little man. But I've got you now...in this form, my raw strength is unmatched in all the universe! Ahahahaha...! Haha...ha...h...w-what the...?" His eyes widened in disbelief. Despite every available gigantic muscle in his body forcing it down, his foot was slowly rising from the ground.
Kuriza was standing up straight, both arms straining against the enormous weight above his head. "You...really need to lose a few pounds...it's like lifting a good-sized country down here!"
"Grrr...stay down, damn you!" Slug stamped down again, but Kuriza pushed back with all his strength, muscles burning.
"Not a chance!" With that, he gave one final effort, heaving Slug up into the air. Throwing out his ki, the tyrant stopped in mid-flight, trembling with exertion. Kuriza slowly rose up to face him. This calls for a cliché... "Hey, 'Lord'...I've only got one thing to say to you."
"...What?" Slug snapped, before deciding on impulse that he didn't care, and making another swipe at Kuriza. His fist swung through an afterimage, and Kuriza appeared behind him, a fully-charged ball of crackling energy hovering above his outstretched fingertip—he'd evidently picked up the trick of rapidly preparing the planet-wrecking Death Ball technique from his uncle.
"You're fired!" Kuriza yelled, hurling the Death Ball straight into Slug's back.
"And you're sure he'll be all right?" Zarbon asked.
Gohan shielded his eyes from the flash of orange light that filled the sky back where Kuriza and Slug were fighting. That spike of ki...it was Kuriza's, not Slug's... "Yeah. I think he'll be fine."
It was broadcast on every channel, every station, every frequency. The message was wordless—almost silent—and therefore understandable in any language. Turles and Slug lay in a heap on the floor, one piled on top of the other, unmoving. The Super Saiyan stood with one foot on their backs, staring at the camera. He gave a brief smile, nodded to the camera, then left.
The rest happened quite slowly, for a change, even the immediate loose ends taking several days to clear up.
The Tree of Might was found shortly, now a smoking ruin. The effects were felt immediately—a planet-wide lightening of the spirit, a sense of optimism in the air, compounded by their unexpected salvation.
Lord Slug was taken to a hospital and (along with his and Turles' surviving henchmen) kept sedated until a sufficiently durable holding cell could be built, so that when the Nemean people were self-sufficient enough to form a government they could officially put him on trial-which would mostly a symbolic gesture, a formal 'casting off' of the old ways he represented.
Turles' former subjects, without the influence of the Tree of Might, quickly set about organising themselves, and within a matter of months the planet became the busy trading port it had once been. Those on Slug's half of the planet took a while longer to come ot of their homes and begin normal life again, but eventually they all moved on. Nemea itself took on an air of mystique, becoming a tourist hotspot-"Visit the Empire Museum! See the throne occupied by Frieza and Turles! Venture underground and see the very spot where Turles died! The Super Saiyan himself once trod the ground you walk on!"
"Everybody ready to leave?" Zarbon asked.
"Yup!" Kuriza's voice was somewhat muffled by the food in his mouth, currently halfway inside the fridge, scrounging for snacks.
"Yes, sir." Videl, leaning against the back wall of the pilot's cabin where Zarbon sat, gave a mock salute. She had a bandage around her leg, but appeared mostly recovered from her ordeal.
"Yeah, we're all good back here!" Gohan called out. He'd been able to walk the streets largely unnoticed in his base form, the disguise completed by a change of clothes that seemed to fit in better with the urban style on the planet. He tossed something back and forth, from one hand to the other on his way to put it in cryo-stasis—a 'souvenir' he'd taken from Nemea, potentially an object of great value.
"All right then...we have liftoff." Zarbon slowly increased power to the thrusters, lifting off gently and adjusting the various settings the ship needed to run smoothly on its own, before flicking over to autopilot. Stretching, he pushed himself out of the seat and ambled over to Gohan's cabin. "Hey. Hey!" He opened the door, seeing Gohan scribbling down notes with one hand, typing something up with the other, and occasionally pausing to sketch something. "Hey, anybody home?!"
