DISCLAIMER: I do not own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super or Dragon Ball Heroes.
Chapter 11: The Aftermath.
"So, my fr-ie-nd." Embryo said, saying the word 'friend' in the creepiest manner I had ever heard. "What say you, one Saiyan for another?"
Embryo's stinger was poised above Saiya's neck, still in the shape of a sword-tail instead of its normal appearance. His manic grin seemed to lose its tension, becoming more akin to a neutral frown more than anything. His eyes were half-lidded while he stared at me.
"The cards are all in my favor, but I seem to be the one with a disadvantage." Embryo said morosely. "I can easily destroy her as she is now, and killing you would of no challenge. But you would destroy my partner… and I would lose the greatest adversary I've ever had."
His sword-tail drifted away from Saiya's neck, effortlessly sliding into her shoulder and sinking to its 'hilt'. Saiya didn't even seem to feel it, the pain of her tail being grasped was probably overriding the sensations. But it still made me furious, my Psychokinesis suffocating Brockulle harder as a result.
"I was always fascinated with human anatomy." Embryo said, slowly pulling his weapon from my partner's shoulder, blood pouring from the wound and dripping from his sword-tail in an almost lazy fashion. "A delicate system, where one bone out of place can cause excruciating pain and disrupt the entire skeleton."
Saiya was injured. I had no ki. If I killed Brockulle then Saiya dies. If Saiya dies then I die.
I had no choice, not really.
"Do you swear it?" I said, still suffocating Embryo's partner with my psychic power. "If I give you him, will you let her go?"
I heard my name, a slight whisper in my mind. I didn't need to think too hard about it to know it was Saiya who did it, some emotion carried by that one word that I just couldn't place.
A short pause on the battlefield, a deafening silence where only the heavy rain made noise.
"I swear it." He finally said. His calm demeanor only made me snarl.
"I was told you've never told a lie since you got here." I said. "Will now be the moment you throw away your integrity, for a chance at victory?!"
"How dare—!?
"—No, you're trying to upset me, like you've been doing all day." Embryo's sudden change from calm to angry to calm again gave me whiplash. "You've taught me much today, about myself, about my techniques. My rage had blinded me to my goal, and my full strength has flaws in its form.
"No, I have lost today, and you have my word that we shall leave."
Suddenly, and without warning, his sword-tail sunk into Saiya's lower back, ripping a horrifying wheeze from her.
"Saiya!"
"She'll live." Embryo said, reaching down and ripping the Capsule Corp. belt off of her. "I merely severed her spine from her hips, nothing one of your numerous Senzu beans won't fix. But she is hotheaded, no? Someone who doesn't think like you or I."
"I'm nothing like you!" I was seething at the casualness with which Embryo crippled my partner.
"Oh ho, but I can see it in you. Your power, your purpose, your very being! You and I are men of integrity, unwavering in our core beliefs. You just might be the only other real person I've met."
"M-m-master…?" In my panic, I had let my psychic grip on Brockulle slip and he started coming too.
"Rest now Brockulle, we have lost here and learned much. And for you, Arcos, I will not be so blinded next time." There was a flash of purple energy, and in the blink of an eye they were both gone.
I rushed to my partner, reaching into the bag on my hip for a Senzu bean. There weren't many left, my rough guess when I left Korin's tower was higher than the actual number, and I felt horrified at how quickly we went from almost 50 of them to the mere seven in my hand. A full month hadn't even passed since we first got them.
Even worse, Embryo swiped the other seven Saiya had. Steeling myself, I slipped one of the beans into Saiya's mouth and felt immediate relief when she swallowed it. Her clothes were tattered, I didn't have my ki, and the both of us were covered in dirt and soot and blood—
But we were alive.
The trip back to Korin's Tower was a somber one. Saiya and I rode on Nimbus, holding each-other in silent comfort and drinking in the fact we weren't dead. Who knew a fight for your life could last so long? I had already told my partner how we might not see Master Korin again, and now we simply hoped for the best.
20 days, we had only 20 days before we had to fight them again.
