A/N: as requested, now with explicit breaks between POV shifts (I'm always writing these at 2 AM; life's a little incoherent at that point!)
Chapter 8: The Battle for Capsule Corps
Kuririn spared a quick backwards glance at Gohan. The boy had collapsed at last; he would not make it into the house. The very fact that Gohan could be so badly injured and yet so distracted as not to even notice indicated a fairly serious concussion; and there were very, very few who could hurt the son of Goku so badly. So Kuririn glared balefully at the hovering helicopters. Gohan's condition left him no choice but to stand his ground-- not a position he'd have chosen in general, but nothing he regretted. He had attacks he could send from standing. Although if this was, in fact, the enemy that had taken the boy down, then defending him would be ridiculous; sort of like a guppy protecting a shark, or something. Guppy versus Orca. Lately, all the battles had seemed like that to him.
"No time to think," Kuririn muttered, shaking off that particular wry thought. So far, it was just helicopters. And if it was just helicopters...
Kuririn focused his energy, feeling it burn along his limbs, into his fingers, until "Kienzan!" he called, and hurled the sawblade of ki into the sky.
The helicopter, with a large cracking noise, split into two perfect halves. Small, human figures hurled themselves from it as it plummeted, and hit the ground a scant fifty feet from where he stood. Red light flared from the crash site, sending the other helicopters scattering like skittish beetles; suddenly the night sky was illuminated by a bonfire blaze which exploded from the wreckage. Startled, Kuririn recoiled. The attack had been almost too easy-- but this was not the result he'd expected! An explosion, sure, but this fire showed no sign of dying down. And it smelled wrong. Like burning tar, some sort of incendiary chemical.
"Someone's been starting fires," Kuririn said under his breath, and wondered what poor suckers had had to ride in that thing with its deadly payload. Whoever they'd been, most likely they hadn't survived his own attack, much less the ensuing explosion; Kuririn's brows furrowed. The other helicopters were circling warily; six or seven of them, trying to steer clear of the heat from the fire. It was considerable, and spreading; whatever that chemical was, it showed no sign of being extinguished quickly. With luck, it wouldn't reach Capsule Corps; the dangerous nature of the Briefs' experimentations meant their house had a considerable firebreak around it. Nonetheless, there was no way he could risk one of those helicopters falling directly on the house.
Kuririn took a catstep back, bracing himself. It was an impossible situation. He couldn't protect both Gohan and Capsule Corporation. He made his choice.
The helicopters opened fire.
He tried to push the barrage away from himself with voice and ki. They were ordinary bullets; they pushed around him, deflecting away from his aura, a small echo of the burning wreckage spreading around him. Kuririn smiled, delighted. Normal, human warriors! For once! A slow realization began to dawn on him-- he could win this one. Himself. For his best friend's son, for his own bedraggled pride, for his comrades. He puffed himself up.
"Tenshinhan!" He called. "I take it back! You can wait!"
Suddenly his head jerked to one side. With the instincts of a thousand spars, Kuririn ducked and struck without turning, only then looking to see what had hit him. A soldier, wearing black, who now rolled on the ground by Gohan, grabbing his own head and groaning.
"Take that!" said Kuririn. "Who sent you?" He narrowed his eyes, looking around frantically. How many more of these guys were there? The fire helped somewhat, but it was still damnably hard to see in the middle of the night. Shadows lept around the garden like lurking figures, making him pass a hand over his eyes. He couldn't tell the real from the phantoms. There, that one looked--
"Ha!"
The ki blasted harmlessly into a wall, leaving a nice hemispheric dent. Kuririn cursed, then turned his attention to protecting himself as another wave of bullets tunneled their way into the lawn. The firebreak was holding, he noted; but-- there! One copter, splitting from the cover, heading to the left and over Capsule Corps, diving--
Kuririn didn't wait to see what it would drop; his hands were already at his waist, chanting,
"Kame-- Hame-- Ha!"
