Chapter 11 When Misconceptions Clash
Sunday Evening
Ichigo had allowed her mind to wonder. The purposefully slow climb was quite boring, and she had started to think of all the things that had gone wrong in the past week and a half. She realized that her father had not expected her to succeed. He had only wanted her to live. But like most Saiyans, Ichigo had an iron will to succeed. And she was going to do everything she could to find the Vegeta rebels.
She was busy trying to recall every thing she knew about the people who had followed the rebelling Vegeta family when someone suddenly spoke.
"Ah excuse me, but what are you doing?"
"AHH!"
Ichigo spun around in an instant. Being surprised was not something that she liked, and she had had no indication that anyone was behind her until he had spoken.
There, not more then three meters away floated a young man about her age. He was dressed in a loose fitting blue, orange and white outfit and did not look like much of a warrior.
Ichigo looked at the readout on her scouter. "Five?" she said aloud in disbelief. No one with that low of a power level could fly! Then she realized that he was sitting on some kind of yellow cloud like thing.
"Another one of you? I don't have time to deal with know-nothing weaklings. If you don't want me to have to kill you, I suggest you take your cloud and fly someplace else."
The young man cocked his head slightly to the side. "Why are you being so aggressive? I just asked what you were climbing this tower for."
Ichigo grimaced and shot a ki blast past his head in an attempt to scare him away. She could always ignore him and go back to climbing, but she would prefer to deal with as few of the indig people as possible. She had already killed far too many of them for her own tastes.
Rather then fly away in fright the guy stood up on his cloud thing and glared at her. "Now that was totally uncalled for. For the last time. Why are you here, what are you looking for, and why are you climbing that tower?" He asked sternly.
Ichigo glared at him through her scouter. The readout still read five and he had yet to show that he had the slightest clue what he was dealing with. 'This idiot is really begging for it. I'll give him one last chance.'
"Look, you pathetic little man, you haven't the slightest idea what you are dealing with no go away before I have to kill you." She said as she casually flicked her tail off in a random direction.
The boy had been staring right into her eyes. Any idiot knows better then to look into a possible opponent's eyes. He should not have even been able to see her flick her tail. But in an instant, he had moved faster then Ichigo could react.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" She let out an involuntary scream of pain as he grabbed and squeezed her tail. She had had her tail grabbed before, and it was always painful, but this time was different. Far exceeding the pain from the conduit in the catacomb run, the pain that shot through her body was excruciating. She had jerked straight up the moment he had grabbed her tail. Her now firmly anchored tail was stretched out by her own upward movement. Pain like fire or lightning raced from her tail up her spine and exploded into her brain. She felt the joints in her tail grinding together. Muscle bruised, and nerves sizzled. Every muscle in her body went tight and then seemed to spasm. Her gut wrenched, and she tasted bile in her mouth. She could not breathe, but could only scream out in pain. As more waves of pain hit her brain, it felt like some great hand was squeezing her heart and lungs. She was for the first time she could think of totally and absolutely helpless by someone else's actions.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. It was all over in a matter of moments, but it felt like centuries. She felt herself, no longer being supported by her Ki, start to fall. Her body started to slip to the side, and that caused it to twist on her tail. New waves of pain shot up her back as one of the vertebrae at the base of her tail suddenly cracked.
She felt the flesh of her tail begin to rip away from the base of her spine as she slowly started to fall away. The pain was incredible. She knew that she was falling, but she could do nothing to stop it. She just couldn't focus her mind enough to control her own ki.
She slowly spun as she fell until she was once again looking up at that horrible young man. Tears blurred her vision, but she could see him well enough. He was floating there beside his cloud holding her tail. He made eye contact, but his face was completely expressionless.
As Ichigo fell further, her cape flapped up and covered her face. Moments before it did however, she saw him put his hand out and shoot a Ki blast at her. It hit her at the base of her spine, right where her tail had once been. A new wave of incredible pain shot up her back. It was more then she could take, and as she mercifully passed out, she smelled the acrid stench of her own burning flesh.