No more Senzu-empowered training, no Dragon Balls, my energy locked for an indeterminate amount of time, my arm throbbing from all the excitement of the past hour, and a huge war zone carved into the Earth where the great forest of giant stone mushrooms used to be. The only saving grace from this was that no innocent was hurt. It didn't matter to me if I was in some pseudo world to serve as entertainment, these people felt real to me and that was good enough.
Nimbus brought us into the tower proper, and as we slid off our loyal cloud it seemed that my fears came true. Korin was missing, his cane leaning against one of the tower's pillars that held up the roof. Korin had never let go of that cane, always holding it in one hand. Sadness clutched at my heart and tears slowly fell from my eyes.
Master Korin was gone.
It was three days later, 17 days until the next battle, when I felt something I could only describe as 'alignment'. My body and spirit finished recovering, and my ki flowed through me once more. In those three days my partner and I talked, and we came to a conclusion.
There was a good chance we were not going to survive the next fight and Saiya decided that, until I had recovered my energy and we could continue our search for the Dragon Balls, we wouldn't think about the Reincarnation Game and just enjoy life.
On the first day I spent it alone, staring at my hands and trying to come to terms with everything that had happened. It had all been such a whirlwind of emotions and combat and everything that I didn't even notice my arm (the one that exploded, not the one with fused bones) had been fixed when I woke up in Korin's Tower. I would forever be in Saiya's debt for giving me space and time to cope.
On the second day we had our talk. Mostly we just held each-other and cried, but we had our talk nonetheless. We agreed to give love a shot, figuring that it shouldn't be anything too different to what we were already doing. The title of boyfriend and girlfriend, for some reason, didn't sit well with either of us. We were partners, first and foremost.
On the third day we went on a date. It was impromptu, and mostly an excuse to use our submarine capsule. Saiya loved to watch fish, originally planning on graduating college and becoming a marine biologist. But that didn't pay her rent fees.
So instead she joined a boxing tournament, a random nobody that boxed only as a hobby. Imagine everyone's surprise when she not only won her first fight, but won the tournament and its prize money. That day onward woke something in her. The thrill of fighting; adrenaline pumping in her veins, the taste of blood in her mouth, the reverberations when her fists hit something; she craved more of it.
And that was how boxing became her life, but she still loved to watch the fish swim and interact with their environment. So on the third day we went into the ocean, the Capsule Corp. submarine having easy to follow instructions and powerful underwater lights. The fish in Dragon Ball were usually huge but there was strange variety to not only their size, but also their color as well.
I had to suppress my fourth "Huh" that day when a rainbow colored trout the size of a boulder swam past us. I didn't really care too much. Spending a good portion of my life taking care of almost a dozen cats had given me a… rather jaded opinion on animals in general.
But my apathy gave way to happiness when I saw Saiya, enthralled and looking at all the different species of unique fish like a kid looked at different brands of candy in a store. That was when it hit me, my power suddenly restored itself and I could finally feel my partner's energy again. The sense of wonder that encompassed every part of it gave way to surprise and then happiness.
The kiss that followed was nice. The hug afterwards was also nice, but came with breathing problems.
16 days until the next battle. Hunting the Dragon Balls would take too much time, but we didn't know what to do. I had an idea on where to go to figure out our next move, but no guarantee it would work. Saiya and I stood atop Korin's Tower, a sea of clouds in every direction around us. The grasping fingers of early dawn reaching through the seabed of clouds, bathing everything in a beautiful array of morning colors.
"Good boy Nimbus!" Saiya said, petting our cloud dog. "Watch over the place while we're gone, okay?" The black Flying Nimbus flew around us in a quick circle nuzzling against us, one after the other, before flying back into the tower.
"You sure about this Arcos?"
"No." I said. "If I was sure this would work, we'd've done this already." Breathing deeply, I let out a weary sigh and slump a little on the spot. "Truth is, I can't think of anything else. We need those Dragon Balls, without them we're essentially dead men walking."
"But I'm a woman."
