Chapter 12 They meet and the sparks fly
Sunday night about 9:45 p.m.
"Owwww my head," Ichigo said as she slowly came to.
She rolled over while slowly opening her eyes and then tried to blink them clear. "Wow that is a big star." She said as she caught sight of a large luminescent globe.
Ichigo stretched out and rubbed the last of the sleep stuff from her eyes. Then she blinked, dumbfounded. She was flat on her back blinking in shock.
"THAT'S NO STAR!! THAT'S A FULL MOON!!!" This was a shock to her. She had not been expecting a full moon. In fact she had only seen one twice before in her life.
Being a trained Saiyan she relaxed and waited for the indications that the Ouzaru transformation was taking her body over. She waited. Nothing happened.
Ichigo was fully awake in a millisecond. She rolled up into a sitting position... only to fall back onto her back in pain.
"AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
She suddenly remembered. She didn't have a tail anymore. It was gone and the area where it had been attached was now very very tender.
"AH AH AH AH AH.. Ok. Don't panic. Tails grow back. I just need to get to my regeneration tank and everything will be ok. This is not that big of a deal." She told herself in an attempt to not panic.
Remembering the boy who had put her into this situation, she reached up and turned on her scouter. She then turned it all the way up to the highest sensitivity setting.
"Damn! He seems to have disappeared. Well, He is going to have to die. Just as soon as I get my tail back." She said to herself
Ichigo got up, careful not to put pressure on the former location of her tail, and flew back to her ship. This was harder then it sounded because for some reason her sense of balance seemed to be off. She adjusted quickly enough, but for a little while, it felt like she was drunk.
After she had adjusted, she thought she was doing fairly well at keeping her balance. Then she saw her ship in the moonlight. It was over half destroyed. Pieces and parts were all over the place.
"MY SHIP!!! MY SHIP!!" She wailed as she lost her balance and flew right into a tree. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! HE IS GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!! I AM GOING TO KILL HIM AND EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS PLANET!!" she screamed as she flew to the rubble.
It took her no time to find the ruins of the regeneration tank.
"It's gone. I can't get my tail back now... I..." she suddenly went from mad as hell, to so deeply into shock that she was at a loss for words.
The next few minutes were a fog. The only thing that was even remotely intact was the bridge. Her room and all her possessions were spread like leaves in the wind. She found that the refrigerator was also gone. Along with every scrap of food she had, even the dreaded support rations.
She was in shock. Ichigo couldn't think straight. She absentmindedly rubbed her lower back where her tail had been.
"IIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAA HAAA that hurts! I have to look at the wound. It would almost be just my luck to get some weird infection now."
She tried to turn her head around to look at herself, but her armor was too restricting to allow her to get a good look at her rear, so she found a medkit and left the ruins of the ship to find something to eat before she tended the wound.
* * *
Ichigo found a small lake with a grassy beach near in the woods nearby. After killing and eating large furry animal that had attempted to attack her, she set about working on her tail.
She stripped out of her armor and then the bodysuit so that she could get enough flexibility to see what she was doing. Wearing only her workout bra and the mid-thigh length shorts that she wore under the body suit she looked at her wound.
"AH OH NOOOO IT'S BURNED! That, that, that means that I... I..." Ichigo realized then and there that she would never get her tail back, but she could not bring herself to say it. The realization hit her if anything worse then the knowledge of what the Changelings had done. HOW was she supposed to find the Vegeta rebels if she not only did not have a ship. But had lost her tail as well?
Low level guards and clumsy children loose their tails. Elite warriors and most definitely Crown Princesses did not. It was unheard of. It was shameful. Even if she saved everyone on Saiya she would be a mockery of her family. In one day, in one action that boy had destroyed her entire world far more then Blizzard had ever hoped to.
She carefully pealed down her shorts so she could rub some salve on the wound. The salve sent little lightning bolts up her spine, but she knew she had to cover the burn or it would probably swell up so much she wouldn't be able to walk let alone enact her revenge.
"I just need to calm down. Rushing into things blindly is what got me into this situation in the first place" Ichigo said with a sigh.
She looked out on the reflection of the moon on the water. Having grown up on a world that had no moon (it had been blown away long ago), her eyes adjusted very well to the moonlight. It was majestic, serene, and wholly beautiful to look at. The warm summer breeze and the clear night sky only complimented the mood.
'Strange,' she thought, 'I have never thought of moonlight for having any qualities except for the ability to grant my people great power. But, I can't deny that this is... is... relaxing.' Realizing what she had just thought, she quickly grabbed her scouter.
"Good, no one is coming." She said as she scanned the horizon.
Splish!...
Ichigo turned in time to see the tail of a huge fish disappear under the water.
'Just seeing the fish makes me hungry. That big furry brown thing was really not that filling,' she thought to herself. 'I think I will just have to go for a swim. She looked back at her back. Her shorts were not truly damaged and the hole that normally allowed her tail to extend through them was practically glaring at her. 'Well, the salve that I put on the burn is waterproof so that should not be a problem.'
Ichigo dove in. The water was clear and cold. She ignored the small amount of discomfort. The cold water felt so good on her stiff joints and muscles.
After a few minutes of just swimming for the sake of swimming, Ichigo caught a large fish and hauled it to shore.
