huh-- three new chapters, only four reviews? I guess I was gone so long I lost most of my readers! :-( Anyway, I'm being courageous in my writing this time around-- never done a single-combat scene before, and I'm nervous about it. If ever there was a time I needed some feedback, this was it!
Sometimes I worry that having a main character who is pretty universally maligned by the fan character loses me readers. I think they'd like the story anyway... Heh. I'm like a worried parent myself. No wonder I'm writing about Chi. Sheesh.
Oh yeah-salut, DBZ FFQ! Tao Pai Pai=General Tao.
Yrs, -- Kettr.
17. Chichi Takes Charge
She ran through the darkened passage, breathing heavily, ignoring the pain that still shuddered along her nerves and blossomed in her cheek. Close ahead was her quarry, the assassin Tao Pai Pai, huddled under the weight of the unconscious warrior Vegeta, slowed down by him in the damp, narrow tunnel. If this was part of the original base, then it must have been some sort of emergency escape passage; it was unfinished and barely lit, and seemed forgotten, although here and there it widened or branched off into subsidiary passages, presumably to connect with other parts of the base. She wondered where it would lead them.
Chichi passed the time keeping her anger feeding her energy, and thinking of her strategy. Her greatest weakness as a fighter-- other than the complete lack of training herself in recent years-- was her frailty. She wasn't a big damage soak like those alien lugs always hanging around her place; she would have to rely on speed to dodge rather than to block. Especially when her opponent was liable to throw poison darts at any point. But she still felt like she'd been called back to the past; her mind was recalled to the 23rd Budokai, and she could feel the old training like a pattern newly reimposed over her brain. She would fall into those rhythms, although her muscles would complain later. Whatever. She was used to complaining. After all, she was a mother.
But now, what was important was catching up to her prey before he completed the transfer to Vegeta's body. That was a battle she couldn't win today; there was no time to come up with the sort of plan she'd need. Funny how the very thing she'd set out to do, and done, to best Vegeta in combat, was now what every fiber in her body warned against. Sneaking around with potions was one thing; but sometimes, the best strategy was to force a direct combat. It had worked for her on Goku, hadn't it? Buoyed by the memory, Chichi smiled, then gritted her teeth, yelled, and launched a ferocious flying kick at the back of the assassin's knee. They would fight here. It would have to be enough.
Tao Pai Pai stumbled before he caught his balance, but it was enough to jar Vegeta's body from his grasp; the heavy form rolled over and over across the floor, finally banging to a rest against a red door. Chichi winced-- a limp body could dislocate a shoulder like that. Not to be so easily discouraged, however, Tao Pai Pai diverolled out of her range towards Vegeta, and scooped him up and through the door in one fluid moment. Bright light spilled into the tunnel, confounding her vision; she raced forward and through the door, to emerge into a deserted barracks. Bunk beds lined the walls in symmetrical rows, sheets precicely tucked. The place smelled like bleach. She couldn't see her opponent. But something out of the corner of her eye--
Chichi pulled her head to one side, barely avoiding the axe kick that descended brutally on her shoulder, nearly pulling it from the socket. She fell and rolled away blindly, ducking behind a bed. There was Tao Pai Pai, carressing the side of Vegeta's face, rapt as a lover. Vegeta's eyes were rolling in time to Tao Pai Pai's. They flickered--
Chichi attacked again, desperately, trying to break the assassin's concentration. If she could prevent him from taking the new body, perhaps Vegeta would now wake on his own, even be persuaded to act as her ally-- though such responses were not to be taken for granted from the Saiyajin prince. But not to come to his aid meant death to her, as well, so there was no choice. Hands rigid as knives, her whirlwind attack battered and bludgeoned at his defenses-- here a thrust at his kidney, blocked with one hand, in combination with a back kick to the knee again, a hit, weakening it further; dodge down and a sweep which he simply stepped over, concentrating still on the victim-- Chichi was infuriated. He was putting up a competent defense, one-handed without even breaking his concentration? She was less than a distraction to him?
But he didn't have the resources to attack at the same time. She couldn't give him that chance. Perhaps if she continued, she would wear him down? The sides of her hands ached, and her forearms where she'd been blocked were bruising; and that smell of bleach--
Never letting up her attack, Chichi turned her head, quickly scouting out the location of the stench. If attacking him wouldn't break his concentration-- she pulled down, aiming a last strike at his neck for good measure, then snapped into a backflip, landing in a crouch beside the stinking bucket half-full of cold, bleachy water. Kicking it up into her hand quickly, as Tao Pai Pai cracked an eye to see what she was up to, she hurled it with all her might across the room, picking up the mop to brandish it for good measure.
The shock of the cold water seemed to break Tao Pai Pai's trance. His arm went limp, and Vegeta's form fell still once again. Dripping, half-crouching, his face was obscured to her in three-quarter view. Slowly, his queue, sodden as a rat's tail, dripped water onto the floor. The smell was acrid bleach and half-moldy mop. The skin on Tao Pai Pai's neck was reddening-- whether in anger or because the solution was stronger than she'd though, she didn't know.
Tao Pai Pai stood up, letting Vegeta drop unceremoniously to the ground.
"Congratulations, little fly," he said, voice spitting bile: "You have my full attention. For now."
As he fell seamlessly into an attacking stance, Chichi felt her stomach quaver.
* * *
"Heave!" ordered General Gao for the last time; and finally the iron bar shattered, the door to the control room burst open with a bang, and he ran into the room, surveying it with horror. Two of his lieutenants lay dead. The thick cage was opened, and the alien prisoner was gone. As for Mrs. Son's cage-- it lay shattered on the ground, utterly demolished, like the victim of about a cubic ton of TNT.
"Who could do this?" he muttered aloud. Certainly not Mrs. Son, or she'd have done it long ago...
It was then he noticed that his precious salvage from the Cell Games arena, that mangled yet oh so informative Red Ribbon relic, his microchip was missing. His jaw twitched.
