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 9: Strategic Warfare

"Come on you freaks, fight me you fuckin cowards!" I shouted, knocking a kamikaze flyer away with my fist when it buzzed by. I was pissed, extremely pissed. The entire battle had me blasting and beating the crap out of the many Zerg I came across, but my Saiyan pride was taking a hit. None of the Zerg had even attempted to fight with me, at least that I'd seen anyway before I sent them on their merry way to hell. All of them either avoided or ignored me completely, even if I was powered up to full. It was very easy to fight them like this, no doubt Krillin would have liked to be in my shoes. Because of that, they sent tons of air forces plowing through like they found a hole, and they paid for it. I had already used three high power Galic gun attacks and ate one Senzu bean just because I was out of energy; but I had taken no damage, at all. Tora, Seventeen and Buu hadn't been so lucky, as the Zerg were attacking them with a fury unlike I had ever seen before. They had also begun to attack Gotenks like this, but they sent in wave after wave instead of all at once. Tora had already gone down twice, but I managed to cover him a bit from where I was. Despite being partially mechanical, Senzu beans healed Seventeen regardless, that and he had Buu around to distract and heal when necessary. Buu for the most part took more of a beating than anybody, probably since physical attacks just didn't hurt him that much. Every time he would look even slightly torn up, he would just pop back to his normal jolly self, right before laughing like the idiot that he was.

The Zerg were coming in extremely overwhelming numbers. I could tell even with the dark red clouds that hovered everywhere around us, which darkened the landscape to nightfall like conditions with an eerie red glow. I blasted left, right and all around, lighting up the air with my golden ki blasts, and hitting most of the Zerg air troops. No matter what I did to them however, they pushed onwards, still completely ignoring my presence. It was as if I was an invisible phantom pain in their side. Then a sudden thought hit me, and I quickly pressed the transmit button on the side of my scouter.

"Hey Gohan, are these freaks ignoring you like they are me?" I asked through it, blasting while I was speaking.

"Yeah they are, I don't get it!"

"Neither do I," I said, cutting the connection.

About five to ten minutes later, I saw red and pink colored laser beams tear into the sky, hitting numerous Zerg that had dropped in from higher altitudes.

"Guys, they're starting to get a bit close over here! We've been fighting off the burrowed ones for about twenty minutes! I'm not sure we can hold them off now that the air troops are coming in, and there is a large batch of them coming in from the west. Some crossed the sea it seems, and we could use some help back here since I'm trying to fix the generator, it took a hit!" Mom practically shouted over the scouter, making me wince slightly. I sensed Goku and Vegeta then power way up and fire combined beams into the Zerg cloud to the east, literally making most of it evaporate. The scattered ki signal dropped to the floor afterwards. Wow they must have hit a lot of them, there's barely any coming in now. I wonder why they didn't do that before hand! Probably wanted to save energy or something. I frowned right away though, I still sensed many more not far away. They didn't appear to be getting much closer at the moment, giving me a partial answer.

"Boy, you and Gohan get back to base and do what you can! We will prevent additional Zerg from arriving!" Vegeta ordered over the scouter. I was about to argue that it wouldn't help matters to do such a thing, but a rather loud explosion and eruption of fire from the Capsule Corp area made me think twice and I raced through the air, punching a few Zerg aside in the process on route to home. I noticed my power was starting to run low, oddly that it wasn't until now, because I had been running on all cylinders for such a long time. I simply forgot that I was using a lot of power, and strangely I wasn't as tired as I should be. Must be more of my hidden powers coming out in all this effort. While I'm thankful, I'm not sure how long it's going to stay up. I better eat a bean anyway. I gulped the bean down and took off towards base. Gohan and I met up half way and flew as fast as we could, reaching home in a few seconds. The place was just as much of a war zone as we had experienced, perhaps more so. Red and pink laser beams fired every which way, striking many Zerg and adding to the growing numbers of dead Zerg on the ground. Even the ground color was officially purple now. We approached carefully, nodding at a few of the soldiers that were manning guns on top of the building as well as the front door. We got inside, finding a few lucky Zerg that got through the door, not that they made it much farther.

"You're just in time, take a look at this!" Mom called from the holographic display of the battle. She hit a few buttons and the view switched to the western ocean.

"So where are all the Zerg you mentioned?" I asked.

"Oh, there weren't that many left. I just wasn't sure there so I called for backup anyway. Luckily I got the backup generators working again and the automated chain guns came back on and took care of the rest of them! I'm such a genius sometimes," she giggled at the thought.

"So while we could be out there stopping them from getting here, we came back for nothing?" Gohan asked in a slightly serious tone.