It took a few moments to cook the fish and then she ate ravenously. Full and satisfied she checked her scouter once more and found no change. Not worried about her appearance, she sat down again to do some stretching. She had not been able to harness her ki during her fall, and she was quite bruised. Knowing that it would hurt her in the long run if she allowed herself to get tight and stiff, she set herself to relaxing and stretching out.
Her mind however had other things running through it. Actually, one thing to be specific. That Jerk.
She thought about him as she went through her routine.
'He looks like he is about my age. Maybe a little older. Tall, well built, but definitely not as bulky as most fighters. Then again, he was wearing that loose fitting orange, white and blue thing. So I really did not get a good look at him.'
'Well, he is not bad looking, with short black hair and that little widow's peak. Oh and his eyes. His face was so impassive, but he had such deep dark eyes.' "What am I thinking?" Ichigo asked herself. "He is definitely a member of the weak race that lives on this planet. He only had a power level of 5. Besides it doesn't matter what the idiot looked like as soon as I see him again, he is as good as dead." 'I think I'll make his death very slow and painful. I will have to be careful though, with only a power level of 5 he will be way too easy to kill.'
Ichigo started thinking about how she would slowly kill the weak pathetic young man who had so grievously wounded her. Suddenly she remembered something. 'Wait! But, he could float in the air, I saw him before he hit me with that ki blast. So how did he do that? Nothing with a power level that low can fly let alone fire a ki blast. I don't think he is normal. Either that or my stupid scouter is broken again. When I get done with my stretches I will have to look and see if my scouter picked anything more up from him.'
'Hmmm,' she thought, 'he knows about Saiyans.' "I have never seen such a grim set look from anyone before. He knew what he was doing. He also must have been afraid of the Ouzaru. Otherwise he would not have ripped off my tail. I must not kill him right out when I find him. I will need to ask him many questions. LIKE WHERE THE HECK ARE the Vegeta rebels?" Remembering once again the Green man and his statements, Ichigo paused. "Perhaps I should be more cautious, this trip has been a lot more then I ever bargained for."
* * *
Roshi flew up on the Kintoun. He could easily sense where she was. The girl's power level had spiked several times during the last forty minutes as he pushed the little cloud to go faster.
When he found her, he was quite surprised. She was doing stretches on the shore of a small lake. Beside her were the bones of a large animal, most likely a bear, and the bones of an equally large fish.
'Heh,' he thought, 'I didn't need to wait for Slip to tell me what she was, I could have known just by watching her eat.'
Roshi sat there on the Kintoun for several minutes just watching the girl stretch. Before, when she was wearing her armor and cape, he did not get a good look at her. Now he was getting an eyeful.
Roshi could not help but stare at her long lithe toned body. 'Wow, she is so very feminine, he thought to himself. She has such long legs, a small waist, flat toned abs, smallish yet firm aesthetically perfect breasts... and what the hell am I thinking? I don't think like this! I am not my namesake. If stories about Master Roshi's exploits were even half-true, the man would be trying to make out with the girl right now. I don't think that way. I respect women. I don't stare at their long shinning black hair and wonder what it would be like to touch it...'
Roshi could feel himself blushing with embarrassment as he realized that he really was ogling. 'Dende! This is bad! Think Roshi, she is the enemy, not some girl you want to ask out! Not to mention you yourself are off limits. Because you are trying to start dating Mariah. Mariah wouldn't like it much if she knew you where eyeing some barbarian cretin. Besides, I doubt the barbarian bitch would like it much even if I tried. She is a barbarian stop thinking of her as a girl.
After calling the girl a barbarian in his mind, he pictured her wearing the bearskin coated in mud with her hair snarled and matted. The image was ludicrous! And then he did it.
"ha hmm ah ah... oh shit." * * *
Ichigo had been in the middle of a butterfly stretch when she heard laughter.
She whipped her head around and up. She saw the same guy who had ripped off her tail. He was about twenty meters away sitting on that cloud of his.
Ichigo was in the air in moments. "YOU ARE GOING TO PAY! FIRST YOU RIP OFF MY TAIL, THEN YOU BLOW UP MY SHIP, AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING AT ME! I DON'T FIND IT FUNNY YOU JERK!"
"Hey wait, we don't have to fight!" The guy said as he jumped away from the cloud.
"Oh yes we do! Only the weak refuse to fight, and I am not weak!" Ichigo said as she pulled her arm back to charge a ki Punch.
"Yaah!" she screamed.
The guy moved to his left to avoid her punch and caught her wrist in his right hand.
WHOOMP!
Even though he did not take the attack directly, touching her wrist released the ki Ichigo had built up and threw the young man back. It took him a few moments to reorient himself as he spun in the air and hit a tree. This would have all been acceptable for Ichigo, but unfortunately, the disruption of her attack and subsequent release of energy had also thrown her back. She was thrown head over heals right into that stupid cloud.
Ichigo fell through the cloud and onto a rock.
'Darn! He reacted faster then I expected. I wish I had my scouter so I could see what his power level is.' Ichigo thought to herself. 'No one with a power-level of five would live through that blast!'
As Ichigo got back up to look for the stupid jerk, his cloud floated in front of her field of view. That cloud had seemed to slow her as she fell through it, as if it had wanted to hold her up, but could not.
'Oh well,' she thought, 'I might as well start to get even with him.'