"Sir!" barked a lieutenant.
"Get these bodies out of here," he ordered, then testily, "what?"
"Sir, while we were gone-- the targets have left location Blue. All of them."
General Gao found himself suddenly beside the monitor, staring at it in consternation. It was blank. His eye twitched. He took a deep breath.
"Order the troops to pull back to the base, right away."
"Sir!"
"Ryu, locate them on the radar. Do whatever it takes."
"Sir!"
"Deploy the troops we have remaining into defensive position Omega."
"Sir!"
The General's nostrils twitched. "Damn it... if only we hadn't lost so many choppers in the assault on their floating citadel... I should have realized location Blue was their true base of operations from the start. Damn it!"
"Sir," the officer Ryu said, turning, "I've got them on radar. You're not going to like it--"
"Where are they?"
"Fifteen miles off of our position and closing, sir. I don't know how they got here so fast... wh... sir, our radar's gone dead!"
"What?" Gao turned angrily to survey the chaos in his command room. Was this a diversion they had planned? Was there treachery in his own base? He could feel the skin on the back of his neck crawling. How many Namekian imposters could there be in the world? Was it all too late? "How long until our troops can be recalled back to base?"
"At least an hour, sir."
"No..." He had to pull himself together. He was a military man, a strategist. How could he be so outmaneuvered, by a bunch of disorganized amateurs that had only even known they had an enemy for twenty-four hours? "The hostages..." he murmured.
"Sir," Ryu turned, "If I may be frank, we don't have any hostages any more."
"They don't have to know that," The General said, snapping his fingers. "Can we loop the film we have of the prisoners? Deng, get on it."
"Sir!"
General Gao surveyed his blind monitors. Soon, the enemy would come into range of his home sensor arrays. And he'd have them then. He'd have them yet. If it was the assassin who had taken the other hostages, then they were both already dead. The alien invaders would never know they hadn't been taken. He would play his cards until there were none left, until he had spat out his own heart and offered it to them poisoned to crush them in the hour of his victory. If that was what it took.
The general's lip twitched. Twice.
* * *
"Piccolo," Gohan shouted against the current of air rushing by him. "Piccolo-sensei! Why did you blow up that tower?"
Piccolo slowly reached a hand back, indicating his ear. "Radar," he said.
"Ohhhh..."
* * *
The deserted barracks were swiftly developing the look of a genuine war zone.
Chichi ducked low under a barrage of poison darts, hearing their soft thuds into the wooden frame of the bed behind her, followed by the sizzle of their acid burning into the wood-- but she was already transferring momentum into a roll, narrowly avoiding the stomp of Tao Pai Pai's boot, which struck the floor inches from her head, then the claw of his hand, which grasped the air where her arm had been as she rolled under the bunk, then out from under it as it was demolished above her with his kick; he was descending at her again, feet first, eyes wild and clothes flying. Gathering herself into a crouch, she leapt-- but her ankle, weakened from a well-placed low kick she hadn't seen, gave way and her leap went foul, and he landed several blows to her ribcage as she protected her face before she could escape, lashing out with an elbow that he was forced to stop attacking to block, then a drop and another roll as she saw with dread the flash of the knife he was pulling from his belt.
She couldn't go on much longer like this. Her lack of training, her softness and her exhaustion were getting to her. Long ago she'd lost the mop to his attacks; it lay in pieces around the ground, pieces he never gave her the maneuverability to reach. And the splinters of wood from the bunks were ready weapons to her hands, a thousand unpoisoned darts to hurl with deadly accuracy. Her legs, her body was filled with tiny splinters that shoved their way further in every time she had to roll to dodge one of his attacks. He hadn't hurt her badly yet, not as badly as when he'd kicked her in the face in her cage, but he was wearing her down; she couldn't even find the strength to be angry anymore, much less attack. His knee, she had weakened it-- for all the good it did her. He could still kick with it, and it wasn't hurting his landings, unlike her ankle.
Tao Pai Pai flicked the knife into his right hand, spinning towards her, blade flashing back and forth like a bright, deadly hummingbird. She scrambled back, disorganized-- was that splinter too close to her lung? Would it pierce it if she rolled again? It was too painful for her to tell. She couldn't risk another roll. He landed close to her-- and then, unbelievably, slipped in the water and fell!
It was an incredible stroke of luck. As if in slow motion, his chin struck the ground. Now was her chance to attack him! She ran forward--
--and straight past him, jumping over the stealthy attack from his knife that flashed out, grabbing up Vegeta and dragging him through the door into the dark passage again, down a side tunnel, scurrying as fast as she could. Almost to the next door--
The energy blast took her in the side, glancing along her ribcage, shredding her clothing and singing the threads. It hurt. It hurt unbelievably, worse than when she'd held Goku's power, an explosion in her side. She fell, crying out, and the splinter skewered itself further into her back, thankfully hitting a rib and grating on it. She grabbed the handle of the next door, wrenching it open-- another barracks, another eternal arena-- hearing his footfalls pelt behind her, she pulled herself through the opening, to hear a startled cry.
"Ma'am! Ma'am, are you all right?"
Spots were still dancing before her eyes from the pain; the sudden changes between light and dark didn't help matters. Strong, young hands were pulling her and Vegeta forward; soldiers' hands, like her son's, their strong, young voices calling in dismay. Then the tone changed, to menacing fear:
"You-- halt! What a-- aeurggghhh!"
Chichi regained vision just in time to see the two young men who had helped her struck by a second energy blast, ricocheting from the darkened room to strike them back in a sizzling pile of scorched flesh. They had bought her the time to recover, though, and she was staggering to her feet when her attacker rushed into the room, face purple with rage and embarrassment over his slip-up. She knew she couldn't run from him now. She had no ranged attacks. She would have to keep the battle close to him now for as long as she could, to keep him from launching a ki attack, no matter what damage she incurred. And he still had a knife. The easy part of the battle was over.