"Oh hush, there really aren't that many left! That big blast from Goku and Vegeta wiped out most of the remainders, or at least from this bunch. They only sent about twenty thousand or so this time, which is kind of a surprise. Vegeta said the others can take care of it for now, check this out though!" she said, hitting some more buttons. First the picture changed over to a time lapse of her radar, the parts of her grid that were working anyway. One chunk of the purple blob broke off and attacked, the other remained back. About twenty thousand was the number that hovered over it before the time lapse ended and they were pretty much dead, stragglers here and there. Also on the lapse, they spread outwards to surround us. I had Mom scan the backside of where they had been rallied at to see if there was a base there, and there wasn't. She and I then noticed that there weren't any bases behind them now like there had been.

"Now that is weird. Making all those little hives, creating all those Zerg, and then getting rid of them?" she asked, glancing towards me.

"Don't look at me, I've never seen that before. What about this stuff trying to surround us?" I asked, pointing out the different areas of troops.

"I don't know, its like they want to come at us from all angles or something. Or maybe they're tired of you blasting a whole bunch all at once?" she cocked an eyebrow at me.

"Maybe, but I don't know. How'd this one get here?" I asked, pointing to one that was to the south and west of West city, over the ocean and moving slowly. The camera slowly zoomed in on a large batch of Zerg coming our way gradually, but something about them was different. First of all, they weren't purple colored, they were orange, like a slightly different species.

"This is a group that split off and went clear around us. They are approaching from the ocean," She explained the obvious.

"Zoom in on that Overlord Mom," I said, pointing out the front one. She typed for a few seconds, getting the result I desired. In the large tentacles, I could see orange colored Hydralisks holding on. They looked meaner and much uglier than what we had already fought against.

"Ugh, disgusting," Videl said from behind me as she was busy checking Gohan over.

"Upgrades, but I think I know why they are a different color. The Overmind has agents to help it control his minions, they are called Cerebrates. Think of it like the Overmind being the king and the agents being the governors or something. Well each Cerebrate's little clan or brood has a different color. This is obviously the work of another Cerebrate helping out with the battle," I explained, hoping someone might be following along.

"I think I get it, the brood thingy we've been fighting is like army number one. That could be army number two!" Goten asked, holding his hand up and grinning that he knew the answer. Maybe he's just been paying attention for once.

"Yeah that's about right," I said, nodding slightly.

"But if we've only taken on one group so far and been beaten back this bad, what chance do we have?" Videl shrieked, hurting my ears slightly, despite the explosions going on outside.

"I doubt all these Cerebrates have this many troops with them at all times. For one, lack of resources to maintain such an effort. While the Zerg did arrive in great numbers, they had to establish their position and wasted a lot of their invading troops right? Well after gathering some materials they were able to spawn some more and probably didn't stop there. Look at this, whoever is sending this group over here hasn't been here long enough to gather enough troops to send a substantial attack. This huge force of Zerg doesn't look near as impressive now that they've split up. If Gohan and I were to combine blasts, we could take these out pretty easily from here since they always fly in a dense pack. The Overmind must think that splitting its forces apart would prevent us from getting them all in one big blast, but has either failed to realize how that may not work, or it has something else in mind," I said, quickly having Mom get a count the small batch.

"What are we waiting for? Let's do it before they get here," Gohan said, ki pouring off him in eagerness.

"Hold on guys, that was part of what I was concerned about. There's some more, here let me pan out," Mom said, going back to the main map that remained over West City. She panned to the east, where multi-colored masses were flashing, and slowly moving westward.

"I'll have the satellite cam zoom on that group there!" she pointed to a blue colored mass. The video screen popped up, showing Blue colored Zerg of various types in the air and on the ground, all coming our way.

"Great," I muttered.

"According to this, we have just a few hours before all of these get here, there must be ten different groups of them out there. Some are moving, some are not. The smaller groups are about twelve thousand or so, and that may not include what might be underground. The others are closer to thirty thousand total. It's tough getting an accurate count if they are underground, which would explain why parts of the groups seem to be disappearing. Ah damnit, the satellite feed is breaking up. They must have trampled another sensor, shit!" Mom pounded on the keyboard with her hands in irritation as the feed went out and the view switched back to the map.

"That doesn't make much sense," Gohan began, "If they wanted to wipe us out so bad, why would you split off like that instead of attacking in a huge force like they have been doing?"

"Keep in mind that we're assuming the Overmind wants to capture us. Remember that the Zerg never even came after the two of us this time. It wants us alive, that's why they didn't all come in at once. Obviously they were counting on us to defeat the first wave of twenty thousand, and then the idea is to catch us from all sides. That is much harder to account for when they aren't all lined up in a single mass like before. If Mom didn't have such good technology on hand, it would have caught us off guard. It's a war of attrition, they are trying to wear us down before coming out to get us," I explained for him.

Mom gave me a smirk of pride, "Oh what a brain, please tell me you're going to study science when we get you into a school!"

