I wish I owned DBZ, but I don't. I own DVD's and tapes, but it just isn't the same. I also don't own the right to Starcraft or any of the music pieces you see selected, just copies of merchandise, such a shame. The artists that created them are geniuses and we all must bow to them.
Chapter 22: Pre Invasion
I stumbled out of the gravity chamber six hours later, feeling the effects of Vegeta's word. Vegeta had taking it up to five hundred time times gravity just as he promised, no doubt due to my constant jokes. That and a power punch from a Super Saiyan three at that gravity really hurts! Gohan was in similar shape in that department, Goku put him through the wringer as far as training goes, but that was expected. We weren't allowed to power up to full because Vegeta suggested it would pay off more. The plan was simple though, Vegeta and Goku would take the other Saiyans to the time chamber for training for a few days, and the last day would be used as rest and final planning.
"So why don't we all just go to the time chamber now anyway? Wouldn't that be easier, and things get done faster?" I had asked, dodging a punch from Vegeta.
"Because boy, if we don't make you young again first, well you probably would not survive the next night," he smirked slightly.
"What do you mean by that?"
"The transformation back to a child will make that bond you've started subside instantly. Whenever mates or future mates are apart for a long time, they tend to want each other pretty bad. Your mate would be much stronger when she came back, get my drift?" Oh that's what he meant. I nodded, parrying a kick and punching towards his face, then turning to spin kick.
I sighed slightly while sticking that part of the conversation into the back of my head. I looked around the halls, using my ki sense for all it was worth at the moment, until catching something way down the hall.
"Where is everyone?" Goku asked.
"The brats are over at your place, no doubt that harpy mate of yours has bashed them over the head a few thousand times by now. The woman and the other Saiyans are down in her lab," Vegeta said calmly, walking in that direction. We followed, before Mom came running out and up to us, quite an excited look on her face. In her hands she held a large and fancy looking pistol, the barrel had to have been about eight inches in length, one in diameter. She met us right in front of the party room that we had closed up.
"Hey guys, check out my newest invention! This will fry some Zerg for us!" Mom held out the pistol, letting us look it over.
"What is that inferior weapon woman? We have no need for such things when our fists can move mountains!"
Mom frowned, "As I recall hearing, you wanted to know if conventional weapons worked on the Zerg, well they don't really! So I made one that does, observe!" She hit the button on the door, opening up the party room that hadn't been touched since the Zerg had gotten in there. It was dark inside, till she hit the lights, but no scattered ki showed up, nonetheless there were still dead Zerg everywhere. She picked out a Zergling that was lying on its back with its feet in the air and fired. A red beam shot out of the pistol and struck the ling, and damn near vaporized it on the spot. She picked out another one, firing and it exploded quickly without much of a hit. Vegeta looked slightly amused, Goku and Gohan impressed as Mom just turned back for opinions.
"I have to hand it to you woman, you know how to make Zergling stew pretty well," Vegeta snorted slightly.
"Well I'm making new and harder armor for everyone, and I plan to include these little toys to come with them on a holster. I don't care if you don't use them Vegeta, but think of it this way: Run out of energy and it might be something to consider, we're not exactly facing one warrior here. My dad is starting on making a bunch for the King's armies!" she screeched slightly at the end.
"Fine woman, just don't give any to the brats," Vegeta grunted and left the room quickly, in search of food.
"What do you call that little thing Bulma?" Gohan asked.
"About time someone asked, I really don't know what to call it Gohan. Maybe a Zerg buster or something?"
"Maybe, does it run out of power at all?" I asked.
"Only if the sun get completely blocked out, or its nighttime. It has solar panels installed on the top and on the handle, and it has a back up battery. But that won't last but a few shots past the normal charge up, so you've got to be careful. On a full charge you could probably get about thirty shots off before you need to let it charge back up, if the sun is out then it charges quickly. I figured if you guys didn't use these, then we weakling humans could at least right?"
"Thanks Bulma, we'll give them a shot at least," Gohan said before walking towards the door, "C'mon Dad, you know how Mom is around dinner time!"
Goku quit idolizing the weapon and quickly looked fearful, "Coming!" We watched the two run out the door, before my own stomach signaled it needed food. I sensed Fasha and Bardock coming down the bending halls towards us, along with the rest of the crew behind them.
"What's up guys?" I asked.
"We were studying some of the schematics Bulma had managed to figure out in according to that disk and book you brought back, and by using long range scans, we managed to decipher all the different Zerg types. It is a little difficult to imagine these things in a game meant for amusement, but your computer was able to compute the results rather accurately," Bardock began.
"Well I am a genius you know! Think of it as a good way to come up with a battle plan! When we meet everyone here tomorrow I'll give a presentation on them with the kid!"
