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 11: The Caves
Letch and I continued onward around the desolate wasteland of rock and dust. Frankly there wasn't anything on the surface that was interesting at all. I kept my speed down so the Zergling didn't get left behind, though I wasn't sure why I cared that much about it. After about an hour of rather slow flying, we came upon a thick mountain range. I glanced around and spotted a cave at the base of one of them. I descended upon it just as Letch caught up, catching his breath with a thick pant.
"Wear ya out boy?" I asked with a grin. The Zergling groaned a bit in response. I glanced into the cave, seeing nothing but darkness. An odd feeling hit me, some sort of life form that I could not sense earlier was now showing up, from the cave. I stretched my senses out more, and extended to read as much of the cave as I could. A dark and semi-evil feeling came off them, and I could tell that there were a lot of them. I heard a loud bang of thunder above me, and saw that the smokey clouds were thickening up, and that it was starting to darken a bit outside, but not much. Letch took a sniff of the cave and right away started growling at it. I still couldn't see or hear anything coming from the cave, but that eerie feeling sure did stick like glue.
"Well, whatever is in there is gonna wish it wasn't if it messes with us, let's go boy!" I said, leading the way. I stopped just as the Zergling went by, realizing what I just said and wondering why I would ever show attachment to any Zerg. Okay either the Zerg genes are screwing with my head, or maybe its because I'm that nice to all creatures at first. But it's not like they're going off on a murder streak right now, besides it's their masters who are evil.
Once I decided to quit the mental argument and proceed, Letch took the lead and proceeded forward. Once in the darkness of the cave, I could see much better thanks to Super Saiyan senses. Not that they help total blackness that much, but if anything moved I was going to pick up on it quickly. I heard breathing sounds coming from deeper in the cave. Thunder came again and I heard a rain start to fall. How there was rain on this planet I couldn't help wonder, but it was sure to be acid rain with all the ash and sulfur in the air. Letch stayed just ahead of me, not moving until he knew I was right behind him. Then he stopped and hissed furiously at the air. Dead silence the instant his noise ceased, but I started making out shapes in the darkness, and they were slowly moving towards us. I became more wary, and started raising my ki. The creatures stirred even more, and Letch readied himself to pounce. I still couldn't totally make out what these creatures were, but the ever-growing hostile feeling told me enough. I dropped into a fighting stance, ready for whatever these things had. Then I suddenly felt a presence behind me, more familiar to say the least, but whoever it was, they were already close enough to catch me off guard. The ki I felt off this being felt very human to me, and semi-full of good intentions, or so I thought.
"And you are?" I whispered, not taking my eyes off the blackness of the cave.
"When I throw this, run for the door, or you'll die!" a man's voice whispered back. Letch's head was turning round and round, but kept mostly on whatever we had disturbed.
"Now run," he rasped as he tossed an object into the air. It contacted the ground and exploded into a big fireball. Right away I could see the creatures features, and was bewildered to say the least. They resembled large bats of some kind, the heads were shaped like a thick cross, a thick vertical line and a horizontal one as well, and their tails had to be three feet long. It was at the cross-head center that their mouths were showing incredibly sharp teeth. And they could not stand fire, because all of them hissed and shrieked in pain, running from it quickly. Whoever was behind me, grabbed me up from behind and carried me towards the door. Letch picked up on this and was biting at his heels just as quickly. Once we were outside, he dumped me on the ground and had his rifle aimed at the cave. Letch looked me over, before staring down the human. The fire inside the cave died down and the screaming aliens silenced again. The man then turned, and I got a full load of his features. First off, he was wearing the same kind of armor that the marines wore on Tarsonis, except his was teal green in color, and he didn't have a helmet. His head was mostly bald, except for the slowly thickening sideburns and scars around it. He carried a similar machine gun that the other soldiers did as well, one that he now pointed at the Zergling.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Good question kid, back away from that Zergling. It'll bring others if it stays alive," he said, motioning for me to do so.
"He's my pet, he's okay," I said, petting Letch on the head slightly.
The man's eyes jumped alive when this happened, "A tame Zerglin? And just who are you kid? Where did ya come from, did you crash with a ship here to?"
"Name's Verto, and no I didn't crash with a ship. I came here with the Zerg, what about you?" The man barely relaxed, like he was going to fire or die trying.
"Hey, he isn't going to hurt you okay, I'd like to know your name, where you come from, and what the hell those things in there are!" I spoke up suddenly. He must not have been used to anyone bossing him around, especially a kid, but he did relax and lower his gun.
"Name's Jim Raynor," he said, looking back around in the rainstorm.
"So what were those things in the cave?" I asked.
"A big nightmare kid, I crashed here with a few members of my crew about two months ago. We were being chased by the Dominion troops and ran out of fuel. We managed to glide slowly down, but my ship is wrecked. So we set out to find a suitable shelter so not to run down the remaining power on the ship, after all we needed it for a transmitter!" Raynor explained. I nodded, glancing at the acid burns and scratches on this guy's armor.
"We went deep into that cave and accidentally found those things one night. It's been hell ever since because we dropped our power cells in there, and we can't get them back with all those things in there!" Raynor finished.