The blue flames exploded across the lawn, outstripping the chemical blaze, pushing the rogue helicopter out, safely away, and all its pieces and all it carried far far from him. Kuririn panted, then grasped his arm as a sudden pain hit him. He hadn't thought it through. All very well to have an attack that gathered and concentrated energy, but it didn't leave much for defense. He sank to his knees, feeling his side wet, although there was no pain there yet. He was shot.
Kuririn crawled to Gohan. Maybe these helicopters really had taken him down after all; although ruefully he thought to himself that if he were Saiyan, if he were Goku, then taking two bullets would only have made him angry... made him more formiddable... and therein lay the difference, he mused. Why he would always, no matter what he did, be only playing pretend, no matter what he tried.
"At least I helped," he ventured, giving himself up. He would drape his body over Gohan's. He would at least save Goku's child.
It dawned him, then, that he was not yet dead, or even unconscious. He could muster one more attack. The helicopters were too close to take out directly, but perhaps a game of chase-- Kuririn mustered the last of his energy, forming it into a ball. "After them," he whispered, and sent it off. He could only muster one missile of an attack that usually sent out a dozen such missiles, but he put his all into it. As it left him, he seemed to pass out of his body with it; as if it were he chasing the helicopter that fled before him, terrified, him that finally crashed into it in a most satisfying burst of flame; him that saw, with his last moment of existence, through the flames of his own undoing, a three eyed being wavering in the heat like a demon of rage.
Had Kuririn, or Gohan for that matter, been awake to see it, they would have seen how Tenshinhan threw helicopters away from them like a man throws driftwood; seen the terror in the eyes of the men who fled the grounds of Capsule Corps without the bodies they'd come for, clutching their stomachs, petrified of the living porcelain figure floating there like a ghost; seen how friends mistook one another for enemies, how helicopter guns mysteriously targeted one another, until in the end the straggling survivors cowered as they fled, convinced that devils had descended on them, wondering what they'd done to deserve being sent to Hell.
***
Inside the building, another battle was being waged.
"Do we have a stethoscope, a blood pressure monitor, a... a tongue depressor, for Kami's sake?" Bulma snapped, putting her ear to Vegeta's back. She thought she could hear a beat, but it was faint, frighteningly so, and she couldn't find his pulse in his neck. Then again, he was an alien, so who could tell?
"Will he be all right?" asked her mother, frantically stirring a bowl of cookie batter. At least they would all be well fed, whatever happened. On her shoulder, Trunks stirred, exhausted from crying.
"Mom, would you get Trunks out of here, please?" Bulma said. "I'm a mechanic, not a doctor, for the love of... thanks..." as her father handed her a blood pressure cuff.
She was silent as she took his pressure; the only sound was Trunks whimpering. Although she hoped he wouldn't, Bulma knew he was old enough to have a pretty good understanding of what was going on.
"Senzu beans! Senzu beans," she yelled, running to the kitchen. Everything was moving in halftime. There were no senzu beans.
"Mom," Bulma called from the kitchen. "Did you eat a sort of big nasty bean, by any chance?"
"The one from the cabinet above the stove?"
"Yes."
"Fed it to Trunks. The poor thing was so hungry... you don't feed him enough!"
"Mom!" Bulma said, agitated. "That was-- no wonder he's been off his feed."
There was nothing left to do. She walked back to the living room and found her mother still standing with the cookie bowl. There was no talking to that woman. She went instead to Vegeta. He was pale. She ran her fingers through his coarse hair.
"Don't you dare die on me," she hissed at him. "If you die on me, I will not fix the gravity room for a week. Two weeks."
It occurred to Bulma then that if he died on her, it was not likely that the gravity room would ever be fixed again. She sat down. There seemed to be some sort of explosions going on outside. It didn't matter. Her father was calling for an ambulance; good. That barely mattered either.
Bulma Briefs sat beside her lover and thought. Bulma Briefs sat beside her lover and tried to follow him. Eventually, though, she simply waited.