"Wha...Oh, hey." Gohan looked up, bleary-eyed. "Sorry, it's just...I learned a lot about alien culture there, not to mention the political history of the last few years. It's going in the book..."
"Isn't it about ki control, though?" Zarbon asked.
"Well, yeah, but..." Gohan sighed. "There's a lot of stuff we know that most people don't...I was happy to let people just be oblivious, ignorance is bliss and stuff, you know..." he shrugged. "But now they want to know. Might as well tell them everything."
"Time travel? Super Saiyans?"
"Okay, not everything. As much as is safe to make public. I don't want our families to be hounded by governments and religious fanatics...if I started writing about legendary alien prophecies, you know...and as for time travel, not only do I not know nearly enough about it to seriously discuss it, if people knew it was possible...if somebody figured it out...can you imagine the damage a selfish person with a time machine could do?" Zarbon looked confused. "Look, you think I'm dangerous? You think Frieza was dangerous? Compared to time travel in the wrong hands, I'm nothing."
"But you're giving the people the ability to turn their bodies into superweapons? You don't consider that dangerous, too?"
Gohan sighed. "Look...this is going to sound really stupid, but...imagine if everyone walked around with their eyes closed all the time, okay? Imagine nobody could see anything. Then I discovered that vision is a thing. I opened my eyes and used them, and suddenly I was so much better at just about everything than anybody else. It'd be selfish not to tell people about it."
"Hah! That's actually a pretty good analogy..." Zarbon turned to leave. "It explains that Hercule person, anyway."
"How d'you mean?"
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
It was several minutes later that Zarbon somewhat sheepishly reappeared in the doorway. "Uh...sorry. That conversation made me forget why I came to see you in the first place. Basically, where do you want to go next? I think we've run out of tyrants for you to depose, so the next planet will probably be a bit less of an adventure..."
"I wouldn't count on that," Gohan muttered. "Life has a way of throwing adventures at you whenever you're least ready for them. Anyway...can I see a map or something? What's around this...uh, this...this bit of space?" he finished lamely.
"Yeah, Bulma uploaded a map of the galaxy to the ship's computer, and I helped her fill it in...here we go." He tapped the console on Gohan's wall, bringing up the map. "What be our heading, Cap'n?" He joked.
Gohan rolled his eyes. He's getting more human every day... "Well, let me see..." he examined the map closely for a few minutes. Planet-wide factories, trading posts, military bases, asteroid spaceports, backwards feudal worlds, crowded metropolises...desert planets, ice planets, jungle worlds...the choice was dizzying. "Hey..." he pointed out a system a few parsecs away. "What about that one? It doesn't say anything about it."
"Hmm? Oh, what's it called..." Zarbon brought up the file. "...Alfheim. We've got no data at all, aside from physical geography. All that's known is it's fairly Earthlike—though be careful with anything flammable, there's high oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Only one expedition's ever been made there..."
"They didn't come back, did they?"
"Good guess. One of them made one last transmission—rambling about 'ghosts'—but after that, nothing. There don't seem to be any significant mineral deposits there, so it's just been left alone since then."
Gohan nodded. "Hmm...interesting..."
Zarbon sighed. "You want to go there, don't you?"
"Would you believe I do?"
"Seriously? Why?"
"You know why. I'm curious!"
"Well, don't be! Whatever killed the explorers is still—"
"Look, if whatever it was was strong enough to pose a threat to me, we'd have been able to feel its power all the way from Earth, all right?" Gohan frowned. "Remember why we're out here! We came to see what the situation was like, right? Fix things if they've gone wrong...we've done that. We took out the two worst despots, and the rest are running scared. Go team."
"What's your point?"
"My point is that the other reason we set out was to explore! 'To boldly go'! You know...discover valuable secrets?"
"And you think you're just going to find that on some random planet?"
"Like finding Dragon Balls on Namek? Or Instant Transmission on Yardrat?"
"...There's no arguing with you, is there?"
"Nope. We're going."
The planet—a deep shade of blue at this distance, somewhat darker than Earth or Namek—floated almost lazily into view on the monitor as they approached.
"So what are we expecting?" Videl asked.
"Ghosts?" Kuriza ventured hopefully.