"What are they again?"
"Afraid I don't know what they are, but I can tell you what they can do, rip your head off in about three seconds. Probably give a mad Ultralisk a run for its money, and there's lots of them. A lot more than I can shoot with limited ammo here!" he nodded towards his large machine gun.
"Any weaknesses in them?" I asked. Raynor looked a bit confused that I would ask that.
"Yeah, they don't like light, and if exposed to it long enough it burns them, alive or dead. We found that out with just a flashlight," he said, glancing at Letch, who was sleeping next to my leg. I smirked slightly, Well those things are going to hate me then.
"What's your story kid, how'd you get with the Zerg?" Raynor asked. So I told him, the heavily edited version. Mostly that I had special powers, and the Zerg had wanted them, not that I was right about that anyway. I also mentioned how the Protoss got involved, that was about it.
"Sounds a bit crazy to believe. The Zerg and I have crossed paths many times, but I don't really mess with them unless I have to, and special powers? What, you a ghost or something?" he asked, chuckling slightly. I held up a ki blast, shooting it into the sky.
"Well that's the very minimum of what I can do," I grinned slightly. Raynor's jaw was on the ground in amazement, no surprise there.
"So you don't like those Terran Dominion guys huh? I ran into them at a place called Tarsonis, gave them a hell of a run to," I said, rubbing the back of my head Goku style.
"Yeah, I joined up with them because me and my crew were screwed on the planet we were stationed at during the Confederate reign. Then their leader, my former boss, rescued us, then employed us to help his plans along, little did I know that we were really just handing this sector to him on a silver platter. Me and my boys were some of the best, teamed up with the Emperor's best men, we were unstoppable. But when he was so desperate to win quickly against the Confederates, he sent his second in command, and my love interest down alone to handle the Protoss, I began to question his motives, a lot actually. She and her team succeeded, but then the Zerg rushed in and killed them all, ever since we have been on the run since we rebelled the day after," Raynor looked pretty down. I listened to his story, and noticed just how similar it was to Kerrigan's story. Maybe I should hook them up or something. Wait a sec…Jim Raynor was the guy she mentioned in her story as well.
"So anyway, we should go back to my ship. But since the power cells are down there, the replicators won't work. I don't have much food for ya, sorry about that," he said, standing up with rifle slung over his shoulder.
"You said the power cells are down there, how about I help you get them? If those things don't like light like you say, we easily can get them if they aren't too far, or too busted up," I rose and offered. Raynor didn't look so sure about my bold plan, but was quickly running to catch up to me once I started towards the cave. I pointed at the ground and told Letch to stay. He whimpered slightly and sat at the entrance, gazing in as we walked in.
-
"Just how do you do that anyway?" Raynor asked as I lit a ki ball in my hand, lighting up the room enough to send the creatures running and screeching.
"Long story short, plenty of training. It gets easy once you learn how to use it though," I explained briefly, walking forward. The creatures were definitely afraid of light; I saw them squabble in the shadows just to get away from it, never mind not coming out to attack the provider. I spotted a red blood trail on the ground, and followed it into the shadows where many of the creatures were hiding. I approached a turn in the cave walls and a large boulder blocked the tunnel partially, right where the blood trail went around.
"See something behind that rock, need me to fire off a spray?" Raynor asked behind me, snapping in a clip of ammo.
"You could, but I got it," I said, moving my left hand to just in front of the turn. I then summoned my Psi into it, creating my Psi sword and extending the bright blue light past my field of view. There were instant pain-filled shrieks, and a flutter of creatures flew further down the cave halls. I extinguished the ki ball and swapped hands with the sword.
"You got some cool tricks kid, any advice?" he asked.
I smirked, "Don't make me mad."
"Right," he said with a hint of sarcasm. I turned the corner to find what used to be a body on the floor, except the head was missing as well as most of the skin and organs, so there was just a bloody skeleton left. The smell of blood stirred something in me, and I fought to keep it down.
"Oh man, that was Frank Osborne, my head science officer," Raynor stopped to remorse over it for a moment.
"Then consider Frank lucky that he was released from this life so quickly," I said, stepping forward to move on.
"They got him a few hours ago, and they were dragging him away. There's no way this was quick!" Raynor said in slight disgust.
"His head was removed, death was instant, let's keep moving if you want to get your power cells!" I replied, noting an unusual harsh tone about my voice. What's wrong with me? Even Vegeta has more respect for the dead then what I just said, well maybe. Must be the Zerg hormones in my blood, little bastards. I may have been mentally strong, but one thing I can't stand is the dead, especially the innocent dead. Raynor seemed to ignore that comment though, and moved on with me. We walked un-heeded for a good twenty minutes, rather silent except for the pain filled sounds of the aliens as they fled away from my Psi sword. I noted that there were many more of them the deeper we got, and not just because I was pushing them all into each other. If I had wanted to, I could have blasted all of them right then, and according to Raynor, just the light would affect the ones that didn't die in the blast. But there was a problem with that, all of the mountain rock above coming crashing down on us didn't seem like a good idea.