"Well, You blew up my ship! I think it is only fair that I blow up your stupid cloud! Flare!" She called out to him as she shot the two handed version of her Blaze attack directly at the center of the cloud.
Ichigo saw the young man jump up and intercept the cone of the Flare. He was a blur of orange, white and blue.
"KIAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" He screamed at the top of his lungs. BOOM!!! The cone blew with a satisfying explosion. The smoke cloud slowly cleared. As far as Ichigo was concerned it did not matter if the smoke ever cleared. No fighter she had ever encountered could have lived through that heat.
"How?" The word managed to slip through her lips as she saw the sight before her. The young man floated there, arms crossed in front of his chest. His white bodysuit was slightly blackened, but there was no other apparent damage.
Her mind filled reckless abandon, she flew at him in rage.
* * * Roshi was in pain. He did not at the time realize how much pain, but he quickly realized that he had just encountered head on the two attacks that Piccolo had warned him about.
'Man I can be dumb at times. She comes at me with a glowing fist, and what do I do? Oh, I grab the thing like an idiot!'
Roshi looked down at his hand. His right hand was blistered and the skin had split in places. Blood was slowly oozing out of the torn flesh.
To make matters worse, he was hotter then hell. Or at least it felt like it. Roshi felt as though he were being slowly cooked. He was just glad that his Kiah had been big enough to block most of the heat of that last attack.
"I should have never listened to Slip. Stupid Saiyan bodysuit is one too many layers, even if it supposedly breathes." He said, as he subconsciously squirmed in the bodysuit he was not accustomed to wearing.
He saw the girl fly at him to attack once again. 'Oh, how I wish there was another way. Oh, how I wish I could reason with her.'
He did not have those options however, and he quickly cleared his mind to prepare for the assault.
* * *
"WOULD you two BOYS shut up!" Slip screamed at Tee and Boxers. "The fight has started!"
The two boys for their part quickly stopped their horseplay. Both of them knew better then to mess with Slip. She might only be their cousin and not training in fighting at all, but she was more then enough to cow them into doing whatever the heck she needed them to do. That and she had warned them against breaking any more of her lab equipment.
Slip's eyes were glued to the GKSS. While the orbiting satellites could not actually give a true video picture of what was going on, it did generate a very accurate computer generated video picture of the fight.
"The computer claims that the girl has a power level of about 49,000!" Boxers suddenly exclaimed. "Wow! Ah, Slip, what is Roshi at? The little indicator for him keeps flashing up a question mark."
"Well ah I don't really know." Slip admitted, "I know it is higher then that though."
"So ah do you think we should go help him?" Tee asked.
Slip grimaced. While Boxers and Tee were relatively strong, it did not take a rocket scientist to tell that the two of them not only did not want to fight, but would not add to the fight if they did fight.
"Why bother, the fight will be over before you could get there. I mean it should not take him that long to kill her and be done with it." Slip stated mater-o-factly.
"Ah Slip, if Roshi actually kills her, it will be an accident and I don't think I would want to be around when he gets back." Boxers replied.
Slip waived his comment off. "Oh really, and why not? The girl is evil, she killed a whole bunch of people and deserves to die. So why do you say he won't kill her?"
"Slip, for a smart person, you are really really stupid!" Tee replied. "I mean come on, did Goku EVER just Kill ANYONE?!? He thankfully did not even let Krillan kill Vegeta, even after Vegeta and the thug he was with destroyed a whole city, most of the Navy, and killed most of Goku's friends!"
"Okay OKAY would you to just shut up and let me watch the fight!" Slip screamed. "Why can't he just kill her and be done with it?" She then grumbled to herself.
Happy to have won and argument with their all too smart cousin, Tee and Boxers happily turned to the screen to watch. After giving each other a high five and victory dance that is.
* * *
"Ka-Me-Ha-Me-HA!!!!!" Roshi shouted as he sent a beam of blue white energy streaking towards the girl.
"Ieee-Ya" the girl fired a small blast of ki into the ground to help force herself into a backfliping summersault over the incoming beam.
Roshi saw an opening and fired off a few small ki blasts towards where the girl would land. He then dove right into the lake.
'Ok, think Roshi. She is fast, agile, and has very good reflexes. I won't be able to hit her with a Kamehameha if she knows it is coming. I need to out think her. What are her weaknesses? She can't sense ki. That is why I am hiding from her at the moment. I am stronger then her. Which means that the best thing is to keep it close hand to hand and just out power her. Right? No, that won't work either. In the few straight out physical exchanges she gave as well as she got. Hmmm...'
Roshi could hold his breath for a long time underwater, but he knew he did not have all day to sit there and ponder. The girl had not gone for her scouter yet, but it would not be long.
'AH HA! I know what I am going to do! It might be a bit dark for this, but I don't want to hit her with it anyway.'
Roshi set his plan into action.
* * *
Ichigo saw the ki blasts coming at her out of the corner of her eye. She had almost no time to dodge them, but she managed to change her direction just a bit.
WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! The three blasts hit the dirt at her feet and threw up a cloud of dust.
'Jerk! Now I can't see,' she thought as she flew up and out of the dust cloud.
'Ok, where the heck did he go? He can't have gone far. Oh well, he will have to come out eventually, I can just use this time to build up a really big Star Ripper.'
