Namek

Chapter 55: Carnage


They had seen him approach from afar; even from a distance, Dodoria saw green-shaped lines turn towards him and his men and widen, then give a wobble and turn back to their farming. He couldn't remember the last time people had reacted to him like that- had viewed him with complete ignorance. Since ascending to the lofty position of one of Frieza's prized elites, he almost never led assaults himself, and in the rare times that he did, they were against an enemy that expected his arrival from a long way out- not that it did them any good. If he was being brought out to finish a job, it'd get finished.

So it felt odd to land unopposed, flanked to his left and right by the ten soldiers in his squad, while these green humanoids tilled the land peacefully. Them farming was charming in a "not gonna last" kind of way.

Dodoria's gaze flicked back and forth among the small village until an older looking alien dropped their gripped shovel, wiped the dirt from their hands to their flowing, vest-like clothes, and approached. 'How goes it?' He asked, giving them a welcoming but wary look. His gaze kept landing on the various beam blasters affixed to the arms of Dodoria's troops. 'Are you with the others?'

A wide smile rolled across Dodoria's face. Were they really going to make it this easy for them? 'We are,' Dodoria lied, performing an easygoing nod, 'but we lost 'em not too long ago. If you would be so kind, we'd love to know what direction they left by.'

'Well, we don't know where the other two are,' the green alien said, his face scrunching up in concentration, 'but if I had to guess, I'd say they're staying around Moori's village- somewhere around thataways,' he said, pointing off into the western distance, 'judging by the direction the man left by.'

'Three, eh?' Dodoria said, and admittedly, said lazily, for if he was paying any attention at all to the conversation and not busy sizing up the other fifteen or so green natives, he would have given a much more thought-out response.

'Well, you should know, right?' the green alien replied, looking a bit confused. 'You know them.'

'Of course,' Dodoria said, tapping the side of his scouter idly.

The Namekian elder paused, wiped his clean hands across his clothes out of habit, and then said, 'You know, you don't look much like them. The one who came here, at least,' he said, his eyes tracing the segmented, white and brown armor Dodoria and his troops wore. 'You look… more…'

'Military, right?' His smile grew cocky. 'You're right on that- we're soldiers, one and all.'

By this time, Dodoria could feel his soldiers behind him start to grow twitchy- he couldn't tell what exactly what they were doing besides standing in place and waiting for his command, but judging from how the alien in front of him started to squirm, they must have been casting around some predatory looks.

Slowly, he raised his arm and started to unclasp the scouter from the side of his head. No doubt Zarbon had recorded their conversation and already relayed the elder's helpful directions to the most appropriate squad to his west. So there was no reason to include him in what would happen next. With a click, he switched the scouter off, and heard his men behind him start to do the same.

'Boss,' a soldier behind him said in a scratchy voice, 'can we have at 'em?'

'Do you need rest?' the elder said, who in spite of his frightened appearance, didn't seem to understand what was about to happen. 'We have a few dwellings that we can spare for the afternoon… if you all aren't opposed to cramming together, that is.'

Dodoria simply looked at the elder and smiled softly. To get to this desolate, far-off planet, he and everyone else had busted their asses to prepare and arrive here in a timely fashion. His squad, like all the other grumpy squads consumed with combing the planet, needed to let off some steam. And, truth be told, he always had a soft spot in his heart for the wellbeing of his troops under him. It wasn't too long ago that he was just like them, serving under some snotty, irascible officer...

The elder must have finally read what was readily present in Dodoria's eyes- in all the eyes of militarized, armed soldiers facing him- for he fell to his knees, hands desperately clasped together before him. 'Please! We mean-'

But his words came too late- by the time his knees hit the ground, his head rolled alongside them.

0o0o0

Yamcha stared at the purple alien for but a second- he knew he really couldn't afford to waste any time with Bulma plummeting to the ground below- but he permitted himself a brief question before he put his plan into motion. 'Yeah? And who's asking?'

The purple alien gave him a cocky smirk. 'Cui, and the PTO, renegade,' they replied cockily. Rapidly, Cui straightened, extending their right arm towards Yamcha. 'Your betters want a word with you!' A violent purple ball of ki then flashed into life in their hand and launched itself at Yamcha.

The human grinned- and the ball passed through his afterimage harmlessly. In the next moment, he crashed into Cui's body from below, slamming one kick, and pulling back another-

And Cui growled, grabbing the second strike and, with a heavy heave, spun around in the air and flung Yamcha towards the ground. They were about to fly off in pursuit- but an immediate burst of ki from Yamcha, accelerating the human's downward motion, startled him, and promptly, Cui knew he had played into the human's hands perfectly.