"Well, there's probably some kind of life form..." Zarbon agreed. "To be seen as 'ghosts' they must be pretty strange..."
Gohan grinned. "I'm counting on it. Take us down."
The atmosphere was, as promised, breathable, though the high oxygen levels did give a slight heady taste to the air. The ground was smooth and worn-down—gale-force winds blew almost constantly. Kuriza pulled his cloak closer around him, shivering at the cold.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be able to survive in space?" Gohan asked, frowning. "This should be no problem for you!"
"I guess I've just got used to Earth..." Kuriza shrugged. "Its temperatures are pretty mild, as planets go."
"But still...'frost demon'...the clue is in the name..."
"That's just a nickname—since the three most publicly-known members of our species were Frieza, Cooler and Cold, you can see where it comes from."
Videl raised one eyebrow. "So what's your species really called, then?"
"I could try telling you, but the word, like much of our native language, is spoken at a frequency your ears couldn't pick up..."
"Can we try and stay on track here?" Zarbon barked. "Well, we're on your mystery planet, Gohan...are you happy?"
"Well, I thought we'd just take a look around, see if we can sense anything. I just picked a random spot, since no artificial structures showed up on the scan..." he paused. "Wait. I sense...a disturbance..."
Videl rolled her eyes. "Look, I know it's a space voyage, but this is hardly the time for jokes!"
"No, seriously. Did you guys...?" He swung his head back and forth, searching. "There! Again! Some kind of weird ki just appeared, then vanished!"
"Yeah, I felt it too..." the others gave nods of agreement. In the minute following, they detected three more of the brief energy signatures.
Gohan's eyes slowly narrowed. "Hold on...they're getting closer." Another. "Yeah, definitely. And they're coming from over...here!" He leapt off to the right, taking great bouncing strides, surprising himself. "Whoa, low gravity...anyway." He skidded to a halt, the others close behind. "Right around here...this is where the last ki appeared..."
"I think we've found our ghosts, guys," Zarbon muttered.
Videl turned in a slow circle. "Yeah, but I don't see any—" there was an impact, a blur of movement, and she fell to the floor.
Gohan spun, but there was no-one there. "Videl!" The remaining three clustered around her as she stood up.
"I see..." Zarbon nodded. "If it's some kind of predator...it makes sense, going for the one with the lowest energy first..." Videl tried not to take the remark personally.
"But why do you think it's a predator?" Gohan asked, eyes scanning the surrounding area.
"Well, like you said...there aren't any artificial structures on this planet. Perhaps these 'ghosts' are just a kind of wild animal with a naturally high power level...and a weird ability to disappear."
"Yeah, what's up with that?" Kuriza grumbled, then blinked, almost tripping over his words. "Hold on a second!"
"What?!"
There was a pause of several seconds, then Kuriza turned to Zarbon. "How the hell are you walking around a planet this cold in a T-shirt?!"
"What kind of question is—" Another impact, and Zarbon was floored.
"Watch it!" Gohan stepped in front of his fallen friend, and this time he saw it, just barely. A receding shape, seeming to fade from existence. No, not fade—it didn't look like teleportation, or anything of that sort. Almost like...
"Hey..." Kuriza glanced around. "Is it Instant Transmission? Is that what they're doing?"
"No..." Gohan shook his head. "And it can't be just speed either...in the moment it struck, this time I got a glimpse...for that moment, its speed was slow enough for me to follow...no, it kind of looked like...it just stepped out of view. It just went in some direction we can't see..." Could it be...?
"Can't go back to the ship..." Zarbon muttered as he rubbed his head. "Too far now, we'd be making ourselves even bigger targets than we are. Have to think of something...why does this stuff always happen as soon as we go somewhere?"
"I guess we just attract trouble..." Videl said, grinning bitterly.
"Okay...we're the only uninjured ones..." Kuriza almost whispered to Gohan. "You're stronger than I am, they'll go for me next..."