As she set about building up her ki attack, she suddenly realized that it was getting darker. Ichigo spun around to see what had happened to the moon. It was still there, but there seemed to be something sucking all the light from it right into the lake. In fact, the lake had a rather eerie glow to it now.
Suddenly the Jerk shot out of the water like a torpedo and was floating about 50 meters in the air. He had his arms spread out, up and in front of his head. Energy crackled between his hands.
Looking down at her, with his head neatly framed by the energy, he spoke. "What is your name? I am Son Roshi. I would like to know yours so that I can give you a proper burial if you force me to kill you."
'Son Roshi huh, probably means big Jerk in your language,' Ichigo thought to herself.
"You will not need to worry about that, but I will be honorable and give you a proper burial now that I know your name you stupid jerk!" she said as she fired off her attack.
"Wait Ah!!" he said as he had to rapidly move out of the way of the Star Ripper that she had shot at him.
'Oh no you don't you Jerk!' Ichigo thought to herself as she redirected the Star Ripper back towards his back.
"Fine be that way!" The guy said as he suddenly moved straight at her.
As Ichigo started to float backward in preparation for a hand to hand confrontation, the guy quickly clapped his hands together. "Photon Array!" he streamed.
* * *
"What the heck is he doing?" Slip screamed at the screen. "Why is he sitting on the bottom of that lake?"
"Ah, I don't know Slip. I do know that he must have a plan though." Tee said.
"Hey Boxers, isn't that the Photon Array?" Tee asked.
"Ah yeah it looks like that is what he is doing, but it is rather dark for that. Not to mention, that that attack is so slow it would never hit someone like her."
"Well then why would he be preparing that attack?" Tee wondered aloud.
"Duh! It is a distraction, but to what end?" Boxer stopped in contemplation.
The three of them watched as Roshi jumped out of the water and then paused in mid air. The girl threw some sort of attack at him, and he dodged.
Then Roshi powered up.
"50,000... 60,000... 70,000 Holy crap Roshi is at 70,000!!! I bet that that is even stronger then Piccolo!" Tee said with an air of wonder.
"72,400... he stopped at 72,400! At this power, he is going to make quick work of the girl!" Boxers chipped in.
"How high is that?" Slip asked.
"High..." both boys said at once.
"Look, he threw the Array! Four of them! That is pretty good for it being dark and all!" Tee said.
Then all three of them saw something that made their jaws hit the ground.
"HE SPLIT IN THREE!!!! THAT'S THE TRI-FORM!!! WHEN DID HE LEARN THAT!?!?!" both Tee and Boxers shouted.
"Why are there three Roshi's ON the screen? Tell me what is going on!!!" Slip demanded.
"It is one of Piccolo's techniques. Actually, it is based on one of Tien's old attacks but Piccolo is the only one who uses it now. He split his power three ways. So now he can attack her from three sides at once!" Tee told her.
"Yeah, and now each one of him has a power of like around 24,200 or so. This technique is used for training, he is committing suicide using it in a battle." Boxer replied slowly.
"I wouldn't use it, but that does not mean that it is suicide!" Tee argued.
Slip sat there in worry watching the fight while the two boys started fighting over the intelligence of Roshi's move.
"Please don't mess up Roshi" Slip said to the air. * * *
"Ah!" The bright flash momentarily blinded Ichigo as he launched the attack. As her eyes cleared, she saw that there were four very bright balls of light flying at her from different angles. What she did not see, was the guy.
"Where the hell did he go?" She said aloud as she spun to dodge the first of the balls of light.
"Ka-Me-Ha-Me-HA!" He screamed from below and to her left.
Ichigo turned to face that direction preparing to block the beam.
"MA-SEN-KO!" He shouted from above and behind her.
"What?!!?" Ichigo said as she jerked her head around to see a big yellow ball of energy rushing right at her. "How in the heck did he move that fast?
AHH!!!" she screamed as her ankle was suddenly grabbed.
"Waaaa!!!" BOOOM!!! She was thrown right into the blue beam. It crackled and sizzled as it hit her in the left shoulder.
WHAMMMM!!! BOOOM! A kick to the back sent her right into the big yellow ball. It hit her in the side of her left thigh and spun her around.
"AHHHH THAT HURT YOU JERK!!! FIGHT FAIR YOU HONORLESS BASTARD!" She screamed as she regained some control of her freefall. Spotting the guy out of the corner of her eye, she sent her still oncoming Star Ripper at him.
Then her right arm was grabbed. Whipping her head around, she saw him in two places. The one holding her arm kneed her in the gut before she could react and sent her sailing up again.
"KAMEHAMEHA!!!"
"MASENKO"
The two words were spoken at once. Whipping around she saw another one of the jerks! Seeing that she was right in the middle of two on coming attacks, she dodged straight up.
BOOOOOM!!
She ran right into one of those stupid bright light balls. It blew up and gave her a mild sunburn. This more then anything else pissed her off. Ichigo had a fair complexion, but she had NEVER been sunburned before.
The remaining attacks, including her Star Ripper hit the ground or each other and detonated in bright flashes of light. * * *
Well there you have it. The first of the major fights has started. Please Review.
I would also like you all to go read "Letters" It is a Gohan Videl fic co- written between myself and Kitsune Maxwell.
Here be the link http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=880046
I personally think it is good, so go read it. And while you are there check out Kitsune's other work.