They were cursing even before Tien plowed back into the fight, slamming a double-fist down on their head and launching them downward after Yamcha like a cannonball.

0o0o0

Come on… Bulma's falling, flailing form appeared as a dot, then became a line, as Yamcha pushed his ki to its limit. Come on… Come on! She spun, twisted through the air, forcing him to nudge and adjust his horizontal position to him, all the while the solid earth below them grew more distinct by the second. Come… He could her now- she locked eyes with him. COME ON!

Their hands, Yamcha's right, Bulma's left, clasped together, and with as much finesse as Yamcha could spare on Bulma's behalf, he pumped his ki outwards and down, briefly yanking their grip taught before springing her towards him. Bulma squealed in pain but their combined velocity slowed down massively, and in the next moment she was safely held in his arms as his feet hit the ground, rocking the earth below them and spurting dirt up into the air. With a quick flare of ki, Yamcha cleared the air around them.

He examined her. Bulma looked injured- and, indeed, her left arm looked mangled or broken from Yamcha's maneuver- but it was a small price to pay for stopping a surely fatal fall. But he couldn't spare any more time beyond making sure she would live; moving quickly, he sprinted over to the other side of a nearby outcrop of rock and lowered her to the ground. With a squeeze of her unhurt arm, he seized her attention through the pain. 'Stay hidden,' he cautioned her. 'Stay here. I'll be back soon.'

With that, he left her, sprinted around the outcrop, and shielded his eyes. Waves of dirt peppered him from a massive impact centered at where they had been just a few moments ago.

0o0o0

Once he sighted the alien's body crash into the ground below him, digging their body several feet into the soft, loamy earth, Tien veered off from his purely vertical descent and moved across the blue-grass plains. They had been caught over a doughnut-shaped island, with an outcrop of rock on one end and a moderately sized lake of water at its center. He had sensed Yamcha scurry back and forth in the span of a few seconds, and now he saw him standing protectively before the outcrop, gaze set on where the alien had crashed into the ground.

Without a word, he dropped to Yamcha's side and nodded to him. No words needed to be said- this would be a rough fight.

'Tien?'

Tien blinked. That was in his head. He suppressed his surprise. 'That you, Yamcha?'

His friend's body stood motionless at his side. 'It is,' the voice in Tien's head replied. 'We're in trouble here, aren't we?'

At this, Tien couldn't help but smile. 'Nothing we haven't dealt with before,' he said telepathically, sounding to himself more confident than he actually felt. 'The gap between us and this guy is definitely smaller than it was between us and Raditz way back when.'

'The guy's name is Cui, by the way.'

'That so? Good to know.'

'You got a plan?'

Before Tien could reply, waves of wind lashed out and buffeted them, blowing away the smoke and dust hanging over the area. Cui, looking severely annoyed but uninjured, revealed themselves and started to stride towards them.

'You recovered faster than I thought you would, three eyes!' Cui boasted, making a show of stretching their arms and legs as they moved forward. 'How'd you pull off a trick like that, hmm? Especially when-' Cui froze, and Tien and Yamcha saw Cui's attention jump up to the green and square-ish panel of glass laid over his left eye- a scouter. 'Your power levels…' Cui murmured. 'They jumped. They're higher now.'

Yamcha and Tien exchanged a surprised glance. So they weren't actually flying at top power before, after all- which meant there was a chance they haven't reached the limit of their newfound powers.

'So let's find out, then!'

The island was suddenly filled with rapturous wind- trees billowed and splintered, whole mats of grass were ripped from the ground and flung into the air, and at the center of it all, two white pillars of aura beat relentlessly across the land, forcing Cui to halt and call upon their own dark purple area to anchor themselves. The purple alien smirked. Their auras were the only color difference between them in their appearance- Tien and Yamcha, lacking a change of their Earth clothes for months now, were dressed very similarly to Cui.

'So you two can hide your power levels, huh?' Cui yelled over the din. 'Another thing to beat out of you when you're lying helpless at my feet!'

0o0o0

With easy grace, Master Roshi plunged through the yellow clouds separating Otherworld and Hell and shot out the bottom into a darker and muskier domain. He slowed; from this high up he would be in the best position to snuff out what was going on down here. Now… where was that strange ki KIng Kai was talking about?...