* * *
"This way! March! March!"
Like a treacherous undertow, or perhaps more like a herd of lemmings, a battalion of infantry suddenly burst from one of the barracks room at double-time, plowing over the solitary figure of Bulma Briefs, one disoriented cat in tow, who had been trying to make her way in the other direction, away from the MP officers and towards more deserted realms. Now she was swimming through hordes of tall, buff men-- a dream on almost any other men, although these were regrettably now rather too young for her-- and pump as her legs might, she was still going backwards. And slowly foundering down.
Bulma breathed heavily, suddenly dizzy and frantic-- was she going to be trampled in a crowd? Her, the greatest genius of her generation? Her, the beautiful blue-haired heiress of a multinational corporation? Stomped on by grunts?
As she began to topple backwards, a rough hand grabbed her by the uniform and pulled her up. Her head reeled.
"Soldier, the enemy's that way," said a grizzled sergeant. Bulma let her eyes run up and down his form. Fifty, chronic bad temper, one-track mind-- no, not a candidate for a Little Lost Lady act. Better play along like a good soldier.
"Sir, yes sir," she said, managing a frazzled salute, and came about, letting the flow of the other soldiers carry her forward at an quick half-jog.
After a few minutes of this, the drill sergeant out of the way, she muttered, "Dear god, what am I doing?" Any further and she'd find herself in the middle of a battle-- always the last place for beautiful geniuses. But if the sergeant caught her deserting, there was no telling.
"Hey!" she tapped the shoulder of the young man jogging next to her. He glanced over, annoyed, then turned to face forward again, his face a picture of determined dutifulness.
Bulma tried again, this time her neighbor to the left. "Hey, you! What's going on out there?"
This youth seemed more tractable. "Enemy attack. Sarge said some sort of super-soldiers."
"And us?"
"Front-line assault troop! What are you, a dope?"
Great. Front line assault troop against the Z warriors. In a low-visibility mass combat. Suddenly the Sergeant seemed a whole lot friendlier.
Bulma edged her way to the side of the jogging mass. They were passing through areas of the base she didn't know from her memory of the map she'd downloaded.
"Puar," she hissed. "We have got to get out of this. Can you transform?"
"Into what?" came the response.
They rounded a corner. She could hear more footfalls ahead-- soon, they were really going to be swimming in soldiers. The growing, rhythmic tide of sound seemed like an extension of the pounding of her heart. What with hearts, tides, and impending death, Bulma was finding it a little difficult to think critically.
"I don't know!" she said, speaking quickly. "Do I have to do *all* the thinking around here?"
"Okay, Okay!"
There was a silence from the sling for a few seconds, during which Bulma heard the footsteps ahead grow louder, like a rising doom. Then, suddenly, she was holding a walkie-talkie. With a bandage on its antenna.
She stopped, eyeing the item in shock. What in the...
"Private Briefs," shrilled the walkie-talkie, in Puar's voice. "Report back to barracks for reassignment. Over. Kkhhh!" The think moved as it talked, like a mouth. Bulma stifled a horrified snicker.
The Sergeant had come level with her. "Well, what are you waiting for, Private Briefs?" he ordered. "Step to!"
"Private Briefs," snickered someone in the company.
"Soldiers, is there something amusing?" said the sergeant, wheeling.
As Bulma fled down the hallway back towards the barracks, she could hear the chorus of response:
"Sir, no sir!"
* * *
Gohan shivered. Hovering high, high above the world, above the mountain from which Piccolo said he could hear radar pings emanating, the air was thin enough that even warmed by his own ki he couldn't get enough oxygen to keep his cells warm and his head clear at the same time.
Kuririn and Yamucha, 18 predictably having decided not to participate in the late night raid, had seen no point in attacking an army's rear when that rear was protected by a great big stone mountain; so they had gone to watch the others' rear instead. Tenshinhan and Chaotzu, under cover of the forest, watched their right flank. The two fighters hovering like unearthly hawks knew that they would have been detected, if not now, then soon; but by staying so high, they might draw off any aircraft fighters from the ground troops, taking care of them first. At least, that's what Piccolo had said.
Gohan glanced over at his teacher, unwilling to expend his precious breath on a question-- he had the feeling that Piccolo would know what he wanted to ask, anyway. The Namek seemed calm, staring down into the void with keener eyes than a Saiyan's, truly a great predator with his cape blowing in the cold, steady winds that make up the stratosphere.
Gohan was correct. Without the need to ask, Piccolo answered his question. "Not many," he said. "Tanks in partial cover; ground units, which do not concern us; the helicopters cannot come so high-- ah, you hear that?"
Teeth chattering, Gohan turned a head. Where Piccolo found the breath to speak so calmly was beyond him. A high crackling noise-- aircraft?
Piccolo was already nodding assent. The noise was almost imperceptable now, but growing-- climbing at them from below and to the east. They waited, Gohan's body jittering from cold and holding his position; then Piccolo said, Gohan wasn't sure whether it was aloud or somehow in his head:
"Dive."
The head tucks down into the shoulders, the body springing as if to leap, the rotation of the legs pulling the body into a quick spin-- stabilize with a burst of energy, make the body slender like an arrow, and downward you dive, downward and to the east. The wind bitter against the face, the exhilaration of speed, racing towards an enemy invisible in the clouds, your hands grasping air that has become solid and tangible with the wind of your passing-- some ethereal fiber binding you to the sky, pushing at you-- this is aerial combat. His power surged up in the back of Gohan's mind, battering at it like a caged dog, excited at the battle it now knew was coming, begging to rush free, transform him, make him the furious god he knew he could become. Gohan swallowed it back, hushing the voices, even as the night wind battered at his arms in the dive. Piccolo was beside him. He knew if he were to transform now, he would lose that control. He would save it for later.