After what seemed like constant walking and turning, we came across a large green metal object on the ground. "Hey, that's one of the power cells, I wonder how it got so far down here?" Raynor asked.
"The fact that we've probably driven about half a million of these creatures back down here is one way," I said, keeping on eye on them as I did.
"You sure don't act like very many kids I know that are your age," he said as he picked the power cell up.
"Yeah I get that a lot, how many of those do you have anyway?" I asked.
"Three, let's leave this one here. That way we can back track with a less load, they are a little heavy," he said, setting it against a wall.
"Heavy huh, well if you can lift it that easily, no worries!" I said, continuing on the beaten path the aliens had made for us in the darkness. A few more minutes went by before we found the other two, also having being rolled around a bit by the fleeing aliens.
"Well that was easy," I said. If only I hadn't opened my mouth, because just then my Psi energy started dropping, and my sword flickered.
"What the hell," I started, and then noticed my arms were beginning to grow some extra veins under a new yellow and green colored skin. My Psi energy literally disappeared into the depths of my spirit to where it had been during my battle against the Confederate Terrans: nearly nothing to sense. Great, guess she wasn't lying about Zerg tissue and Psi power not liking each other, or maybe it's just a bad reaction. That is of course if big ugly isn't screwing with me again.
"What's going on kid?" Raynor asked.
"Grab your power cells and run, get back to the cave entrance. Some of my powers aren't working right at the moment, I'll hold them off!" I said, stepping forward to meet the aliens.
"But," he started.
"I said go, these things are nothing to me!" I said in total confidence. Raynor obviously did not want to get me going at him, so he packed up and ran for the hills.
"Okay you little, whatever you are, come and get it!" I challenged, powering up my ki and dropping my sword at the same time. My aura provided a little light, but not much more than to at least see the monsters coming closer. I got into a stance and waved the lead alien on. It came in much quicker than I expected, but I got away from it before my arm was a chew toy. I punched it in the side of its skinny body. It took the blow better than any Zerg I had ever seen, and clawed at me in response, cutting across my arms. Blood drew and splattered on the ground. I kicked much harder and the alien flew away just in time to see the next one come in. This one was even faster, like it was angry. It's rage got the better of it and I knocked it into a wall. The following three met similar fates, leaving trails of blue blood all over the place. Then a stampede came at me, easily a few hundred of the beasts in one twisted looking swirl.
Damn, can't blast the cave, guess I'll just have to take this fight to the outside. I turned and powered up slightly, flying back towards the entrance quickly. I kept my aura lit just in case they were faster than me. They weren't, but they were flying pretty close. I ran across Raynor about a third of the way back, and grabbed him by his armor as well as the power cells.
"What's up kid? Damn you can fly too?" he asked in astonishment.
"We're getting the hell outta here. Then I'm gonna blow this mountain up and kill all of them!" I said.
"Sounds good, watch out!" Raynor said as a low ceiling came up. I ducked down just in time and kept my speed up. I heard the aliens colliding with each other once I was through. I grinned at the fact that they weren't all that smart.
"Hey look, there's the exit!" Raynor pointed out though I had already seen it. We flew out quickly and landed to see the creatures hit the exit and come to a screeching halt, flying back inside just as fast.
"Humph, what a weakness to have," I said, disappointed, but drawing back my arms to fire a big ki attack.
"You might want to take cover Raynor, KamehameHAAA!" The blue beam slammed into the cave and drilled through part of it, before the mountain then imploded slightly, causing a rockslide where the cave entrance had been. I purposefully held back though when I sensed that Raynor did not take my advice.
"I thought you were going to blow it all up?" Raynor noted.
"Didn't have to, most of them are gone with that blast. The rock slide will either seal them in, or force them out. And with nothing but light out here, they're done! Plus you didn't exactly take cover," I said. I noticed Letch was gone, and since he was Zerg I was not going to pick him up very easily. I stopped myself once I started to scan around for him, almost calling myself an idiot out loud. Oh geez, showing concern for that Zergling. What would Vegeta think if he saw this? Oh time out, I must remember it's the Zerg masters I have to defeat, the Zerg species themselves are not truly the enemy. This whole infestation thing is screwing with my head just a little too much for my taste. I swear I'm going to go insane before this is over. Can't wait to get back to normal. Raynor broke my disputed thoughts thankfully.
"Thanks for holding back then. Come on kid, let's get these power cells hooked up so we can send out a distress beacon, besides I'm sure your hungry by now right?" Raynor asked with a slight smile. The smirk I gave him when he referred to food made him gasp in surprise.
A/N: If you haven't figure out what kind of aliens yet, then you obviously have not seen the movie Pitch Black, which I don't own any rights to, just a DVD. Raynor sort of resembles Vin Diesel, but mostly with the baldhead and battle scars. He even has the fugitive background if you want to call it that. Next chapter's general events will be obvious with the chapter title.
Next time on DBV: A solar eclipse blankets Char in darkness and sparks a war between the light-fearing aliens and the Zerg. The Zerg struggle against the overwhelming strength of the aliens and need Verto's help. Does Verto have the power to destroy all of these aliens around the planet, or will he have to work together with the Zerg to win.