"The word woman is shorthand of 'womb man' and was first uttered in ancient Greece to help with early methods of categorization. The description for 'womb man' was that it was like a man, but with a womb. Same concept with how goodbye came from a written letter where someone got fed up with writing 'God be with ye' and shortened it to 'God b w y'."
Saiya blinked once. Then twice. She opened her mouth to pose a counterargument of sorts, but must've thought better of it when she remembered who she was talking to. I once won an argument about the usefulness of the Rogue class for Dungeons and Dragons.
That argument lasted two days.
Truly, I was a treasure trove of random trivia.
"Anyway." Saiya said, seguing the conversation. "Back to the plan, yeah?"
The plan I had was to head to Kami's Lookout. That was it. Everything else I could think of needed the Dragon Balls. Kami's Lookout might have someone that could point us in the right direction. All our hopes right now are finding someone that can guide us to the Dragon Balls.
Saiya must've felt my melancholy through my energy, because the next thing I knew was she put her hand on my lower back. We managed a workaround for my inability to feel through my natural armor. The answer was as simple as it sounded, she would just touch me somewhere else to get my attention. It wasn't a perfect workaround, but any intimacy was better than none.
"Hey." Saiya said. "One step at a time, alright?"
Her smile was a weapon, one I would never be able to say no to. "Right."
Hand-in-hand, we flew upwards into the sky, hoping the Lookout was in its usual spot of just being really high above Korin's Tower.
Kami's Lookout; a huge, half-sphere platform that floated so high in the sky it was probably only 100 or so miles from being in orbit. That was an exaggeration, but it might not be was the scary part. We managed to find it without much trouble, but the air was incredibly thin here.
A normal human could not survive up here.
A ladder wrapped around the underbelly of the Lookout, beautiful and ornately crafted. The closer we flew, the more tired I suddenly felt, even feeling out of breath at one point. Saiya's aura was fading in and out, and as we neared the bottom of the Lookout our energy suddenly cut off.
Time stopped again, and I reviewed my situation. One of my hands held Saiya's, I was close enough to wrap my tail around her and pull her close, and we were far away from the ornate and weirdly placed ladder. I had an idea, one that might just work. I couldn't move, and we didn't have enough Senzu beans to make it worth hurting myself trying.
But as I looked at the railing at the very top, I realized something. Psychic power doesn't need movement to work, not simple actions anyway. I focused on that railing, feeling it snap under the weight of my Psychokinesis.
Time slowly started again, my body sluggishly moving while my mind was going a mile per minute. The railing tore from its post at the top, still connected at the bottom and swinging our way like a metal vine. My tail wrapped around my partner when time snapped back to normal. The railing connected with my outstretched hand and stung like a wasp, but my grip held!
Laughter echoed across the roaring winds.
"How did you do that so fast?!" Saiya said after laughing, happiness and exhilaration flowing though her ki.
"I stopped time." I said bluntly, unsure if I was actually the one doing that.
"You can do that!?"
"Maybe? I'll explain later." With both hands free and Saiya wrapping her arms and legs around me, I started climbing. My hand-like feet and finger-like toes helped tremendously, and slowly I made progress. Saiya hummed into my neck, her tail rubbing against mine affectionately.
Climbing the pole turned into climbing the ladder proper. Something was suppressing our ki, but it wasn't locked like with Limit-Breaker. I could still feel Saiya's energy after all.
My hand landed on the top rungs of the ladder, and I pulled us onto Kami's Lookout.
AN: Chapter 11 is now done, and I'm only now realizing that I wrote the first big battle of the story taking place over the course of 6 chapters. I'm gonna stick to the chapters being 2,000-3,000 words, so the chapters are easier to digest while still feeling satisfying to read.
6 chapters, Holy Molly. Was it entertaining for you guys, did you enjoy them? I naively thought that these fights would take place over 1-2 or 2-3 chapters, but it's hard to have a regenerator believably lose. So future battles are going to be equal parts punching, ki attacks/techniques, and psychological warfare.
Also, I think I'm getting better each chapter in terms of editing and story pacing, I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter.
Remember to review, favorite, follow, or don't! I can't force you after all.
Take care and stay safe.