Sunday night about 9:45 p.m.
"Owwww my head," Ichigo said as she slowly came to.
She rolled over while slowly opening her eyes and then tried to blink them clear. "Wow that is a big star." She said as she caught sight of a large luminescent globe.
Ichigo stretched out and rubbed the last of the sleep stuff from her eyes. Then she blinked, dumbfounded. She was flat on her back blinking in shock.
"THAT'S NO STAR!! THAT'S A FULL MOON!!!" This was a shock to her. She had not been expecting a full moon. In fact she had only seen one twice before in her life.
Being a trained Saiyan she relaxed and waited for the indications that the Ouzaru transformation was taking her body over. She waited. Nothing happened.
Ichigo was fully awake in a millisecond. She rolled up into a sitting position... only to fall back onto her back in pain.
"AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
She suddenly remembered. She didn't have a tail anymore. It was gone and the area where it had been attached was now very very tender.
"AH AH AH AH AH.. Ok. Don't panic. Tails grow back. I just need to get to my regeneration tank and everything will be ok. This is not that big of a deal." She told herself in an attempt to not panic.
Remembering the boy who had put her into this situation, she reached up and turned on her scouter. She then turned it all the way up to the highest sensitivity setting.
"Damn! He seems to have disappeared. Well, He is going to have to die. Just as soon as I get my tail back." She said to herself
Ichigo got up, careful not to put pressure on the former location of her tail, and flew back to her ship. This was harder then it sounded because for some reason her sense of balance seemed to be off. She adjusted quickly enough, but for a little while, it felt like she was drunk.
After she had adjusted, she thought she was doing fairly well at keeping her balance. Then she saw her ship in the moonlight. It was over half destroyed. Pieces and parts were all over the place.
"MY SHIP!!! MY SHIP!!" She wailed as she lost her balance and flew right into a tree. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! HE IS GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!! I AM GOING TO KILL HIM AND EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS PLANET!!" she screamed as she flew to the rubble.
It took her no time to find the ruins of the regeneration tank.
"It's gone. I can't get my tail back now... I..." she suddenly went from mad as hell, to so deeply into shock that she was at a loss for words.
The next few minutes were a fog. The only thing that was even remotely intact was the bridge. Her room and all her possessions were spread like leaves in the wind. She found that the refrigerator was also gone. Along with every scrap of food she had, even the dreaded support rations.
She was in shock. Ichigo couldn't think straight. She absentmindedly rubbed her lower back where her tail had been.
"IIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAA HAAA that hurts! I have to look at the wound. It would almost be just my luck to get some weird infection now."
She tried to turn her head around to look at herself, but her armor was too restricting to allow her to get a good look at her rear, so she found a medkit and left the ruins of the ship to find something to eat before she tended the wound.
* * *
Ichigo found a small lake with a grassy beach near in the woods nearby. After killing and eating large furry animal that had attempted to attack her, she set about working on her tail.
She stripped out of her armor and then the bodysuit so that she could get enough flexibility to see what she was doing. Wearing only her workout bra and the mid-thigh length shorts that she wore under the body suit she looked at her wound.
"AH OH NOOOO IT'S BURNED! That, that, that means that I... I..." Ichigo realized then and there that she would never get her tail back, but she could not bring herself to say it. The realization hit her if anything worse then the knowledge of what the Changelings had done. HOW was she supposed to find the Vegeta rebels if she not only did not have a ship. But had lost her tail as well?
Low level guards and clumsy children loose their tails. Elite warriors and most definitely Crown Princesses did not. It was unheard of. It was shameful. Even if she saved everyone on Saiya she would be a mockery of her family. In one day, in one action that boy had destroyed her entire world far more then Blizzard had ever hoped to.
She carefully pealed down her shorts so she could rub some salve on the wound. The salve sent little lightning bolts up her spine, but she knew she had to cover the burn or it would probably swell up so much she wouldn't be able to walk let alone enact her revenge.
"I just need to calm down. Rushing into things blindly is what got me into this situation in the first place" Ichigo said with a sigh.
She looked out on the reflection of the moon on the water. Having grown up on a world that had no moon (it had been blown away long ago), her eyes adjusted very well to the moonlight. It was majestic, serene, and wholly beautiful to look at. The warm summer breeze and the clear night sky only complimented the mood.
'Strange,' she thought, 'I have never thought of moonlight for having any qualities except for the ability to grant my people great power. But, I can't deny that this is... is... relaxing.' Realizing what she had just thought, she quickly grabbed her scouter.
"Good, no one is coming." She said as she scanned the horizon.
Splish!...
Ichigo turned in time to see the tail of a huge fish disappear under the water.
'Just seeing the fish makes me hungry. That big furry brown thing was really not that filling,' she thought to herself. 'I think I will just have to go for a swim. She looked back at her back. Her shorts were not truly damaged and the hole that normally allowed her tail to extend through them was practically glaring at her. 'Well, the salve that I put on the burn is waterproof so that should not be a problem.'
Ichigo dove in. The water was clear and cold. She ignored the small amount of discomfort. The cold water felt so good on her stiff joints and muscles.
After a few minutes of just swimming for the sake of swimming, Ichigo caught a large fish and hauled it to shore.