Performing the job he currently held- and he really didn't know what to call it, because apparently this job didn't exist until he and Baba had tag-teamed Yemma and essentially forced him to create it for him- often involved a mix of sleuthing and fighting. Hell was, according to how King Kai told it, purposefully designed to muddle and confuse the energies of any person within it, and did so sort by weakening the spiritual and bodily containers of its denizens- he understood it by imagining the doomed residents as balloons filled with water and hell as a thin needle. Because of this, ki continually leaks out of wicked, evil people and makes sensing anything clearly a mess. While he didn't need to worry about the realm affecting him this way- he had gotten the magic treatment, as he understood it- it still made parsing through the energies down here nearly impossible. Though not having to worry about holding in his own ki compared to those he was searching fordid make the second part of his job much easier.

But to fight someone, he had to find them first, and so far, he only had one concrete lead available to him. Whoever tried to mess with Piccolo must have retained an appalling level of ki control when they materialized in Hell; it's the only way to explain how they had been able to push energy across the barrier to King Kai's world. So that meant that whoever he was looking for was one of the monstrously strong ones. Not great- and even more annoying, these types usually hung out at the edges of Hell and as far away from each other as possible.

King Kai, that cheat… this is going to take forever… Idly, while he tried to spread out his ki sense as far as it would go, Master Roshi examined the landscape below him.

A small, yellow blast of energy, nothing more than a simple drop of ki, suddenly screamed up to him. He pulled himself to the side, tracing the blast zoom past him and move further up into the pink abyss, and then appraised the landscape below him in an altogether better mood than he had held just a few moments earlier. He had resigned himself to hours of monotony; the sole, lone figure hovering off the ground, far enough down and away from him to be barely more than a smudge, promised something else.

The figure didn't flee as Master Roshi descended to meet him, nor did they move to attack him further, which made it clear that the first blast they had sent up was just meant to catch his attention. Which was odd- who among the damned would want to talk to him? His first guess, and who he thought it was judging by the figure's initial appearance was Kakarot- but it soon became clear that this person, who looked like Kakarot and had a tail to boot, was too old and scarred to be him. But Master Roshi was sure that this Saiyan hadn't recognized him- so, again, what exactly was he doing down here?

'So you're the great and mighty Master Roshi,' the figure said as a statement, as if he was prefacing a drawn-out conversation.

Master Roshi frowned. Alright, so he does recognize me. 'I am. And who are you, exactly? I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with you as you are with me.'

'I think you know my son- Kakarot,' Bardock said, grinning and running his hands through his hair 'You see it?'

'I can see the resemblance,' Master Roshi commented wryly.

'And, compared to his son, how does the great and mighty Bardock stack up?'

'Well.'

'I like you,' Bardock said, smiling. 'I like- you know what? You're forgiven. Look at us,' he gestured, sweeping his arms over their jagged, twisting surroundings in a broad, showy gesture. 'We're both past the point of fighting. We should be fading into dust, or- or whatever. So no fighting, yeah?'

Utterly confused, Master Roshi tilted his head to one side. '...Okay? So, then why exactly-'

'Oh, but I want to fight you, though.' Bardock said, straightening. 'Alright?'

'-What?'

Stars flooded into Master Roshi's vision as his body careened backward from a heavy blow to his forehead. Nearly blind from the pain, Master Roshi felt a faint change in the air around his body before spinning and catching a double-handed fist gunning for his back. Bardock struggled to get out of his grip and cursed. 'Act surprised, damn you!'

'I'll try!' Now only partially blind, Master Roshi flooded his body with ki and shifted his trajectory up and to the right, curving away from the ground and into the sky. Bardock lost all pretense of control and began to flag through the air behind him like a cheap banner. Then, accompanied by the briefest, fleetest flicker of red, Master Roshi came to a full stop, appeared behind Bardock, and dove kicked into his body from behind, sending him tumbling across the pink-grey sky. Master Roshi gave a hearty huff of air and curiously watched his opponent catch themselves just before crashing into the ground. Bardock then began to rush back, two pink balls of ki glowing in their hands.

Master Roshi appeared in his flight path and batted the two balls from Bardock's grip with a high kick. They sailed away and sputtered harmlessly into the sky.

Bardock glumly followed their forlorn course, and then reluctantly looked at Master Roshi. 'You're stronger than I thought you'd be.'

'Didn't anyone tell you not to pick on people who are stronger than you?'

'Oh, please,' Bardock laughed bitterly, the tone of his voice lowering. 'I've had plenty of experience not doing that.' He looked over Master Roshi once more, then shook his head. 'Too bad. I was looking forward to getting some more fun out of this.'