Chapter 8: The Battle for Capsule Corps
Kuririn spared a quick backwards glance at Gohan. The boy had collapsed at last; he would not make it into the house. The very fact that Gohan could be so badly injured and yet so distracted as not to even notice indicated a fairly serious concussion; and there were very, very few who could hurt the son of Goku so badly. So Kuririn glared balefully at the hovering helicopters. Gohan's condition left him no choice but to stand his ground-- not a position he'd have chosen in general, but nothing he regretted. He had attacks he could send from standing. Although if this was, in fact, the enemy that had taken the boy down, then defending him would be ridiculous; sort of like a guppy protecting a shark, or something. Guppy versus Orca. Lately, all the battles had seemed like that to him.
"No time to think," Kuririn muttered, shaking off that particular wry thought. So far, it was just helicopters. And if it was just helicopters...
Kuririn focused his energy, feeling it burn along his limbs, into his fingers, until "Kienzan!" he called, and hurled the sawblade of ki into the sky.
The helicopter, with a large cracking noise, split into two perfect halves. Small, human figures hurled themselves from it as it plummeted, and hit the ground a scant fifty feet from where he stood. Red light flared from the crash site, sending the other helicopters scattering like skittish beetles; suddenly the night sky was illuminated by a bonfire blaze which exploded from the wreckage. Startled, Kuririn recoiled. The attack had been almost too easy-- but this was not the result he'd expected! An explosion, sure, but this fire showed no sign of dying down. And it smelled wrong. Like burning tar, some sort of incendiary chemical.
"Someone's been starting fires," Kuririn said under his breath, and wondered what poor suckers had had to ride in that thing with its deadly payload. Whoever they'd been, most likely they hadn't survived his own attack, much less the ensuing explosion; Kuririn's brows furrowed. The other helicopters were circling warily; six or seven of them, trying to steer clear of the heat from the fire. It was considerable, and spreading; whatever that chemical was, it showed no sign of being extinguished quickly. With luck, it wouldn't reach Capsule Corps; the dangerous nature of the Briefs' experimentations meant their house had a considerable firebreak around it. Nonetheless, there was no way he could risk one of those helicopters falling directly on the house.
Kuririn took a catstep back, bracing himself. It was an impossible situation. He couldn't protect both Gohan and Capsule Corporation. He made his choice.
The helicopters opened fire.
He tried to push the barrage away from himself with voice and ki. They were ordinary bullets; they pushed around him, deflecting away from his aura, a small echo of the burning wreckage spreading around him. Kuririn smiled, delighted. Normal, human warriors! For once! A slow realization began to dawn on him-- he could win this one. Himself. For his best friend's son, for his own bedraggled pride, for his comrades. He puffed himself up.
"Tenshinhan!" He called. "I take it back! You can wait!"
Suddenly his head jerked to one side. With the instincts of a thousand spars, Kuririn ducked and struck without turning, only then looking to see what had hit him. A soldier, wearing black, who now rolled on the ground by Gohan, grabbing his own head and groaning.
"Take that!" said Kuririn. "Who sent you?" He narrowed his eyes, looking around frantically. How many more of these guys were there? The fire helped somewhat, but it was still damnably hard to see in the middle of the night. Shadows lept around the garden like lurking figures, making him pass a hand over his eyes. He couldn't tell the real from the phantoms. There, that one looked--
"Ha!"
The ki blasted harmlessly into a wall, leaving a nice hemispheric dent. Kuririn cursed, then turned his attention to protecting himself as another wave of bullets tunneled their way into the lawn. The firebreak was holding, he noted; but-- there! One copter, splitting from the cover, heading to the left and over Capsule Corps, diving--
Kuririn didn't wait to see what it would drop; his hands were already at his waist, chanting,
"Kame-- Hame-- Ha!"