It took a few moments to cook the fish and then she ate ravenously. Full and satisfied she checked her scouter once more and found no change. Not worried about her appearance, she sat down again to do some stretching. She had not been able to harness her ki during her fall, and she was quite bruised. Knowing that it would hurt her in the long run if she allowed herself to get tight and stiff, she set herself to relaxing and stretching out.
Her mind however had other things running through it. Actually, one thing to be specific. That Jerk.
She thought about him as she went through her routine.
'He looks like he is about my age. Maybe a little older. Tall, well built, but definitely not as bulky as most fighters. Then again, he was wearing that loose fitting orange, white and blue thing. So I really did not get a good look at him.'
'Well, he is not bad looking, with short black hair and that little widow's peak. Oh and his eyes. His face was so impassive, but he had such deep dark eyes.' "What am I thinking?" Ichigo asked herself. "He is definitely a member of the weak race that lives on this planet. He only had a power level of 5. Besides it doesn't matter what the idiot looked like as soon as I see him again, he is as good as dead." 'I think I'll make his death very slow and painful. I will have to be careful though, with only a power level of 5 he will be way too easy to kill.'
Ichigo started thinking about how she would slowly kill the weak pathetic young man who had so grievously wounded her. Suddenly she remembered something. 'Wait! But, he could float in the air, I saw him before he hit me with that ki blast. So how did he do that? Nothing with a power level that low can fly let alone fire a ki blast. I don't think he is normal. Either that or my stupid scouter is broken again. When I get done with my stretches I will have to look and see if my scouter picked anything more up from him.'
'Hmmm,' she thought, 'he knows about Saiyans.' "I have never seen such a grim set look from anyone before. He knew what he was doing. He also must have been afraid of the Ouzaru. Otherwise he would not have ripped off my tail. I must not kill him right out when I find him. I will need to ask him many questions. LIKE WHERE THE HECK ARE the Vegeta rebels?" Remembering once again the Green man and his statements, Ichigo paused. "Perhaps I should be more cautious, this trip has been a lot more then I ever bargained for."
* * *
Roshi flew up on the Kintoun. He could easily sense where she was. The girl's power level had spiked several times during the last forty minutes as he pushed the little cloud to go faster.
When he found her, he was quite surprised. She was doing stretches on the shore of a small lake. Beside her were the bones of a large animal, most likely a bear, and the bones of an equally large fish.
'Heh,' he thought, 'I didn't need to wait for Slip to tell me what she was, I could have known just by watching her eat.'
Roshi sat there on the Kintoun for several minutes just watching the girl stretch. Before, when she was wearing her armor and cape, he did not get a good look at her. Now he was getting an eyeful.
Roshi could not help but stare at her long lithe toned body. 'Wow, she is so very feminine, he thought to himself. She has such long legs, a small waist, flat toned abs, smallish yet firm aesthetically perfect breasts... and what the hell am I thinking? I don't think like this! I am not my namesake. If stories about Master Roshi's exploits were even half-true, the man would be trying to make out with the girl right now. I don't think that way. I respect women. I don't stare at their long shinning black hair and wonder what it would be like to touch it...'
Roshi could feel himself blushing with embarrassment as he realized that he really was ogling. 'Dende! This is bad! Think Roshi, she is the enemy, not some girl you want to ask out! Not to mention you yourself are off limits. Because you are trying to start dating Mariah. Mariah wouldn't like it much if she knew you where eyeing some barbarian cretin. Besides, I doubt the barbarian bitch would like it much even if I tried. She is a barbarian stop thinking of her as a girl.
After calling the girl a barbarian in his mind, he pictured her wearing the bearskin coated in mud with her hair snarled and matted. The image was ludicrous! And then he did it.
"ha hmm ah ah... oh shit." * * *
Ichigo had been in the middle of a butterfly stretch when she heard laughter.
She whipped her head around and up. She saw the same guy who had ripped off her tail. He was about twenty meters away sitting on that cloud of his.
Ichigo was in the air in moments. "YOU ARE GOING TO PAY! FIRST YOU RIP OFF MY TAIL, THEN YOU BLOW UP MY SHIP, AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING AT ME! I DON'T FIND IT FUNNY YOU JERK!"
"Hey wait, we don't have to fight!" The guy said as he jumped away from the cloud.
"Oh yes we do! Only the weak refuse to fight, and I am not weak!" Ichigo said as she pulled her arm back to charge a ki Punch.
"Yaah!" she screamed.
The guy moved to his left to avoid her punch and caught her wrist in his right hand.
WHOOMP!
Even though he did not take the attack directly, touching her wrist released the ki Ichigo had built up and threw the young man back. It took him a few moments to reorient himself as he spun in the air and hit a tree. This would have all been acceptable for Ichigo, but unfortunately, the disruption of her attack and subsequent release of energy had also thrown her back. She was thrown head over heals right into that stupid cloud.
Ichigo fell through the cloud and onto a rock.
'Darn! He reacted faster then I expected. I wish I had my scouter so I could see what his power level is.' Ichigo thought to herself. 'No one with a power-level of five would live through that blast!'
As Ichigo got back up to look for the stupid jerk, his cloud floated in front of her field of view. That cloud had seemed to slow her as she fell through it, as if it had wanted to hold her up, but could not.
'Oh well,' she thought, 'I might as well start to get even with him.'