"You're making it sound like a press conference, you remember the last one we had here?" I chuckled. Before I could react, a certain metal device clanged over my sore head.
"And that was yours and Trunks' fault! Oh yes, Vegeta told me about that, little sneaks!"
"Hey I'm not the one that blew up all the reporters!"
Mom calmed herself and put the frying pan away, "Good point, and Vegeta isn't the master of control is he?" The crew remained silent, maybe out of respect, or maybe they didn't want to taste metal. On cue though, six stomachs growled, signaling what everyone was thinking.
"I suppose your ungodly appetites need cleansing now? The robots should be about done anyway, if Vegeta hasn't scarfed it all. Go on, get going!"
-
The crew walked down the hall for food quickly, though Fasha and I took our time.
"Hope you're ready for tonight?" she said slyly.
"What's tonight?" I asked, though I shouldn't have.
"Well, since it's our last night like this, I figured we would enjoy it," she hinted big time.
"I don't know if I can move," I laughed a little, "Vegeta wiped me out in that gravity room!"
"Oh that's okay, you don't need to move, but you'll be wiped out even more! You won't have trouble sleeping after tonight, I guarantee it!" Great, I thought, full of sarcasm.
"Oh shut up, you like it and we both know it!" Good point.
"Well when you're up there in the time chamber and training to become a Super Saiyan, remember, the change only comes in response to a need, not a desire. No doubt Goku and Vegeta will tell you that, but if you want a good example, picture a Zergling or Frieza killing me for instance, and picture that over and over until the rage takes over. My first transformation was like that, a bad dream got to me and I transformed," I suggested.
Fasha looked slightly worried about that, "Will I really be gone for a year and only a day will pass here?"
"Two years according to Vegeta, two days."
"You know I'm gonna ride you like no tomorrow when I get back?"
I chuckled, "I doubt it, Vegeta said that the youth change will break that up. Good thing too because I doubt my child body could handle you!"
She punched my arm playfully, "I'll remember that you little worm!"
-
We came into the kitchen, seeing everyone had just set down and were munching already, and we jumped in. Afterwards I was feeling even more whipped, but the meal felt good to get down and recharge my energy, enough to get to bed before it was zapped away again by Fasha. Luckily for me, or maybe not, I fell asleep due to exhaustion right in the middle of the action.
"Typical male," Fasha pouted as I woke up next to her around dawn.
"What now?" I had a nagging headache.
"Falling asleep in the middle of fun, oh well, I guess I am a lot of woman for you shorty!"
"Thanks future mate, I'll remember that," I muttered, getting a slap to the face an instant later.
"Oh I just know my hair will be graying out while I'm waiting on your piddly ass to get older again!"
"Does that mean I can call you an old maid?" I cracked, getting another hand to come across my cheek. The door slammed open, revealing Vegeta with a familiar looking device in his hand.
"Get up and dressed boy! Time to go Dragonball hunting! Fortunately Kakarot and the brats saved us some trouble and found four of them last night, so we only need to find three! Well, what the hell are you waiting for, we have training to do!"
"Do you mind?" I asked, blushing horribly under the blankets.
"Hurry it up then brat!" Vegeta stormed out and down the stairs, ki flaring dangerously.
"Gotta go," I shrugged and got up, noticing Fasha had hooked my tail around hers. I carefully untangled them and dressed in training pants and a muscle shirt. Slipping on my boots, I saw the great look of disappointment in Fasha's eye, obviously she was dreading this day.
"Well, see what you got yourself into?" I laughed and slugged her shoulder slightly, getting a small smile in return. She jumped up and gave me more than just a playful peck on the cheek, more like the make out session of ages.
"Go do what your meant to do, I'll be waiting here!" She remained in my room as I shut the door and headed downstairs. In the lobby stood Vegeta, Trunks and Gohan, all looking ready to go, Gohan sported a bag with four balls inside, no doubt other dragonballs. To this point, I hadn't even seen the Earth balls for my own eyes, only the Namek balls a few days ago. He set the bag down and emptied its contents onto the lobby table, before picking up the bag again.
"Okay brats, the nearest one is located about five hundred miles in that direction, Trunks and I will get that one. The other two are pretty close together, you and Kaka-brat there can get those two, about twenty-five hundred miles in that direction!" Vegeta pointed to the southeast, and then headed out the door, Trunks in tow.
"Well bro, we got partnered again. Let's do it!" Gohan smiled and took off out the door into the air, I followed just a half step behind.
-
About an hour later we got within a mile of the first Dragonball. We hadn't gone as fast as we could have, but we weren't going slow either.