* * * Roshi had never heard anyone scream so loudly. It was piercingly, painfully loud. He knew that it would be a long time before he would ever forget that scream or the look on her face, if ever. It was a face set in absolute shock and pain. She almost had a look of betrayal on her face. It made him think he had just tried to kill her. Something made him think that she would have rather died.
That face though, how was he going to forget that? He had looked into her eyes. She had dark gray-blue eyes that had reminded him of a thundercloud brewing on the horizon. There was violence in those eyes. There was contempt. She clearly thought that she was by far superior to him. But, search them as he did, he did not find the cold hard look of evil.
"Stop it!" He said to himself. "I can't just hang around here all day."
Roshi looked down at the girl's tail. It hung limply in his hand. A few drops of blood fell from the severed end of it as Roshi watched. It reminded him of a beheaded snake. It looked like a furry brown-gray snake. It gave him the creeps.
Roshi had slowly started to drop down to where the girl had fallen. If she were still conscious, he would have to fight her before she did any more damage. If not, well, that would give him some time to think.
He found her flat on her stomach in a slight depression in the ground. Her head was flopped to one side and she was laying on one of her arms, but other then the smoking hole in her bodysuit and the burnt flesh visible through the hole she didn't appear to be hurt. She was definitely not conscious. But even without being aware, her face was locked in a grimace of pure pain. Roshi found himself actually almost feeling sorry for the girl.
"Oh well, can't have you waking up while I am gone." He said more to himself then her.
Kneeling down he laid his right hand down on her forehead. Her skin felt cold and clammy, but he ignored it. Getting a sense of her, he made a "Sleeping Beauty" ball as his father had called it. The odd green ball of energy pulsated in a pattern very much like brainwaves during deep sleep. Roshi remembered getting hit by this attack a few times as a kid. Unless prepared for the attack, it immediately knocked a person out for several hours.
Of course, Roshi's father was empathic enough he could use the attack at range. Roshi had to be physically touching a person to get a good enough read on their mind to even have a chance at it working.
The attack was useless against anyone who knew it was coming however. All it took was altering one's thought patterns and concentrating to stay awake to make the attack worthless, but then the girl was already knocked out so that would not be a problem.
"Pst, zzzzzzz" Roshi dropped the ki ball on her head and it slowly spread out and sank into her. She slowly seemed to relax and actually sleep.
'Good,' he thought, 'now I can go back to Slip and have her look at this thing.' He once again looked at the tail. 'I can't help feeling evil after doing this to her.'
'Sure,' he realized, 'she was going around killing people, but if she isn't actually Saiyan, or with the funny color of her tail, if she is a hybrid of some sort that cannot go Ouzaru, then this was a rather distasteful action on my part.' Roshi paused for a moment before deciding she was less dangerous if left here rather then if he took her back to Capsule Corp. Sure, she would be easier to monitor at CC, but she could also do a lot more damage there.
Roshi flew up to head back when he saw the ship.
"That has to go. There may be things to help her heal in it" he realized as he said it.
BOOOM!!! One well placed blast to the rear of the ship where the engines were caused the whole thing to more or less vaporize.
'Man is she going to be pissed when she wakes up. Oh well, nothing I can do about it,' he thought to himself.
Roshi put his numerous thoughts out of his mind as he quickly flew back to the Capsule Corp.
* * * Later that evening at the Capsule Corp
"Come on Slip! How much longer is this going to take?" Roshi demanded as he paced the floor of her lab.
"Just a few more minutes. Roshi, you're terrible! Look if she wakes up you can go stop her from doing anything, but look at the GKSS! SHE HASN'T MOVED!" Slip practically screamed back at him. "You have been asking how much longer these tests will take for two hours!"
"If I knew I would have to sit around here doing nothing but running away from you and your needles, I would have brought the girl back here with me. There is no telling what she might do when she wakes up!"
"Which is precisely why you did not bring her here. My parents will kill me if anything happens to the Capsule Corp's complex. I mean, just how would have YOU restrained her once she woke up? Ever thought of that? It is far better that she wake up out in the middle of no-where where she can't do any real damage." Slip stated while looking at one more printout.
Slip got done with that and grabbed a syringe from her shelf.
Roshi not letting down his guard again noticed immediately.