"Well, You blew up my ship! I think it is only fair that I blow up your stupid cloud! Flare!" She called out to him as she shot the two handed version of her Blaze attack directly at the center of the cloud.
Ichigo saw the young man jump up and intercept the cone of the Flare. He was a blur of orange, white and blue.
"KIAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" He screamed at the top of his lungs. BOOM!!! The cone blew with a satisfying explosion. The smoke cloud slowly cleared. As far as Ichigo was concerned it did not matter if the smoke ever cleared. No fighter she had ever encountered could have lived through that heat.
"How?" The word managed to slip through her lips as she saw the sight before her. The young man floated there, arms crossed in front of his chest. His white bodysuit was slightly blackened, but there was no other apparent damage.
Her mind filled reckless abandon, she flew at him in rage.
* * * Roshi was in pain. He did not at the time realize how much pain, but he quickly realized that he had just encountered head on the two attacks that Piccolo had warned him about.
'Man I can be dumb at times. She comes at me with a glowing fist, and what do I do? Oh, I grab the thing like an idiot!'
Roshi looked down at his hand. His right hand was blistered and the skin had split in places. Blood was slowly oozing out of the torn flesh.
To make matters worse, he was hotter then hell. Or at least it felt like it. Roshi felt as though he were being slowly cooked. He was just glad that his Kiah had been big enough to block most of the heat of that last attack.
"I should have never listened to Slip. Stupid Saiyan bodysuit is one too many layers, even if it supposedly breathes." He said, as he subconsciously squirmed in the bodysuit he was not accustomed to wearing.
He saw the girl fly at him to attack once again. 'Oh, how I wish there was another way. Oh, how I wish I could reason with her.'
He did not have those options however, and he quickly cleared his mind to prepare for the assault.
* * *
"WOULD you two BOYS shut up!" Slip screamed at Tee and Boxers. "The fight has started!"
The two boys for their part quickly stopped their horseplay. Both of them knew better then to mess with Slip. She might only be their cousin and not training in fighting at all, but she was more then enough to cow them into doing whatever the heck she needed them to do. That and she had warned them against breaking any more of her lab equipment.
Slip's eyes were glued to the GKSS. While the orbiting satellites could not actually give a true video picture of what was going on, it did generate a very accurate computer generated video picture of the fight.
"The computer claims that the girl has a power level of about 49,000!" Boxers suddenly exclaimed. "Wow! Ah, Slip, what is Roshi at? The little indicator for him keeps flashing up a question mark."
"Well ah I don't really know." Slip admitted, "I know it is higher then that though."
"So ah do you think we should go help him?" Tee asked.
Slip grimaced. While Boxers and Tee were relatively strong, it did not take a rocket scientist to tell that the two of them not only did not want to fight, but would not add to the fight if they did fight.
"Why bother, the fight will be over before you could get there. I mean it should not take him that long to kill her and be done with it." Slip stated mater-o-factly.
"Ah Slip, if Roshi actually kills her, it will be an accident and I don't think I would want to be around when he gets back." Boxers replied.
Slip waived his comment off. "Oh really, and why not? The girl is evil, she killed a whole bunch of people and deserves to die. So why do you say he won't kill her?"
"Slip, for a smart person, you are really really stupid!" Tee replied. "I mean come on, did Goku EVER just Kill ANYONE?!? He thankfully did not even let Krillan kill Vegeta, even after Vegeta and the thug he was with destroyed a whole city, most of the Navy, and killed most of Goku's friends!"
"Okay OKAY would you to just shut up and let me watch the fight!" Slip screamed. "Why can't he just kill her and be done with it?" She then grumbled to herself.
Happy to have won and argument with their all too smart cousin, Tee and Boxers happily turned to the screen to watch. After giving each other a high five and victory dance that is.
* * *
"Ka-Me-Ha-Me-HA!!!!!" Roshi shouted as he sent a beam of blue white energy streaking towards the girl.
"Ieee-Ya" the girl fired a small blast of ki into the ground to help force herself into a backfliping summersault over the incoming beam.
Roshi saw an opening and fired off a few small ki blasts towards where the girl would land. He then dove right into the lake.
'Ok, think Roshi. She is fast, agile, and has very good reflexes. I won't be able to hit her with a Kamehameha if she knows it is coming. I need to out think her. What are her weaknesses? She can't sense ki. That is why I am hiding from her at the moment. I am stronger then her. Which means that the best thing is to keep it close hand to hand and just out power her. Right? No, that won't work either. In the few straight out physical exchanges she gave as well as she got. Hmmm...'
Roshi could hold his breath for a long time underwater, but he knew he did not have all day to sit there and ponder. The girl had not gone for her scouter yet, but it would not be long.
'AH HA! I know what I am going to do! It might be a bit dark for this, but I don't want to hit her with it anyway.'
Roshi set his plan into action.
* * *
Ichigo saw the ki blasts coming at her out of the corner of her eye. She had almost no time to dodge them, but she managed to change her direction just a bit.
WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! The three blasts hit the dirt at her feet and threw up a cloud of dust.
'Jerk! Now I can't see,' she thought as she flew up and out of the dust cloud.
'Ok, where the heck did he go? He can't have gone far. Oh well, he will have to come out eventually, I can just use this time to build up a really big Star Ripper.'