Bardock's voice tipped off Master Roshi before the swing came- with a quick dodge, he swerved to his right, narrowly avoiding a claw-strike aimed at his gut. His right arm came up next, blocking a forearm smash, and the blows started to blend together, merging into one unending procession. Bardock's strikes embodied what Master Roshi thought Kakarot's always lacked- technique and fluidity. Master Roshi was continually forced to pass up a chance to counter-attack so that he could block strike after successive strike aimed at him. Bardock had the training of a conqueror, and even more so that of a warrior, as his mid-air positioning continually slid around Master Roshi like an insufferable, unreachable hoop.

The breakthrough came- Bardock flipped and vaulted himself over Master Roshi, and cocking his leg back, he smashed his heel against Master Roshi's jaw. The blow sent the human spiraling down to the ground- for a time. With another flush of his ki, he halted his momentum, rubbed the blood trickling out of one corner of his mouth with his thumb, and turned back to Bardock. It was a good hit- he hoped his eyes conveyed the respect he felt in that moment.

'You look better with my blows blooming on your face,' Bardock said haughtily. 'You still think you can hang with me?'

Master Roshi would have liked to parry back- would have loved to, actually, because he was being offered something he had always wanted on Earth; a consequence-free fight- but he had other matters to attend to. And taxing his body by fighting a long, drawn-out battle with a long-dead Saiyan was not one of them. It was a shame; under better circumstances, he would have indulged his natural curiosity a bit further.

A crimson aura, bright and violent, erupted into existence around him. As it is, though...

He rushed forward, appearing behind Bardock without the faintest recognition or reaction from the now far-too-weak opponent, and delivered the lightest possible punch to the square center of his back. Red lashed against Bardock's skin, and like a meteor, the Saiyan rocketed away from and impacted the ground below.

Relaxing his aura quickly, Master Roshi watched rock chunks rain down around him for a time before picking a direction and departing.

0o0o0

He had, in accord with his father's wishes, hidden underneath a massive crag of rock during the short length of the battle. With pride, he had watched his father go toe to toe with the one- he growled to himself- the one who had interceded between himself and that human, Krillin, who could have answered his questions about Raditz. And then he saw his father be summarily dismissed into the black Earth not too far from Kakarot. The human had observed this- observed his father not rise again to fight him- and then left. Kakarot felt like a coward.

Dark miasma trailed off and up from the crater, and Kakarot rushed forward, stumbling over strewn rock and blackened dirt to reach his father. His mind was angry, frustrated, and this slowed him- but he had survived worst mental states, and after having watched his father tank that last, terrible blow- when he had seen his father's chest bend out- he was even more worried that something horrible had happened. He had grown used to having his father, as annoying as he was, to lean on here- losing that now might be the end of him.

The edge of the crater couldn't come soon enough; panting, Kakarot surged over its lip and skidded down its sides. When he reached the center, he fell to his knees and rushed to place his arms over his half-buried father- but a strong, muscled arm smacked his hands away before he could, and in the next instant, Bardock sat up, dirt staining his clothes and resting atop his shoulders, head, and legs. 'That hurt,' he said, frowning and rubbing his legs.

Kakarot simply stared at Bardock, then said, 'How are you still… well, I guess "alive" is the wrong word to use here…'

'I get your meaning,' Bardock said, holding his gaze away at the sky. 'that was a pretty strong blow- nothing too bad, though.' He sighed, then shook the dirt off of him and stood. 'About as bad as what he had done to recover earlier, which wasn't that far beyond me.'

'Then why did you stop fighting?' Kakarot asked.

Bardock gave Kakarot a strange look. 'Well, first off, the deal wasn't to fight him- it was to distract him.' He looked sheepish for a moment. 'I'll admit that… I got a little too excited to fight him. But I'm not going to die a second time to keep my end of the deal up.'

'But I thought you said-'

'I could have matched what I saw,' Bardock continued, 'but… yeah, I'm pretty sure he was holding back a lot.' He frowned, shook his head, and stood, shaking the loose dirt off of him in the process. 'I did what I could; we held our part of the bargain as best we could. We gave them time. Now, it's their turn…'

0o0o0

Bulma was never one to hide or shy away from danger in any way, shape, or form; even now, shielded from the storm of wind and dirt passing and breaking on the flat, rectangular rock outcrop that separated her from the battle, her imagination stretched to fill in the gaps between what she could hear. Every auditory impact that boomed through the air made her think of Tien or Yamcha being hit and savaged; every plume of water and dust that wrapped around the outcrop's outline painted a scene of chaotic, uncontained destruction. She couldn't bear to be this close and not watch every bruising detail. Slowly, surely, she crept sideways and poked her head out to glimpse inwards towards the island's center.