Three seconds of burning dive, no more, and they rushed past a flight of three airplanes, zipping through the belated frenzy of bullets that pumped up toward them when the pilots, in surprise, burst through the clouds to the uncanny sight of human figures falling from the sky. A quick shift of position in the air, as the fighter pilots broke off, no time for a finishing attack-- both fighters chose the same one, a quick barrage of their own, balls of lightning that spin from the fingers like demonic twine. The shower of ki burst into the fusilage of one airplane, the wing of another, and then the sky was lit up with noise and fire, blocking the view.
Without waiting for the result, as one, the fighters turned, continuing to dive. Any airplane that survived that would have to catch them first.
They broke through a layer of cloud, and suddenly Gohan could see what Piccolo's sharper eyes had picked up. To the right, in the forest, there were explosions and shouting-- Tenshinhan and Chaotzu, discovered. Speeding down on the position-- there truly were not very many fighters defending the base! No more airplanes, only a few helicoopters, ground troops standing firmly at the entrance, tanks--
"Kienzan!" Gohan pulled energy from his body around the thought of a throwing star, fashioned it sharp and thin in his head, hurled. Two tanks fell, bisected neatly.
He could feel the amused disgruntlement of Piccolo. Piccolo always preferred to see him use his own attacks.
The battle noises coming from Tenshinhan's position sounded truly horrific. Men were screaming and wailing as if possessed. Two suns appeared briefly low in the sky, then vanished as swiftly. Panic. Mayhem.
They were skirting the ground now. Gohan lifted his collarbone slightly, just enough to change the flow of the air around his body, skimming within six inches of the ground and following its line-- a very fancy maneuvre. Again, Piccolo's amusement. Forward, then, the assault-- they were shooting at him, now, the ground troops, but the bullets fled from the merest hint of his ken-ki, his warrior's aura, scattering into the dust. The faces of his enemy were afraid, and he was rushing up to meet them--
"My little Gohan."
His head struck up in wonderment, the force of the momentum carrying him up to hover in the night sky. His mother's voice?
"always so good about doing... chores..."
Chichi's voice over the megaphone continued, amplified fifty times, broadcast over the battle zone. Piccolo, looking slightly annoyed, left off attacking a regiment of soldiers to listen with the rest. Out of range, in the forest to the right of them, the battle waged on.
Then, like a ray of hope, from behind the battalion of soldiers, a thin beam of light projected onto the darkening clouds, sending an image up onto them, wavering in its foggy medium. Just a projector, but the image--
It was Chichi, crouched in a cage that had fallen onto its side, looking up. Her face was disheveled and gaunt, eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Her clothes were rumpled, and she was holding her side as if from a pain she'd long forgotten about. She looked completely furious; but also, somehow, totally lost and forlorn-- an animal that knows it is already dead. The image moved; Chichi turned, looking nervously at an off-camera part of the room; in another corner, what could only be Vegeta's hair jutted between the thick bars of an iron cage. Chichi turned back, then suddenly glanced up at the camera directly-- a gaze full of hope, and of outrage.
"Mother--" Gohan murmured.
Piccolo had come up to him, silently. "A trap," he said. "They buy time. Listen."
Indeed, from the direction of home there was another eerie whistle, and a great rumbling-- aircraft. Much more. And soldiers as well.
A man's voice came over the megaphone then. "We have her, Namek," it said. Piccolo raised an eyebrow in surprise. The husky voice continued: "We have them both. Surrender-- or they die.
"The woman first."
* * *
Bulma flicked the panel open, dropping the screwdriver into her left hand. The dorms were weirdly quiet, disorientingly so; she had no idea how to find her way back to the door. Or even if she wanted to do so-- there were beginning to be muffled explosions from the outside of the mountain. She thanked her lucky stars she had managed to get away from the soldiers heading out! Or, well-- charitably, Bulma reflected, who she really ought to thank was Puar.
No matter-- let them even the scales when Bulma herself found them a safe hole to hide in somewhere in the compound.
Puar had gone into her human form again, slouching in her uniform against the cold cinder-block wall, looking rather haggard and exhausted. The cut in her leg was bleeding again, but not badly.
There was a strange, quasi-rhythmic thumping pattern coming from somewhere further up the hall. Every now and again, a man or woman's voice cried out. Bulma had been initially concerned, but then as the position of the noise didn't seem to change, she'd chalked it up to battle hormones. Get a lot of athletic twenty-year olds cooped up together in wartime, and-- well.
She finished hooking up the wires, tapping into them one by one to figure out what circuits they were connected to. Lights-- wall sockets-then the data ports: comm system-- interior security monitors-- exterior monitors-- databases. Here.
"Wait a second," muttered Bulma. Something was funny-- she moved the connector back two circuits. The rhythm of one of the currents was too regular, too repetitious. What sort of effect would it produce?
Bulma smiled, slyly. "Someone has looped a security camera," she said to Puar. The cat/woman didn't respond. Not to be discouraged, Bulma turned back to the circuit box.
"Yes, they're feeding looped information-heh, but they aren't sending it to the database files; for some reason they're sending it out to the external monitor system!" She pulled a few wires. "The comm system's going out to that port too-there's a shunt somewhere down the line. I bet it's some sort of speaker, or a projection system..." Bulma scratched her head. "Now why would the army do that?"
"I don't know," said Puar. "Please, let's just get out of here!"
Bulma sniffed. "Suit yourself," she said. "Just let me get this downloaded-I wonder if I could get the internal sensor feed to shunt into my pad, too?"
"Bulma! For crying out loud!" Puar looked nervously to her left and right. Outside, there was an eerie pause in the explosions.
"It won't take long," Bulma busied herself about the circuits: a disconnect here, a clamp there, and a quick analysis of the format of the signal-
The electronic pad fell from Bulma's limp hand, broadcasting its fuzzy picture at the ceiling. Bulma stood staring straight ahead, like a woman who has seen a ghost.
Puar leaned forward, glancing anxiously at Bulma's blank stare, then down at the fuzzy image that now stared up at the ceiling, flickering. When her eyes registered it, she took in her breath with a little gasp.