"Hey get away from my with that! What are you some kind of Vampire! Haven't you taken enough of my blood?" Roshi said while scooting behind some equipment.
"Well I can't get any from Boxers or Tee, they both ran away." Slip said, "Besides for a tough guy like yourself, you are awfully queasy around needles. Don't you want to show-up those two babies?"
"No! If you need so much blood, why don't you prick your own hide?" Roshi said to his defense.
"Well, I could do that but I need more of your blood to run this last test, I didn't get enough last time." Slip said while attempting to corner him.
You mean when you had me looking at microscope and jabbed me in the butt?! That hurt by the way!" he said as he did a back flip over the table.
"Well if you hadn't jumped I would have stuck you in your arm where I was aiming for. Besides, when you jumped, you broke off the needle! If you would have just let me pull it out, it would not have hurt so much. DUH but no! YOU had to run around screaming like you were dying." She said
"Oh yeah well that is just..."
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
The conversation could have gone on well into the night, but the two of them where stopped by the one thing Roshi feared more then that needle in Slip's hand. The GKSS had detected the girl was waking up.
"Crap! Look at what you have done Slip! Now I am going to have to sneak back there slowly on the Kintoun so she does not detect me coming. Now could you at least tell me if she is a Saiyan or not? I mean if, I didn't have to pull of her tail. I may have some apologizing to do. EVEN though she has more to confess too!" Roshi quickly added the last comment to keep Slip from going off.
"Oh yeah, I knew she was a Saiyan two hours ago. And as far as I can tell she is a full blood. I was just testing traits and stuff for the past two hours, because as far as I can tell, she comes from a totally different family then either Goku or Vegeta." She replied from over at her desk, having given up trying to catch Roshi.
"YOU KNEW TWO HOURS AGO!?!?!?!? HOW Could you... ah you.. Oh never mind I don't even want to know. But you are about as absent minded at times as my pet dog."
"Oh you are so kind. Now don't you have to go save the world?"
"Good BYE Slip... If she manages to kick my butt, I will come after you in the afterlife." He said as he left the Capsule Corp. * * *
A nice short chapter. Oh well. Please Review.
Ichigo had allowed her mind to wonder. The purposefully slow climb was quite boring, and she had started to think of all the things that had gone wrong in the past week and a half. She realized that her father had not expected her to succeed. He had only wanted her to live. But like most Saiyans, Ichigo had an iron will to succeed. And she was going to do everything she could to find the Vegeta rebels.
She was busy trying to recall every thing she knew about the people who had followed the rebelling Vegeta family when someone suddenly spoke.
"Ah excuse me, but what are you doing?"
"AHH!"
Ichigo spun around in an instant. Being surprised was not something that she liked, and she had had no indication that anyone was behind her until he had spoken.
There, not more then three meters away floated a young man about her age. He was dressed in a loose fitting blue, orange and white outfit and did not look like much of a warrior.
Ichigo looked at the readout on her scouter. "Five?" she said aloud in disbelief. No one with that low of a power level could fly! Then she realized that he was sitting on some kind of yellow cloud like thing.
"Another one of you? I don't have time to deal with know-nothing weaklings. If you don't want me to have to kill you, I suggest you take your cloud and fly someplace else."
The young man cocked his head slightly to the side. "Why are you being so aggressive? I just asked what you were climbing this tower for."
Ichigo grimaced and shot a ki blast past his head in an attempt to scare him away. She could always ignore him and go back to climbing, but she would prefer to deal with as few of the indig people as possible. She had already killed far too many of them for her own tastes.
Rather then fly away in fright the guy stood up on his cloud thing and glared at her. "Now that was totally uncalled for. For the last time. Why are you here, what are you looking for, and why are you climbing that tower?" He asked sternly.
Ichigo glared at him through her scouter. The readout still read five and he had yet to show that he had the slightest clue what he was dealing with. 'This idiot is really begging for it. I'll give him one last chance.'
"Look, you pathetic little man, you haven't the slightest idea what you are dealing with no go away before I have to kill you." She said as she casually flicked her tail off in a random direction.