For all her courage, she saw nothing. In past battles where she had watched with awe and terror, she could always expect a glimpse of what was going on every thirty seconds or so or have her stronger friends keep her informed. But this fight- this fight was far, far beyond her. Tien, Yamcha, and the PTO soldier were moving so fast that she couldn't even see their blurs. She heard sounds, loud and frightful (for she could not pinpoint exactly where they were coming from) wash over her like an indifferent, cutting wind, and dizzying her with their sheer strength. Colors warped through the air, obscuring the shaded green sky as far out as she could see. Patterns eluded her- she couldn't wrangle anything out of the sensory chaos bombarding her.

Cursing, she moved out into the open even further, trying to take a wider view of the island. There had to be some clue she could latch onto-

'You don't look like you belong here.'

The voice, laced with such a repulsive, innate quality to it that it made Bulma want to gag, froze her, and haltingly, she twisted her head to look behind her. Five soldiers, clothed in white and brown armor with wide beige shoulder pads and white boots and gloves, appraised her from not twenty feet away. How could she have been so careless? They could have landed on top of her head and she would have been too distracted by the battle to notice... Not good...

'I'm visiting,' she brazenly lied, her mind racing to create a believable story. 'I was taking a walk,' she clarified, 'and I-'

'No,' the soldier in the front, a faded bronze humanoid with long, black hair, said, 'you weren't.' Bulma recognized him as the previous speaker. She also recognized that every soldier was armed similarly to the other PTO thugs she saw back on FP083- each one had a white beam blaster affixed to one of their arms. 'Gotta say- I've been around the galaxy's bruisers a long time, and even though I haven't seen a Saiyan for damn near twenty years, I can't say that I've ever seen one with blue hair before.'

Bulma's eyes briefly narrowed before springing open; he was talking about her. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said, feeling hopelessly defenseless. Yamcha had told her to hide- why didn't she hide?

'You did it again- you're lying,' the soldier said. 'Why?' he asked, startlingly earnest. 'Just makes your pretty face shrink up and shiver.'

She shivered then, unintentionally conforming to his cheerless words, and wrapped her arms around her. In spite of her layers of clothing and the distance between her and them, she felt horribly naked.

The lead soldier gave her a smug, predator smirk- the face of someone who frequently lacked power but serendipitously now found it dropped into his lap. The first two steps he took towards her were, in defiance of the storm of blows raging near them, deliberate and measured and caused her to flinch back a step in response. But his next two steps were wild, uncoordinated, his eyes rolled in his head, and once his body was halfway to the ground, Bulma barely make out a purple shape hovering behind him, looming-

The four other soldiers saw their leader start to fall, and turned away from her. 'Who?-'

A quick succession of blows, four in total, landed around her, far too fast for her to see. The last blow, however, did not resonate as loudly and cleanly as the previous three- and Bulma saw that one soldier was still standing, holding back a thin purple elbow just inches from his face. Just inches away, attached, to the elbow, was Bez.

Their eyes met for the briefest of moments- one eye covered by a glass-green scouter- and his expression was unreadable to her. But the soldier must have picked up on the exchange instantly- the familiarity between them- for he twisted away one arm, the one which his blaster rested threateningly on, and pointed it at Bulma. 'Screw you!' he yelled, before the rest of his words were drowned out by the loud, high-pitched sound of a beam of energy firing towards her.

She saw the end of her life then, as boring and innocent looking as a yellow chunk of space rapidly moving towards her. Time should have slowed down or grounded to a halt to give her time- time to do something. But, if anything, time went by quicker and the blast rushed towards her faster than it should have. Without a single thought to hold, she felt heat and light started to kiss her.

Before it hit, her eyes blinked back to Bez in a wild grasp to convey one last thing. But he was gone- no, he wasn't where he was supposed to be. A purple flicker appeared before her, soaking up the encroaching heat like a sponge, and a gentle grunt and shove backward from the object shielding her brushed up against her front. The purple body in front of her slumped, like a tree about to fall, but she blinked again and she was alone, and the soldier with the arm outstretched towards her lowered his arm in alarm and started to scan his surroundings. 'He- where did he-'

The purple blur reappeared, slightly to Bulma's front and right, a moment later, one arm raised. A blast of purple energy then quickly ripped across the space from the blur. Evidently, the soldier hadn't been prepared- he hadn't even lifted his arms in a feeble attempt to defend himself- and was lanced straight through the chest by the blast. In another second, his body came to rest, motionless, on the green, wavy grass.