"Chichi!" she whispered.
"Vegeta," whispered Bulma.
(very big To Be Continued!)
Sometimes I worry that having a main character who is pretty universally maligned by the fan character loses me readers. I think they'd like the story anyway... Heh. I'm like a worried parent myself. No wonder I'm writing about Chi. Sheesh.
Oh yeah-salut, DBZ FFQ! Tao Pai Pai=General Tao.
Yrs, -- Kettr.
17. Chichi Takes Charge
She ran through the darkened passage, breathing heavily, ignoring the pain that still shuddered along her nerves and blossomed in her cheek. Close ahead was her quarry, the assassin Tao Pai Pai, huddled under the weight of the unconscious warrior Vegeta, slowed down by him in the damp, narrow tunnel. If this was part of the original base, then it must have been some sort of emergency escape passage; it was unfinished and barely lit, and seemed forgotten, although here and there it widened or branched off into subsidiary passages, presumably to connect with other parts of the base. She wondered where it would lead them.
Chichi passed the time keeping her anger feeding her energy, and thinking of her strategy. Her greatest weakness as a fighter-- other than the complete lack of training herself in recent years-- was her frailty. She wasn't a big damage soak like those alien lugs always hanging around her place; she would have to rely on speed to dodge rather than to block. Especially when her opponent was liable to throw poison darts at any point. But she still felt like she'd been called back to the past; her mind was recalled to the 23rd Budokai, and she could feel the old training like a pattern newly reimposed over her brain. She would fall into those rhythms, although her muscles would complain later. Whatever. She was used to complaining. After all, she was a mother.
But now, what was important was catching up to her prey before he completed the transfer to Vegeta's body. That was a battle she couldn't win today; there was no time to come up with the sort of plan she'd need. Funny how the very thing she'd set out to do, and done, to best Vegeta in combat, was now what every fiber in her body warned against. Sneaking around with potions was one thing; but sometimes, the best strategy was to force a direct combat. It had worked for her on Goku, hadn't it? Buoyed by the memory, Chichi smiled, then gritted her teeth, yelled, and launched a ferocious flying kick at the back of the assassin's knee. They would fight here. It would have to be enough.
Tao Pai Pai stumbled before he caught his balance, but it was enough to jar Vegeta's body from his grasp; the heavy form rolled over and over across the floor, finally banging to a rest against a red door. Chichi winced-- a limp body could dislocate a shoulder like that. Not to be so easily discouraged, however, Tao Pai Pai diverolled out of her range towards Vegeta, and scooped him up and through the door in one fluid moment. Bright light spilled into the tunnel, confounding her vision; she raced forward and through the door, to emerge into a deserted barracks. Bunk beds lined the walls in symmetrical rows, sheets precicely tucked. The place smelled like bleach. She couldn't see her opponent. But something out of the corner of her eye--
Chichi pulled her head to one side, barely avoiding the axe kick that descended brutally on her shoulder, nearly pulling it from the socket. She fell and rolled away blindly, ducking behind a bed. There was Tao Pai Pai, carressing the side of Vegeta's face, rapt as a lover. Vegeta's eyes were rolling in time to Tao Pai Pai's. They flickered--
Chichi attacked again, desperately, trying to break the assassin's concentration. If she could prevent him from taking the new body, perhaps Vegeta would now wake on his own, even be persuaded to act as her ally-- though such responses were not to be taken for granted from the Saiyajin prince. But not to come to his aid meant death to her, as well, so there was no choice. Hands rigid as knives, her whirlwind attack battered and bludgeoned at his defenses-- here a thrust at his kidney, blocked with one hand, in combination with a back kick to the knee again, a hit, weakening it further; dodge down and a sweep which he simply stepped over, concentrating still on the victim-- Chichi was infuriated. He was putting up a competent defense, one-handed without even breaking his concentration? She was less than a distraction to him?
But he didn't have the resources to attack at the same time. She couldn't give him that chance. Perhaps if she continued, she would wear him down? The sides of her hands ached, and her forearms where she'd been blocked were bruising; and that smell of bleach--
Never letting up her attack, Chichi turned her head, quickly scouting out the location of the stench. If attacking him wouldn't break his concentration-- she pulled down, aiming a last strike at his neck for good measure, then snapped into a backflip, landing in a crouch beside the stinking bucket half-full of cold, bleachy water. Kicking it up into her hand quickly, as Tao Pai Pai cracked an eye to see what she was up to, she hurled it with all her might across the room, picking up the mop to brandish it for good measure.
The shock of the cold water seemed to break Tao Pai Pai's trance. His arm went limp, and Vegeta's form fell still once again. Dripping, half-crouching, his face was obscured to her in three-quarter view. Slowly, his queue, sodden as a rat's tail, dripped water onto the floor. The smell was acrid bleach and half-moldy mop. The skin on Tao Pai Pai's neck was reddening-- whether in anger or because the solution was stronger than she'd though, she didn't know.
Tao Pai Pai stood up, letting Vegeta drop unceremoniously to the ground.
"Congratulations, little fly," he said, voice spitting bile: "You have my full attention. For now."
As he fell seamlessly into an attacking stance, Chichi felt her stomach quaver.
* * *
"Heave!" ordered General Gao for the last time; and finally the iron bar shattered, the door to the control room burst open with a bang, and he ran into the room, surveying it with horror. Two of his lieutenants lay dead. The thick cage was opened, and the alien prisoner was gone. As for Mrs. Son's cage-- it lay shattered on the ground, utterly demolished, like the victim of about a cubic ton of TNT.
"Who could do this?" he muttered aloud. Certainly not Mrs. Son, or she'd have done it long ago...
It was then he noticed that his precious salvage from the Cell Games arena, that mangled yet oh so informative Red Ribbon relic, his microchip was missing. His jaw twitched.
"Sir!" barked a lieutenant.
"Get these bodies out of here," he ordered, then testily, "what?"