"The ball is almost directly below us in that forest, let's split up and look around!" Gohan suggested, dropping into the treetops. I sighed and did the same, careful not to scare the life out of a few birds and monkeys that had taken up residence there. I searched left and Gohan right. I right away looked through the trees as I came down, but no sign of a small orange ball with a red star, so I started pushing through the shrubs. A few animals scampered away as I did, searching the first of what had to be a dozen or so thick bushes. So far no sign of anything out of the ordinary, so I moved on. After the fifth bush, I started to wonder if it was there at all. Then I bumped a hard rock, one that was quite smooth and hidden. I pushed some leaves and branches aside to see a bright glow of orange shine off of it.
"Gohan, I found it!" I was reaching for the ball, careful so not to damage the bush too badly, when the leaves ahead of me parted, and a large and wet snout came sniffing through. The eyes that followed were big and brown, to match the big face and brown fur behind it. It opened its mouth and attempted to take the ball. I quickly grabbed the ball and yanked it out before the bear's jaws could close and started running crazily back towards Gohan, who was also running from a bear and headed right towards me with his bear in pursuit. I looked back to see mine still giving quick chase. Gohan and I gave each other a quick glance, before meeting at the middle and taking off into the air. The result left two bears lying on the ground, seeing stars.
"Sorry about that guys!" Gohan apologized, whereas Vegeta would have blasted them to hell. I shook my head and handed him the ball, he pocketed it in his now empty backpack.
"Now for the next one, according to the radar its about fifty miles that way!" Gohan said, putting the radar away in his pants pocket. We blasted off in the southerly direction, leaving the forest quickly and entering a grassy plain with little in the way of trees. As we got within ten miles of the ball, I sensed something strange. It wasn't ki, well it kind of was, but the feeling was coming from the ground. I looked down and gasped to see that the grass was withering away right below me, and quickly. As we got closer, Gohan started to notice it as well, and we were both surprised when we reached a barren area in the middle of the plains, but the dirt wasn't brown. Instead of brown dirt and dead grass, there was only a smelly purple substance that seemed to take place over the ground, living on its own, and I recognized it very well. Soon scattered ki filled my senses, and Gohan's head snapped up in confusion.
"Gohan, how far away is the ball?" I asked.
He pulled out the radar again, "Just a few miles ahead!"
"I was afraid of that, the Zerg must have grabbed the Dragonball and have it somewhere around here!"
"How do you know?"
"You see that purple crap on the ground, the Zerg build their structures on that shit, not to mention that stuff kills off the surrounding lands!"
"So we should blast that stuff off?" Gohan looked confused.
"It won't do any good. We have to destroy the structure that maintains it, and then it will vanish on its own. I'm betting we'll find that and the Dragonball in the base, look there's more of it!" Sure enough we began flying over a huge purple plain, and I started to see small buildings setting atop the dead ground.
"The ball is in that main structure up ahead, the largest one. Aw, man, how are we gonna get in and get it out unnoticed?"
"We don't, we'll have to force our way in and get our hands dirty! C'mon Gohan, we can do it, these freaks aren't here for friendly chats, and its time for a warm welcome!" I said, powering up a bit and blasting ahead. I was a bit anxious to fight them this time, more confident that I could take them without mistakes.
"Verto wait! Let's think this through!" Gohan shouted up, before repeating my action to catch up. We landed outside the largest building, also known as the primary hive cluster. Around us were Zerg drones, peasants so to speak, conducting typical activity, no warriors to speak of.
"Okay, I was sort of expecting a party down here," I said, scanning around. Scattered ki was all around, and it was more like a static TV after the channels go out, hard to pinpoint even the basic drones. I looked above to see a large flyer of some kind that sported large tentacles and antennae. I knew this to be an Overlord, a form of control for the Zerg when they had a large army underway. The Overlord then uttered a low rumble that reminded me of a foghorn. And instantly there were tons of Zerglings, Hydras and a few other types surrounding us, all of them were covered in purple dirt and a dug out hole beneath them.
"Nice way to stay hidden," Gohan said, dropping into a fighting stance. I dropped back as well, back-to-back with Gohan and watching for the first attacker. All of the minions were hissing loudly, but none had made a move yet, though the closest one couldn't have been eight feet away.
"Okay, what now," Gohan said.
"What else, fight our way through of course!" I said with pride.
"I don't know if you noticed, but there's about a hundred of them! Surely there's a diplomatic way to do this!"
"The scars on my chest will be on yours if you tried that," I said, letting my energy rise further, but not quickly. The hissing and growling continued, but not one made a move.
"Listen, we just want the Dragonball, and we'll leave!" Gohan shouted aloud. The response he got was louder hissing, snarls and growls.
"Happy Gohan?" I asked.