I snorted slightly, "No thanks, I'll stick to fighting!" A loud crash sounded behind us, sounding like it came from the kitchen.

"Uh oh, Mommy is down there!" Goten yelped slightly as he started to run alongside Gohan in that direction. I joined them in jumping over dead Zerg bodies and passing questioning soldiers. For some reason, saving the skillet pan wielding banshee sounded like a good idea.

-

When we arrived in the kitchen, we observed human soldiers fighting with the Zerglings in any manner they could, including hand to hand. The Zerglings had broken in the back door to the yard and were pouring through the door. The soldiers there had been shooting them inside and then outside to keep them out. The lack of solar power cut off the laser pistols rather quickly, and several troops had pulled out knifes and ran at the Zerg, getting a brutal response. A Zergling was just about to jump at the soldier closest to me when I decided to act. I jumped in front of the Zergling, grabbing it by the claw. It looked up at who dared step in the way and growled loudly, struggling to get free. I swung it over and around and around in the air, giving it the toss out the back door, barreling over a few more in the process.

"Let's take the fight outside Verto, you two stay here and help these guys!" Gohan ordered Goten and Trunks, who had followed us down the halls. With that said, Gohan marched straight out the door, and I followed his taller form in concentrated pursuit. The Zerglings glanced up as we emerged into the now cratered backyard. They had dug up the ground pretty bad in their attempt at stealth. A few laser shots came from above, as the roof top soldiers took a few shots at them until they saw us come into the field. The Zerglings spread apart as we got closer, forming a semi-circle around us before moving around and totally surrounding us. By the look in their eye, they looked fully ready to attack, and I cracked my knuckles slightly and grinned. Even if they were small fish, it would be more enjoyable than the ones who didn't even acknowledge me before. Gohan tensed up and let his ki rise along with mine. Just as the Zerg twitched slightly and were preparing to jump at us, a sound behind us caught everyone and everything's attention. It sounded like someone clearing their throat. I turned to see Chichi standing at the door, the dreaded frying pan in her hand, and a angry look crossing her facial features.

"Uh, mom?" Gohan stuttered.

"Tell me, these are some of the creatures that trashed Bulma's kitchen right?" she said in a low tone, barely audible.

"Yeah, they're the Zerg. They're dangerous," Gohan warned.

"That's all I wanted to know, they are all mine!" Okay, she's lost it!

"But Mom," Gohan started.

"No buts Gohan! You and Verto step away or float away or whatever, I'm taking them all out!"

"I don't suggest this Chichi," I began, only to duck out of the way when the skillet came flying at my head. It missed and struck a Zergling with a resounding clang, knocking it out on impact. Never argue with that woman, I sighed and lifted into the air. Gohan did the same; no doubt he was wondering just what the hell his mother was doing besides signing a death warrant. The Zerg were only too happy to oblige, and approached Chichi slowly, stopping when they were about fifteen feet away. Chichi remained calm with a deadly expression that rivaled Vegeta's, and slowly reached behind her back. She pulled out some sort of white cloth and tied it into a headband just above her eyes. Then she reached down to her armor belt, when I noticed she had two holsters packing pistols. She pulled both guns up and held them barrel down for a moment. Then I could see her thumbs strike a button as she brought them upwards, and the single barreled pistols suddenly became multi-barreled chain guns!

"Whoa, she's packing some serious heat," I heard Gohan shudder. Chalk another one up for Mom's work with technology. No sooner than she had brought out the big guns, did she fire. Pink laser beams poured out of the guns, and into the Zerg crowd that had formed. Whether these Zerg took one or five hits to kill I couldn't tell. The laser beams poured out so quick that unless I actually looked for the strike, I wouldn't be able to count how many times a Zergling was hit before it croaked. So I just made sure none of them got close to her. I watched as the Zerg numbers dwindled quickly until only a single Zergling remained. The chain guns slowed to a stop, and the power meter on the top of them read zero. Chichi reset them to pistol form and put them away. Then she turned to go inside, and the lone Zergling rushed towards her. Gohan moved to stop it, only to see it get knocked right back out the door and into the pile. At the door stood Master Roshi, calmly in a stance right next to Chichi.

"Well, I can't let all you boys have the fun! I had to get one good lick in! Say, heh, are you busy right now Chichi?" he dared to ask while one hand drifted very close to a deemed no-zone below her midsection. CLANG! Roshi held his baldhead in pain as Chichi put the dreaded weapon away, making me wonder how many spare frying pans she actually had.

"Dirty old man!" she screeched and reentered the kitchen just as we landed. I looked around the city, noticing now how quiet it was, the battle seemed to have subsided, and I could sense everyone still alive. My thoughts went straight to Fasha, as I sensed her returning with Bardock, Shugesh and Borgos. Vegeta, Goku and Broly weren't far behind them.