"Sir, while we were gone-- the targets have left location Blue. All of them."
General Gao found himself suddenly beside the monitor, staring at it in consternation. It was blank. His eye twitched. He took a deep breath.
"Order the troops to pull back to the base, right away."
"Sir!"
"Ryu, locate them on the radar. Do whatever it takes."
"Sir!"
"Deploy the troops we have remaining into defensive position Omega."
"Sir!"
The General's nostrils twitched. "Damn it... if only we hadn't lost so many choppers in the assault on their floating citadel... I should have realized location Blue was their true base of operations from the start. Damn it!"
"Sir," the officer Ryu said, turning, "I've got them on radar. You're not going to like it--"
"Where are they?"
"Fifteen miles off of our position and closing, sir. I don't know how they got here so fast... wh... sir, our radar's gone dead!"
"What?" Gao turned angrily to survey the chaos in his command room. Was this a diversion they had planned? Was there treachery in his own base? He could feel the skin on the back of his neck crawling. How many Namekian imposters could there be in the world? Was it all too late? "How long until our troops can be recalled back to base?"
"At least an hour, sir."
"No..." He had to pull himself together. He was a military man, a strategist. How could he be so outmaneuvered, by a bunch of disorganized amateurs that had only even known they had an enemy for twenty-four hours? "The hostages..." he murmured.
"Sir," Ryu turned, "If I may be frank, we don't have any hostages any more."
"They don't have to know that," The General said, snapping his fingers. "Can we loop the film we have of the prisoners? Deng, get on it."
"Sir!"
General Gao surveyed his blind monitors. Soon, the enemy would come into range of his home sensor arrays. And he'd have them then. He'd have them yet. If it was the assassin who had taken the other hostages, then they were both already dead. The alien invaders would never know they hadn't been taken. He would play his cards until there were none left, until he had spat out his own heart and offered it to them poisoned to crush them in the hour of his victory. If that was what it took.
The general's lip twitched. Twice.
* * *
"Piccolo," Gohan shouted against the current of air rushing by him. "Piccolo-sensei! Why did you blow up that tower?"
Piccolo slowly reached a hand back, indicating his ear. "Radar," he said.
"Ohhhh..."
* * *
The deserted barracks were swiftly developing the look of a genuine war zone.
Chichi ducked low under a barrage of poison darts, hearing their soft thuds into the wooden frame of the bed behind her, followed by the sizzle of their acid burning into the wood-- but she was already transferring momentum into a roll, narrowly avoiding the stomp of Tao Pai Pai's boot, which struck the floor inches from her head, then the claw of his hand, which grasped the air where her arm had been as she rolled under the bunk, then out from under it as it was demolished above her with his kick; he was descending at her again, feet first, eyes wild and clothes flying. Gathering herself into a crouch, she leapt-- but her ankle, weakened from a well-placed low kick she hadn't seen, gave way and her leap went foul, and he landed several blows to her ribcage as she protected her face before she could escape, lashing out with an elbow that he was forced to stop attacking to block, then a drop and another roll as she saw with dread the flash of the knife he was pulling from his belt.
She couldn't go on much longer like this. Her lack of training, her softness and her exhaustion were getting to her. Long ago she'd lost the mop to his attacks; it lay in pieces around the ground, pieces he never gave her the maneuverability to reach. And the splinters of wood from the bunks were ready weapons to her hands, a thousand unpoisoned darts to hurl with deadly accuracy. Her legs, her body was filled with tiny splinters that shoved their way further in every time she had to roll to dodge one of his attacks. He hadn't hurt her badly yet, not as badly as when he'd kicked her in the face in her cage, but he was wearing her down; she couldn't even find the strength to be angry anymore, much less attack. His knee, she had weakened it-- for all the good it did her. He could still kick with it, and it wasn't hurting his landings, unlike her ankle.
Tao Pai Pai flicked the knife into his right hand, spinning towards her, blade flashing back and forth like a bright, deadly hummingbird. She scrambled back, disorganized-- was that splinter too close to her lung? Would it pierce it if she rolled again? It was too painful for her to tell. She couldn't risk another roll. He landed close to her-- and then, unbelievably, slipped in the water and fell!
It was an incredible stroke of luck. As if in slow motion, his chin struck the ground. Now was her chance to attack him! She ran forward--
--and straight past him, jumping over the stealthy attack from his knife that flashed out, grabbing up Vegeta and dragging him through the door into the dark passage again, down a side tunnel, scurrying as fast as she could. Almost to the next door--
The energy blast took her in the side, glancing along her ribcage, shredding her clothing and singing the threads. It hurt. It hurt unbelievably, worse than when she'd held Goku's power, an explosion in her side. She fell, crying out, and the splinter skewered itself further into her back, thankfully hitting a rib and grating on it. She grabbed the handle of the next door, wrenching it open-- another barracks, another eternal arena-- hearing his footfalls pelt behind her, she pulled herself through the opening, to hear a startled cry.
"Ma'am! Ma'am, are you all right?"
Spots were still dancing before her eyes from the pain; the sudden changes between light and dark didn't help matters. Strong, young hands were pulling her and Vegeta forward; soldiers' hands, like her son's, their strong, young voices calling in dismay. Then the tone changed, to menacing fear:
"You-- halt! What a-- aeurggghhh!"
Chichi regained vision just in time to see the two young men who had helped her struck by a second energy blast, ricocheting from the darkened room to strike them back in a sizzling pile of scorched flesh. They had bought her the time to recover, though, and she was staggering to her feet when her attacker rushed into the room, face purple with rage and embarrassment over his slip-up. She knew she couldn't run from him now. She had no ranged attacks. She would have to keep the battle close to him now for as long as she could, to keep him from launching a ki attack, no matter what damage she incurred. And he still had a knife. The easy part of the battle was over.
* * *
"This way! March! March!"