"So these are the warriors that are to be the thorns in the side of my master? Not as impressive as I expected, but then Majin Buu didn't seem like he would be much either now did he?" Someone called out. It was a strangely female voice that spoke from the Zerg pack. The Zerg slowly separated for a small figure with many appendages. It was a female, skin color green with a tight and black body suit that seemed to be made of dark scales. Her hair was barely even that, each strand was thick and layered, sticking out like dreadlocks straight outwards and in random directions. Her arms sported large and very lethal looking claws. Her lips were dark purple, and her face covered on the sides with dark colored blood vessels. Her back was laced with blade-like talons that almost looked like wings, but were not. But the most fearsome part of her had to be her eyes. The eyebrows were drawn upwards in either direction, and the shadow from her hair covered everything but her eyes themselves. They were an evil yellow that seemed to make my heart stop in fear. Something was very odd about this one; I could sense a distinct energy signal within her scattered feeling.
"But then again, Buu did wipe out the first half of my expedition before I could actually get here! Curse that Babidi for blocking our Nydus warp gate!"
"Warp gate?" Gohan stuttered.
"Why yes little Saiyan, that is correct. We had instant transportation set up to this location for our entire race to invade from, but that damned wizard beat us to the punch and destroyed this end of it so he could revive Majin Buu before we got here to stop him. Once Buu was released, my master the Overmind decided that Earth could wait, as it was about to be blown up by Buu anyway. That's when we got the first signal, one that I believe came from you," she said as she pointed to Gohan.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that little power signal that is unique to you, well not as much anymore. This one also emits that power, and it is the power we search for constantly!" she explained, pointing to me as well.
"She means our mystic powerup Gohan, it emits Psi, the energy I told you about earlier," I said, not taking an eye off the Zerg woman.
"Very good young Saiyan. All beings emit Psionic energy, which is spiritual in nature. But there are no beings in this part of your universe that should have this much coming off of them. Majin Buu and the demon King Dabura were the only ones we knew about, and they are both gone now. Then you two come along, strong as it is and capable of defeating many Zerg warriors easily with your basic ki. Psi is a deeper energy that is hard to find. We have discovered your inner potential and deducted that you two would begin learning your Psi control soon, as you're already emitting a great amount of it. My master the Overmind has determined that you two now have two options," she stated, hands on her hips.
"And those are?" I asked in a rather nasty voice.
She wasn't affected by my tone in the least, "You can join our great family now, we would use you to increase the overall strength or the Zerg greatly. You two would become loyal servants of my master the Overmind and would receive full knowledge on use of your Psi. That will in turn allow you to advance further as warriors since both ki and Psi can be mixed together. Or there's option two, the one where you foolishly oppose our cause, try to battle us and end up getting killed, then forced to become our servants anyway. Trust me, you don't want option two. If you willing to join us now, you won't have to be put through the torture of soul binding to the Overmind!" she stepped a little closer.
"Hand ourselves over, or risk opposition huh?" Gohan asked. She nodded and grinned slightly.
"You ready for this, it's going to be ugly!" Gohan thought at me.
I grinned, "Do you even have to ask?"
"After careful consideration, I think we'll gamble on option two!" Gohan said as he and I started ki blasting all around us. This wasn't what the female Zerg expected, and narrowly missed being hit by a blast. A Zergling had jumped in front of her and got blasted instead.
"Take this freaks!" I shouted, powering more ki and letting loose a rapid-fire rampage. Zerglings dropped like flies around us before they could get closer, bodies littered the ground quickly. The Zerg woman had disappeared into the crowd of Zerg that rushed towards us, only to get plastered down by our ki blasts. Pretty soon the bodies stacked up, Gohan and I weren't taking chances on just injured Zerg and were not holding much back on our ki blasts. Then the Zerg numbers seemed to double and come at us quickly, making us revert to brute fighting. I punched one Zergling straight in the jaw, dislocating it instantly before planting a boot right through its stomach and chest area, killing it instantly. I kicked the dead Zergling off my boot and into another one, knocking it away. I sensed the girl's ki come back towards us, but I had to focus on the Zerglings so they couldn't get their claws on me.
Suddenly the air's energy shifted greatly, and energy I could see but not sense seemed to appear in the form of blue lightning. It wasn't static lightning though, as I could sense that. No this is much different. The lightning surrounded us and all the close proximity Zerglings growled in pain before exploding harshly. Then the blue lightning bore down on us and struck my limbs. Oh crap, it's a Psi Storm! Right away I screamed in pain along with Gohan, and the energy burned into my skin, before leaving a numbing sensation as it shocked us. The Psi lightning continued around us, striking in various places, head included. I tried to power out of the attack, but it struck me down hard before I could get my bearings. I felt something smack the back of my head and I was out like a light. The last thing I remember was Gohan landing beside me and that horrible stench of the purple ground.