The boy had been staring right into her eyes. Any idiot knows better then to look into a possible opponent's eyes. He should not have even been able to see her flick her tail. But in an instant, he had moved faster then Ichigo could react.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" She let out an involuntary scream of pain as he grabbed and squeezed her tail. She had had her tail grabbed before, and it was always painful, but this time was different. Far exceeding the pain from the conduit in the catacomb run, the pain that shot through her body was excruciating. She had jerked straight up the moment he had grabbed her tail. Her now firmly anchored tail was stretched out by her own upward movement. Pain like fire or lightning raced from her tail up her spine and exploded into her brain. She felt the joints in her tail grinding together. Muscle bruised, and nerves sizzled. Every muscle in her body went tight and then seemed to spasm. Her gut wrenched, and she tasted bile in her mouth. She could not breathe, but could only scream out in pain. As more waves of pain hit her brain, it felt like some great hand was squeezing her heart and lungs. She was for the first time she could think of totally and absolutely helpless by someone else's actions.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. It was all over in a matter of moments, but it felt like centuries. She felt herself, no longer being supported by her Ki, start to fall. Her body started to slip to the side, and that caused it to twist on her tail. New waves of pain shot up her back as one of the vertebrae at the base of her tail suddenly cracked.
She felt the flesh of her tail begin to rip away from the base of her spine as she slowly started to fall away. The pain was incredible. She knew that she was falling, but she could do nothing to stop it. She just couldn't focus her mind enough to control her own ki.
She slowly spun as she fell until she was once again looking up at that horrible young man. Tears blurred her vision, but she could see him well enough. He was floating there beside his cloud holding her tail. He made eye contact, but his face was completely expressionless.
As Ichigo fell further, her cape flapped up and covered her face. Moments before it did however, she saw him put his hand out and shoot a Ki blast at her. It hit her at the base of her spine, right where her tail had once been. A new wave of incredible pain shot up her back. It was more then she could take, and as she mercifully passed out, she smelled the acrid stench of her own burning flesh.
* * * Roshi had never heard anyone scream so loudly. It was piercingly, painfully loud. He knew that it would be a long time before he would ever forget that scream or the look on her face, if ever. It was a face set in absolute shock and pain. She almost had a look of betrayal on her face. It made him think he had just tried to kill her. Something made him think that she would have rather died.
That face though, how was he going to forget that? He had looked into her eyes. She had dark gray-blue eyes that had reminded him of a thundercloud brewing on the horizon. There was violence in those eyes. There was contempt. She clearly thought that she was by far superior to him. But, search them as he did, he did not find the cold hard look of evil.
"Stop it!" He said to himself. "I can't just hang around here all day."
Roshi looked down at the girl's tail. It hung limply in his hand. A few drops of blood fell from the severed end of it as Roshi watched. It reminded him of a beheaded snake. It looked like a furry brown-gray snake. It gave him the creeps.
Roshi had slowly started to drop down to where the girl had fallen. If she were still conscious, he would have to fight her before she did any more damage. If not, well, that would give him some time to think.
He found her flat on her stomach in a slight depression in the ground. Her head was flopped to one side and she was laying on one of her arms, but other then the smoking hole in her bodysuit and the burnt flesh visible through the hole she didn't appear to be hurt. She was definitely not conscious. But even without being aware, her face was locked in a grimace of pure pain. Roshi found himself actually almost feeling sorry for the girl.
"Oh well, can't have you waking up while I am gone." He said more to himself then her.
Kneeling down he laid his right hand down on her forehead. Her skin felt cold and clammy, but he ignored it. Getting a sense of her, he made a "Sleeping Beauty" ball as his father had called it. The odd green ball of energy pulsated in a pattern very much like brainwaves during deep sleep. Roshi remembered getting hit by this attack a few times as a kid. Unless prepared for the attack, it immediately knocked a person out for several hours.
Of course, Roshi's father was empathic enough he could use the attack at range. Roshi had to be physically touching a person to get a good enough read on their mind to even have a chance at it working.
The attack was useless against anyone who knew it was coming however. All it took was altering one's thought patterns and concentrating to stay awake to make the attack worthless, but then the girl was already knocked out so that would not be a problem.