Like a treacherous undertow, or perhaps more like a herd of lemmings, a battalion of infantry suddenly burst from one of the barracks room at double-time, plowing over the solitary figure of Bulma Briefs, one disoriented cat in tow, who had been trying to make her way in the other direction, away from the MP officers and towards more deserted realms. Now she was swimming through hordes of tall, buff men-- a dream on almost any other men, although these were regrettably now rather too young for her-- and pump as her legs might, she was still going backwards. And slowly foundering down.
Bulma breathed heavily, suddenly dizzy and frantic-- was she going to be trampled in a crowd? Her, the greatest genius of her generation? Her, the beautiful blue-haired heiress of a multinational corporation? Stomped on by grunts?
As she began to topple backwards, a rough hand grabbed her by the uniform and pulled her up. Her head reeled.
"Soldier, the enemy's that way," said a grizzled sergeant. Bulma let her eyes run up and down his form. Fifty, chronic bad temper, one-track mind-- no, not a candidate for a Little Lost Lady act. Better play along like a good soldier.
"Sir, yes sir," she said, managing a frazzled salute, and came about, letting the flow of the other soldiers carry her forward at an quick half-jog.
After a few minutes of this, the drill sergeant out of the way, she muttered, "Dear god, what am I doing?" Any further and she'd find herself in the middle of a battle-- always the last place for beautiful geniuses. But if the sergeant caught her deserting, there was no telling.
"Hey!" she tapped the shoulder of the young man jogging next to her. He glanced over, annoyed, then turned to face forward again, his face a picture of determined dutifulness.
Bulma tried again, this time her neighbor to the left. "Hey, you! What's going on out there?"
This youth seemed more tractable. "Enemy attack. Sarge said some sort of super-soldiers."
"And us?"
"Front-line assault troop! What are you, a dope?"
Great. Front line assault troop against the Z warriors. In a low-visibility mass combat. Suddenly the Sergeant seemed a whole lot friendlier.
Bulma edged her way to the side of the jogging mass. They were passing through areas of the base she didn't know from her memory of the map she'd downloaded.
"Puar," she hissed. "We have got to get out of this. Can you transform?"
"Into what?" came the response.
They rounded a corner. She could hear more footfalls ahead-- soon, they were really going to be swimming in soldiers. The growing, rhythmic tide of sound seemed like an extension of the pounding of her heart. What with hearts, tides, and impending death, Bulma was finding it a little difficult to think critically.
"I don't know!" she said, speaking quickly. "Do I have to do *all* the thinking around here?"
"Okay, Okay!"
There was a silence from the sling for a few seconds, during which Bulma heard the footsteps ahead grow louder, like a rising doom. Then, suddenly, she was holding a walkie-talkie. With a bandage on its antenna.
She stopped, eyeing the item in shock. What in the...
"Private Briefs," shrilled the walkie-talkie, in Puar's voice. "Report back to barracks for reassignment. Over. Kkhhh!" The think moved as it talked, like a mouth. Bulma stifled a horrified snicker.
The Sergeant had come level with her. "Well, what are you waiting for, Private Briefs?" he ordered. "Step to!"
"Private Briefs," snickered someone in the company.
"Soldiers, is there something amusing?" said the sergeant, wheeling.
As Bulma fled down the hallway back towards the barracks, she could hear the chorus of response:
"Sir, no sir!"
* * *
Gohan shivered. Hovering high, high above the world, above the mountain from which Piccolo said he could hear radar pings emanating, the air was thin enough that even warmed by his own ki he couldn't get enough oxygen to keep his cells warm and his head clear at the same time.
Kuririn and Yamucha, 18 predictably having decided not to participate in the late night raid, had seen no point in attacking an army's rear when that rear was protected by a great big stone mountain; so they had gone to watch the others' rear instead. Tenshinhan and Chaotzu, under cover of the forest, watched their right flank. The two fighters hovering like unearthly hawks knew that they would have been detected, if not now, then soon; but by staying so high, they might draw off any aircraft fighters from the ground troops, taking care of them first. At least, that's what Piccolo had said.
Gohan glanced over at his teacher, unwilling to expend his precious breath on a question-- he had the feeling that Piccolo would know what he wanted to ask, anyway. The Namek seemed calm, staring down into the void with keener eyes than a Saiyan's, truly a great predator with his cape blowing in the cold, steady winds that make up the stratosphere.
Gohan was correct. Without the need to ask, Piccolo answered his question. "Not many," he said. "Tanks in partial cover; ground units, which do not concern us; the helicopters cannot come so high-- ah, you hear that?"
Teeth chattering, Gohan turned a head. Where Piccolo found the breath to speak so calmly was beyond him. A high crackling noise-- aircraft?
Piccolo was already nodding assent. The noise was almost imperceptable now, but growing-- climbing at them from below and to the east. They waited, Gohan's body jittering from cold and holding his position; then Piccolo said, Gohan wasn't sure whether it was aloud or somehow in his head:
"Dive."
The head tucks down into the shoulders, the body springing as if to leap, the rotation of the legs pulling the body into a quick spin-- stabilize with a burst of energy, make the body slender like an arrow, and downward you dive, downward and to the east. The wind bitter against the face, the exhilaration of speed, racing towards an enemy invisible in the clouds, your hands grasping air that has become solid and tangible with the wind of your passing-- some ethereal fiber binding you to the sky, pushing at you-- this is aerial combat. His power surged up in the back of Gohan's mind, battering at it like a caged dog, excited at the battle it now knew was coming, begging to rush free, transform him, make him the furious god he knew he could become. Gohan swallowed it back, hushing the voices, even as the night wind battered at his arms in the dive. Piccolo was beside him. He knew if he were to transform now, he would lose that control. He would save it for later.
Three seconds of burning dive, no more, and they rushed past a flight of three airplanes, zipping through the belated frenzy of bullets that pumped up toward them when the pilots, in surprise, burst through the clouds to the uncanny sight of human figures falling from the sky. A quick shift of position in the air, as the fighter pilots broke off, no time for a finishing attack-- both fighters chose the same one, a quick barrage of their own, balls of lightning that spin from the fingers like demonic twine. The shower of ki burst into the fusilage of one airplane, the wing of another, and then the sky was lit up with noise and fire, blocking the view.