"Back to the lobby I guess," Gohan shrugged slightly, kicking a dead Zerg out of the way and stepping over Roshi moaning form.

"Yeah," I scratched my head slightly in thought. This seems too easy, well not super easy, but easier than it should have been. The Overmind left a large gap in reinforcement troops, giving us all the time we need to rest, strange. Not to mention that this battle seemed to go better than the one in Satan City. I doubt having Capsule Corp this armed had a lot to do with that either, though it did help. I pondered over this as I headed back inside. As usual, I was right.

-

Everyone came in looking a little roughed up, but nothing too terribly bad. Dende fixed that problem and quickly noticed that most of the Senzu beans were gone.

"Those Zerg came in with a more spread out attack at times. It was difficult to fight them all and keep your eyes open to the blindsides at the same time. They may not have any honor, but they are worthy foes," Bardock noted.

"Yeah but nothing we couldn't handle right big guy?" Tora asked, slapping my shoulder slightly.

I rolled my eyes slightly, "Maybe if they were all ignoring you like they did me. The only reason I even ate any beans was cause I ran out of power waxing all of them!"

"They ignored you?" Vegeta asked, interested.

"Yeah they ignored me completely too, I kept pulling them off Broly though. Even as I did they did nothing, like I was invisible or something!" Gohan explained.

"That is odd, they've attacked everyone and everything they have laid their eyes on, especially you two. But if they ignored the two of you this time…" Piccolo said. Mom's alarm then blared on, silencing Piccolo and causing us all to rush to the holoscreen to see what it was.

"According to this, there is a number of Zerg Hives developed all over the city! It didn't say anything about that before, but there are a lot of stragglers here and there across the city. But, my scanners would have picked up a Hive going up. Wait a sec, they're gone now? Must have been a glitch. Argh! Now what the hell is going on?" she asked before the alarm blared like crazy again.

"Zerg troops, massive amounts of flyers, coming quickly into the city! They're staying a good ways upward towards that weird dark red cloud, they will be here very shortly!" Mom announced as she read it. Everyone got geared up again quickly, most of them simply powering up a little bit, but I remained at the holoscreen, there was something I wanted to know.

"Hey Ma, can you scan that cloud or something? I've never seen clouds like that before!" I said.

"For some reason I can't seem to break through it. Either with my scanners here on the ground, or with my satellite. My direct signal hasn't been able to go through it either; I had to count on relay stations across the world to get my signal to bounce back here. Not a problem though why?"

"Can you measure how thick that cloud layer is?" I asked, this got me thinking a little bit since it was directly overhead.

"Yeah sure. According to this, there is about two miles worth of blank air up there where the clouds are. My scanning signals just bounce right off them!" Mom pointed out.

"Two miles of undetectable space? Sounds like a big hiding place for something that flies, let's check it out!" I said, heading out the door, the others following. I stood out on the lawn, looking straight up into the slightly glowing crimson clouds.

I pressed a finger to the scouter so Mom would hear what I was saying, "Your satellite can pick up a ki beam right?"

"Well if it couldn't.." she began.

"Good enough, Masenko, HA!" I shouted cutting her off slightly, shooting the low power beam into the clouds quickly, sensing for a result. The beam ripped into the clouds like blowtorch, but the clouds filled back in just as fast, revealing nothing but the same.

"Okay Verto, your beam came out the other side. Still didn't pick up anything!" Mom said.

"And probably not surprising boy, our blasts obliterate them beyond repair, especially one like that. Your theory is useless even if they were there. Surely they all would have come out and attacked in a big swarm. I don't sense or see anything!" Vegeta barked impatiently. I frowned slightly, that was the only thing I could think of to explain the clouds. Then I glanced over to see a soldier manning a mini-gun laser.

"Hold on Vegeta, let's try something that doesn't rip them apart so easy. You there, fire a few rounds into the sky!" I said to the soldier. He glanced at me briefly before Vegeta gave him a nod and he aimed almost straight up, firing a round of lasers that would have killed anything else ten times over. At first nothing happened, except Mom noted she did not see any more activity on the feed from above. Then a few objects tumbled out of the sky, all of them on fire. I winced slightly so I could see them a little better, before they dropped very fast and fell right in front of us onto the street. Three large crab-like Guardians lay dead and dismembered in front of us. Ah damn.

"See what I mean Vegeta?" I asked. Mom beeped in quickly and practically shouted that more Zerg troops had just vanished into thin air, but there was still a good one hundred of them surrounding West City, not moving. Her loud alarm blared again, but I didn't need it to know what I could now see and sense. There were thousands of Guardians, Mutalisks and Kamikaze's coming out of the clouds in very great numbers all around us moving in swiftly, easily inside the boundaries of the city and getting closer.

"So, you got a plan for this Vegeta?" Goku asked as we all started to power up slightly.

Vegeta snorted, "We fight!"