As she set about building up her ki attack, she suddenly realized that it was getting darker. Ichigo spun around to see what had happened to the moon. It was still there, but there seemed to be something sucking all the light from it right into the lake. In fact, the lake had a rather eerie glow to it now.
Suddenly the Jerk shot out of the water like a torpedo and was floating about 50 meters in the air. He had his arms spread out, up and in front of his head. Energy crackled between his hands.
Looking down at her, with his head neatly framed by the energy, he spoke. "What is your name? I am Son Roshi. I would like to know yours so that I can give you a proper burial if you force me to kill you."
'Son Roshi huh, probably means big Jerk in your language,' Ichigo thought to herself.
"You will not need to worry about that, but I will be honorable and give you a proper burial now that I know your name you stupid jerk!" she said as she fired off her attack.
"Wait Ah!!" he said as he had to rapidly move out of the way of the Star Ripper that she had shot at him.
'Oh no you don't you Jerk!' Ichigo thought to herself as she redirected the Star Ripper back towards his back.
"Fine be that way!" The guy said as he suddenly moved straight at her.
As Ichigo started to float backward in preparation for a hand to hand confrontation, the guy quickly clapped his hands together. "Photon Array!" he streamed.
* * *
"What the heck is he doing?" Slip screamed at the screen. "Why is he sitting on the bottom of that lake?"
"Ah, I don't know Slip. I do know that he must have a plan though." Tee said.
"Hey Boxers, isn't that the Photon Array?" Tee asked.
"Ah yeah it looks like that is what he is doing, but it is rather dark for that. Not to mention, that that attack is so slow it would never hit someone like her."
"Well then why would he be preparing that attack?" Tee wondered aloud.
"Duh! It is a distraction, but to what end?" Boxer stopped in contemplation.
The three of them watched as Roshi jumped out of the water and then paused in mid air. The girl threw some sort of attack at him, and he dodged.
Then Roshi powered up.
"50,000... 60,000... 70,000 Holy crap Roshi is at 70,000!!! I bet that that is even stronger then Piccolo!" Tee said with an air of wonder.
"72,400... he stopped at 72,400! At this power, he is going to make quick work of the girl!" Boxers chipped in.
"How high is that?" Slip asked.
"High..." both boys said at once.
"Look, he threw the Array! Four of them! That is pretty good for it being dark and all!" Tee said.
Then all three of them saw something that made their jaws hit the ground.
"HE SPLIT IN THREE!!!! THAT'S THE TRI-FORM!!! WHEN DID HE LEARN THAT!?!?!" both Tee and Boxers shouted.
"Why are there three Roshi's ON the screen? Tell me what is going on!!!" Slip demanded.
"It is one of Piccolo's techniques. Actually, it is based on one of Tien's old attacks but Piccolo is the only one who uses it now. He split his power three ways. So now he can attack her from three sides at once!" Tee told her.
"Yeah, and now each one of him has a power of like around 24,200 or so. This technique is used for training, he is committing suicide using it in a battle." Boxer replied slowly.
"I wouldn't use it, but that does not mean that it is suicide!" Tee argued.
Slip sat there in worry watching the fight while the two boys started fighting over the intelligence of Roshi's move.
"Please don't mess up Roshi" Slip said to the air. * * *
"Ah!" The bright flash momentarily blinded Ichigo as he launched the attack. As her eyes cleared, she saw that there were four very bright balls of light flying at her from different angles. What she did not see, was the guy.
"Where the hell did he go?" She said aloud as she spun to dodge the first of the balls of light.
"Ka-Me-Ha-Me-HA!" He screamed from below and to her left.
Ichigo turned to face that direction preparing to block the beam.
"MA-SEN-KO!" He shouted from above and behind her.
"What?!!?" Ichigo said as she jerked her head around to see a big yellow ball of energy rushing right at her. "How in the heck did he move that fast?
AHH!!!" she screamed as her ankle was suddenly grabbed.
"Waaaa!!!" BOOOM!!! She was thrown right into the blue beam. It crackled and sizzled as it hit her in the left shoulder.
WHAMMMM!!! BOOOM! A kick to the back sent her right into the big yellow ball. It hit her in the side of her left thigh and spun her around.
"AHHHH THAT HURT YOU JERK!!! FIGHT FAIR YOU HONORLESS BASTARD!" She screamed as she regained some control of her freefall. Spotting the guy out of the corner of her eye, she sent her still oncoming Star Ripper at him.
Then her right arm was grabbed. Whipping her head around, she saw him in two places. The one holding her arm kneed her in the gut before she could react and sent her sailing up again.
"KAMEHAMEHA!!!"
"MASENKO"
The two words were spoken at once. Whipping around she saw another one of the jerks! Seeing that she was right in the middle of two on coming attacks, she dodged straight up.
BOOOOOM!!
She ran right into one of those stupid bright light balls. It blew up and gave her a mild sunburn. This more then anything else pissed her off. Ichigo had a fair complexion, but she had NEVER been sunburned before.
The remaining attacks, including her Star Ripper hit the ground or each other and detonated in bright flashes of light. * * *
Well there you have it. The first of the major fights has started. Please Review.
I would also like you all to go read "Letters" It is a Gohan Videl fic co- written between myself and Kitsune Maxwell.
Here be the link http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=880046
I personally think it is good, so go read it. And while you are there check out Kitsune's other work.