Without waiting for the result, as one, the fighters turned, continuing to dive. Any airplane that survived that would have to catch them first.
They broke through a layer of cloud, and suddenly Gohan could see what Piccolo's sharper eyes had picked up. To the right, in the forest, there were explosions and shouting-- Tenshinhan and Chaotzu, discovered. Speeding down on the position-- there truly were not very many fighters defending the base! No more airplanes, only a few helicoopters, ground troops standing firmly at the entrance, tanks--
"Kienzan!" Gohan pulled energy from his body around the thought of a throwing star, fashioned it sharp and thin in his head, hurled. Two tanks fell, bisected neatly.
He could feel the amused disgruntlement of Piccolo. Piccolo always preferred to see him use his own attacks.
The battle noises coming from Tenshinhan's position sounded truly horrific. Men were screaming and wailing as if possessed. Two suns appeared briefly low in the sky, then vanished as swiftly. Panic. Mayhem.
They were skirting the ground now. Gohan lifted his collarbone slightly, just enough to change the flow of the air around his body, skimming within six inches of the ground and following its line-- a very fancy maneuvre. Again, Piccolo's amusement. Forward, then, the assault-- they were shooting at him, now, the ground troops, but the bullets fled from the merest hint of his ken-ki, his warrior's aura, scattering into the dust. The faces of his enemy were afraid, and he was rushing up to meet them--
"My little Gohan."
His head struck up in wonderment, the force of the momentum carrying him up to hover in the night sky. His mother's voice?
"always so good about doing... chores..."
Chichi's voice over the megaphone continued, amplified fifty times, broadcast over the battle zone. Piccolo, looking slightly annoyed, left off attacking a regiment of soldiers to listen with the rest. Out of range, in the forest to the right of them, the battle waged on.
Then, like a ray of hope, from behind the battalion of soldiers, a thin beam of light projected onto the darkening clouds, sending an image up onto them, wavering in its foggy medium. Just a projector, but the image--
It was Chichi, crouched in a cage that had fallen onto its side, looking up. Her face was disheveled and gaunt, eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Her clothes were rumpled, and she was holding her side as if from a pain she'd long forgotten about. She looked completely furious; but also, somehow, totally lost and forlorn-- an animal that knows it is already dead. The image moved; Chichi turned, looking nervously at an off-camera part of the room; in another corner, what could only be Vegeta's hair jutted between the thick bars of an iron cage. Chichi turned back, then suddenly glanced up at the camera directly-- a gaze full of hope, and of outrage.
"Mother--" Gohan murmured.
Piccolo had come up to him, silently. "A trap," he said. "They buy time. Listen."
Indeed, from the direction of home there was another eerie whistle, and a great rumbling-- aircraft. Much more. And soldiers as well.
A man's voice came over the megaphone then. "We have her, Namek," it said. Piccolo raised an eyebrow in surprise. The husky voice continued: "We have them both. Surrender-- or they die.
"The woman first."
* * *
Bulma flicked the panel open, dropping the screwdriver into her left hand. The dorms were weirdly quiet, disorientingly so; she had no idea how to find her way back to the door. Or even if she wanted to do so-- there were beginning to be muffled explosions from the outside of the mountain. She thanked her lucky stars she had managed to get away from the soldiers heading out! Or, well-- charitably, Bulma reflected, who she really ought to thank was Puar.
No matter-- let them even the scales when Bulma herself found them a safe hole to hide in somewhere in the compound.
Puar had gone into her human form again, slouching in her uniform against the cold cinder-block wall, looking rather haggard and exhausted. The cut in her leg was bleeding again, but not badly.
There was a strange, quasi-rhythmic thumping pattern coming from somewhere further up the hall. Every now and again, a man or woman's voice cried out. Bulma had been initially concerned, but then as the position of the noise didn't seem to change, she'd chalked it up to battle hormones. Get a lot of athletic twenty-year olds cooped up together in wartime, and-- well.
She finished hooking up the wires, tapping into them one by one to figure out what circuits they were connected to. Lights-- wall sockets-then the data ports: comm system-- interior security monitors-- exterior monitors-- databases. Here.
"Wait a second," muttered Bulma. Something was funny-- she moved the connector back two circuits. The rhythm of one of the currents was too regular, too repetitious. What sort of effect would it produce?
Bulma smiled, slyly. "Someone has looped a security camera," she said to Puar. The cat/woman didn't respond. Not to be discouraged, Bulma turned back to the circuit box.
"Yes, they're feeding looped information-heh, but they aren't sending it to the database files; for some reason they're sending it out to the external monitor system!" She pulled a few wires. "The comm system's going out to that port too-there's a shunt somewhere down the line. I bet it's some sort of speaker, or a projection system..." Bulma scratched her head. "Now why would the army do that?"
"I don't know," said Puar. "Please, let's just get out of here!"
Bulma sniffed. "Suit yourself," she said. "Just let me get this downloaded-I wonder if I could get the internal sensor feed to shunt into my pad, too?"
"Bulma! For crying out loud!" Puar looked nervously to her left and right. Outside, there was an eerie pause in the explosions.
"It won't take long," Bulma busied herself about the circuits: a disconnect here, a clamp there, and a quick analysis of the format of the signal-
The electronic pad fell from Bulma's limp hand, broadcasting its fuzzy picture at the ceiling. Bulma stood staring straight ahead, like a woman who has seen a ghost.
Puar leaned forward, glancing anxiously at Bulma's blank stare, then down at the fuzzy image that now stared up at the ceiling, flickering. When her eyes registered it, she took in her breath with a little gasp.
"Chichi!" she whispered.
"Vegeta," whispered Bulma.
(very big To Be Continued!)