"Pst, zzzzzzz" Roshi dropped the ki ball on her head and it slowly spread out and sank into her. She slowly seemed to relax and actually sleep.
'Good,' he thought, 'now I can go back to Slip and have her look at this thing.' He once again looked at the tail. 'I can't help feeling evil after doing this to her.'
'Sure,' he realized, 'she was going around killing people, but if she isn't actually Saiyan, or with the funny color of her tail, if she is a hybrid of some sort that cannot go Ouzaru, then this was a rather distasteful action on my part.' Roshi paused for a moment before deciding she was less dangerous if left here rather then if he took her back to Capsule Corp. Sure, she would be easier to monitor at CC, but she could also do a lot more damage there.
Roshi flew up to head back when he saw the ship.
"That has to go. There may be things to help her heal in it" he realized as he said it.
BOOOM!!! One well placed blast to the rear of the ship where the engines were caused the whole thing to more or less vaporize.
'Man is she going to be pissed when she wakes up. Oh well, nothing I can do about it,' he thought to himself.
Roshi put his numerous thoughts out of his mind as he quickly flew back to the Capsule Corp.
* * * Later that evening at the Capsule Corp
"Come on Slip! How much longer is this going to take?" Roshi demanded as he paced the floor of her lab.
"Just a few more minutes. Roshi, you're terrible! Look if she wakes up you can go stop her from doing anything, but look at the GKSS! SHE HASN'T MOVED!" Slip practically screamed back at him. "You have been asking how much longer these tests will take for two hours!"
"If I knew I would have to sit around here doing nothing but running away from you and your needles, I would have brought the girl back here with me. There is no telling what she might do when she wakes up!"
"Which is precisely why you did not bring her here. My parents will kill me if anything happens to the Capsule Corp's complex. I mean, just how would have YOU restrained her once she woke up? Ever thought of that? It is far better that she wake up out in the middle of no-where where she can't do any real damage." Slip stated while looking at one more printout.
Slip got done with that and grabbed a syringe from her shelf.
Roshi not letting down his guard again noticed immediately.
"Hey get away from my with that! What are you some kind of Vampire! Haven't you taken enough of my blood?" Roshi said while scooting behind some equipment.
"Well I can't get any from Boxers or Tee, they both ran away." Slip said, "Besides for a tough guy like yourself, you are awfully queasy around needles. Don't you want to show-up those two babies?"
"No! If you need so much blood, why don't you prick your own hide?" Roshi said to his defense.
"Well, I could do that but I need more of your blood to run this last test, I didn't get enough last time." Slip said while attempting to corner him.
You mean when you had me looking at microscope and jabbed me in the butt?! That hurt by the way!" he said as he did a back flip over the table.
"Well if you hadn't jumped I would have stuck you in your arm where I was aiming for. Besides, when you jumped, you broke off the needle! If you would have just let me pull it out, it would not have hurt so much. DUH but no! YOU had to run around screaming like you were dying." She said
"Oh yeah well that is just..."
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
The conversation could have gone on well into the night, but the two of them where stopped by the one thing Roshi feared more then that needle in Slip's hand. The GKSS had detected the girl was waking up.
"Crap! Look at what you have done Slip! Now I am going to have to sneak back there slowly on the Kintoun so she does not detect me coming. Now could you at least tell me if she is a Saiyan or not? I mean if, I didn't have to pull of her tail. I may have some apologizing to do. EVEN though she has more to confess too!" Roshi quickly added the last comment to keep Slip from going off.
"Oh yeah, I knew she was a Saiyan two hours ago. And as far as I can tell she is a full blood. I was just testing traits and stuff for the past two hours, because as far as I can tell, she comes from a totally different family then either Goku or Vegeta." She replied from over at her desk, having given up trying to catch Roshi.
"YOU KNEW TWO HOURS AGO!?!?!?!? HOW Could you... ah you.. Oh never mind I don't even want to know. But you are about as absent minded at times as my pet dog."
"Oh you are so kind. Now don't you have to go save the world?"
"Good BYE Slip... If she manages to kick my butt, I will come after you in the afterlife." He said as he left the Capsule Corp. * * *
A nice short chapter. Oh well. Please Review.