"Right." Something flashed in Gohan's mind, a fraction of a second before he saw it—but that fraction of a second was an aeon in fights like these. He turned on the spot, putting himself in front of Kuriza and catching the incoming limb. Now, he truly saw the thing—chitin, spines, staring eyes widened in surprise, mouth hanging slightly open, light brown colouring with deep red highlights. Very much physical, flesh and blood. Not a ghost. But of course, as soon as it recovered from its surprise, it stepped away, its body simply withdrawing, in some indescribable way, from the world they could see. At the same time, a second strode into existence, and something hit Gohan in the back, knocking him to his knees.
Kuriza jumped away, raising his guard. "Don't worry, guys...I got this." He was quickly proven wrong by three of the creatures simultaneously. He managed to keep his balance, spinning away and jumping into the air. The low gravity took him and his next attacker by surprise, causing it to miss him and temporarily expose itself. Kuriza, still hanging in the air above it, charged up energy in one hand. "I've got you!"
"Wait—" Zarbon warned, but it was too late. Kuriza fired, but the creature had already vanished, and the beam smacked into the ground. The explosion seemed to expand far too quickly, building into a gigantic column of flame and engulfing Kuriza, sending him tumbling to the ground, still billowing smoke. "Damn it, I warned you..." Zarbon muttered. "The atmosphere is oxygen-heavy...it's flammable..."
Gohan stood up, breathing heavily. Okay...they're not as fast as me...I have that. And...I'm noticing a pattern. It's a fantastic technique, this disappearing attack, but...I think I've got it figured out. He stood still, eyes closed, slowing his breathing. "Okay...come and get me."
Now we're getting to it.
And since nobody seemed to notice it, or at least those who noticed it didn't tell me, the planet Nemea was named for the Nemean lion of Greek legend, hence the chapter title "Lion's Den".
The chapter would have been longer, but some personal stuff came up with my family, and on top of revision for exams, egh.
Q:And the explanation of how Kuriza achieved the fifth form was sort of... well shoved in. I would actually have preferred Slug saying, "What?! But how could you achieve the Fifth Form!" and thus explanation. But that's just my opinion.
A:Well...Cooler never really explained how he did it. So I didn't really know where to go with it. I guess I probably should have come up with something. I was just thinking along the lines of these anime power-ups that just sort of happen off-screen. Like in the Piccolo Jr. arc, Goku has learnt to make his kamehameha homing! And fire it from his feet! And fly, just about! How? Er...he just did. He trained. He learned them. Yay.
Q:Although I have a hypothesis for the rest of the Countdown Saga, I'm rather interested in seeing where it goes. Good luck with your exams, and I wish you nothing but the best.
A:Go ahead and tell me. I'd love to hear it. We're now nearing the end of 'phase 1' of the saga.
Q:To be honest, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with Turles and Slug. From what you've established, neither Turles nor Slug are any sort of match for Gohan, so the only thing I can possibly see happening would be Vegeta finding out about these tyrants being dethroned. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's where you took it.
A:Originally, it was going to just be a rather long-winded look at how the galaxy turned out after Frieza's empire fell. But now it's going somewhere. In a meandering sort of way. But it is going somewhere.
Q: Can't wait for the teen gohan and videl naughty scene.
A:What? No.
Q:And vegetable becoming king!
A:What?
Q: Is goku going to be weaker than usual [chapter 7 review]
A: Yes. At first.
Q:First off, I think that while I love the idea of Even Further Beyond, I think you should come up with more original names (maybe use a English to Japanese online dictionary).
A:Because Japanese names are automatically original, or what? I mean, most the names in DB were puns anyway.
Q:"... Even if all of our armies had risen against him in unison, millions and millions of the galaxy's finest warriors, he could have killed them without any effort ...", well, that's not true. In fact one of the reasons Frieza destroyed the saiyans is because they could give him trouble if they decided to rebel.
A:Oh, I know that. But Raditz didn't at the time. From his point of view, Frieza's power was just about limitless.
I'm sure there was something else I was going to say here. I might edit this later and tack something on the end of the chapter. Oh, and whenever I get around to the Cell saga Kai, it's going to be dedicated to American Vigor, whose excellent Cell-starring story Honor Trip is sadly coming to an end.