The blue flames exploded across the lawn, outstripping the chemical blaze, pushing the rogue helicopter out, safely away, and all its pieces and all it carried far far from him. Kuririn panted, then grasped his arm as a sudden pain hit him. He hadn't thought it through. All very well to have an attack that gathered and concentrated energy, but it didn't leave much for defense. He sank to his knees, feeling his side wet, although there was no pain there yet. He was shot.
Kuririn crawled to Gohan. Maybe these helicopters really had taken him down after all; although ruefully he thought to himself that if he were Saiyan, if he were Goku, then taking two bullets would only have made him angry... made him more formiddable... and therein lay the difference, he mused. Why he would always, no matter what he did, be only playing pretend, no matter what he tried.
"At least I helped," he ventured, giving himself up. He would drape his body over Gohan's. He would at least save Goku's child.
It dawned him, then, that he was not yet dead, or even unconscious. He could muster one more attack. The helicopters were too close to take out directly, but perhaps a game of chase-- Kuririn mustered the last of his energy, forming it into a ball. "After them," he whispered, and sent it off. He could only muster one missile of an attack that usually sent out a dozen such missiles, but he put his all into it. As it left him, he seemed to pass out of his body with it; as if it were he chasing the helicopter that fled before him, terrified, him that finally crashed into it in a most satisfying burst of flame; him that saw, with his last moment of existence, through the flames of his own undoing, a three eyed being wavering in the heat like a demon of rage.
Had Kuririn, or Gohan for that matter, been awake to see it, they would have seen how Tenshinhan threw helicopters away from them like a man throws driftwood; seen the terror in the eyes of the men who fled the grounds of Capsule Corps without the bodies they'd come for, clutching their stomachs, petrified of the living porcelain figure floating there like a ghost; seen how friends mistook one another for enemies, how helicopter guns mysteriously targeted one another, until in the end the straggling survivors cowered as they fled, convinced that devils had descended on them, wondering what they'd done to deserve being sent to Hell.
***
Inside the building, another battle was being waged.
"Do we have a stethoscope, a blood pressure monitor, a... a tongue depressor, for Kami's sake?" Bulma snapped, putting her ear to Vegeta's back. She thought she could hear a beat, but it was faint, frighteningly so, and she couldn't find his pulse in his neck. Then again, he was an alien, so who could tell?
"Will he be all right?" asked her mother, frantically stirring a bowl of cookie batter. At least they would all be well fed, whatever happened. On her shoulder, Trunks stirred, exhausted from crying.
"Mom, would you get Trunks out of here, please?" Bulma said. "I'm a mechanic, not a doctor, for the love of... thanks..." as her father handed her a blood pressure cuff.
She was silent as she took his pressure; the only sound was Trunks whimpering. Although she hoped he wouldn't, Bulma knew he was old enough to have a pretty good understanding of what was going on.
"Senzu beans! Senzu beans," she yelled, running to the kitchen. Everything was moving in halftime. There were no senzu beans.
"Mom," Bulma called from the kitchen. "Did you eat a sort of big nasty bean, by any chance?"
"The one from the cabinet above the stove?"
"Yes."
"Fed it to Trunks. The poor thing was so hungry... you don't feed him enough!"
"Mom!" Bulma said, agitated. "That was-- no wonder he's been off his feed."
There was nothing left to do. She walked back to the living room and found her mother still standing with the cookie bowl. There was no talking to that woman. She went instead to Vegeta. He was pale. She ran her fingers through his coarse hair.
"Don't you dare die on me," she hissed at him. "If you die on me, I will not fix the gravity room for a week. Two weeks."
It occurred to Bulma then that if he died on her, it was not likely that the gravity room would ever be fixed again. She sat down. There seemed to be some sort of explosions going on outside. It didn't matter. Her father was calling for an ambulance; good. That barely mattered either.
Bulma Briefs sat beside her lover and thought. Bulma Briefs sat beside her lover and tried to follow him. Eventually, though, she simply waited.