Half-turned to her, Bez panted, his chest visibly rising and falling with what looked incredible effort. When he faced her, Bulma saw what he had sacrificed to save her- a massive hole was drilled into his upper right chest, bereft of whatever armor or jumpsuit had previously existed there. Bez's blood, sticky and sickly pink, coursed down the right side of his chest.

He spent another minute foolishly standing, and then collapsed to the ground.

Bulma frantically ran over and crouched down next to him. She divested herself of a technician jacket she had discovered on the shuttle during their trip, ripped it into long ribbons, and stuffed it into the wound, and forced as much of her own weight down onto the fabric.

'Damn you…' she cursed under her breath, uncaring whether Bez was lucid enough to hear her. 'You said you didn't care for us... ' Her fingers clutched the bloody ribbons, full of futility and frustration. 'Why did you do this?...'

0o0o0

The air whooshed above Yamcha, and spinning, he smashed his right forearm against a boot. Painful shivers ran up his spine and wrenched his body backward. He feebly blocked another purple fist from digging into his gut, and aching, a final blow slipped past his guard and smashed down on his right shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Ably, Yamcha planted his left hand and pushed off of it, righting himself a moment later in time to catch a charging elbow strike- but the blow's image faded, and Yamcha felt a blinding pain erupt in his back a moment later. Clutching his sides, he fell, then rolled, and came to rest on his right side.

Intolerably smug, Cui eyed him from where Yamcha had just stood. 'Friend?' They mocked called, before crouching down and narrowly avoiding a sweeping kick intended to smash their head into their own shoulder. Turning, Cui didn't anticipate a follow-up kick rebounding off of their ribcage, forcing their feet to drag back through the dirt. Growling, Cui grabbed a punch aimed for his right shoulder and pulled Tien in. They landed a series of heavy, crushing punches to Tien's own ribcage, before Yamcha rushed in behind them, twisted perpendicular to the ground, and swung both of his feet into Cui's left side. Rocketing back into a roll, Cui moved away from them with the force of the blow and came to a stop in a crouching position. They brushed their dirtied, brown-streaked armor and stood. 'Haha… haha…' they chuckled to themselves.

Yamcha panted, and felt Tien do the same next to him. Cui was damaged and was clearly weakened by Tien and Yamcha's efforts- but they were weakening at a faster rate than him and were quickly discovering what their newfound limits were. Cui was a relentless close-quarters fighter. They offered no chances for Tien and Yamcha to hang back and charge a ki attack- something they might have a chance of seriously hurting the alien with. At the rate this was going, they weren't going to win this.

Tien must have been having the same thoughts as him- his voice spilled into Tien's mind just as soon as he'd reached this conclusion.

'We need to end this fight soon,' Tien telepathically cautioned. '... Sorry. You probably already noticed that, right?'

'I did,' Yamcha replied, irked. 'What are your ideas?'

A purple blur appeared before them at that moment- Yamcha felt a heavy boot whip across his body in a diagonal, streaking from his face to left hip, and was smashed backward across the island. He crashed into the solitary rock outcrop with his back, which was shredded by the jagged, hard rock.

'C'mon!' Yamcha heard Tien's ragged voice scream into his consciousness. 'There has to be something we can do to buy some time!' Yamcha blearily saw Tien vault and land a good hit on Cui's head- but the alien shrugged it off with minimal effort and punished Tien for his airborne theatrics by flying above him and slapping him to the ground. The human fighter bounced once and rolled away, and was on his feet in moments to block another strike.

Struggling to free himself- and seeing glimpses of Tien being savaged in the distance by a relentless, physical onslaught from Cui, Yamcha wracked his brain. He had heard a lot of gossip among the lower level PTO grunts about the elites like Cui- it seemed like there was a never-ending merry-go-round where the higher-up soldiers continually fell in and out of Frieza's good graces. He remembered Cui's name being thrown around, that they were one of the more grating elites in how they treated the lower level soldiers, that they hated-

Yamcha's eyes, previously trapped in a painful haze, flew open, and staggering free of the outcrop, Yamcha cupped a hand to his mouth. 'HEY CUI!' He yelled, loud enough to reach them on the far end of the island. 'VEGETA'S COMING UP BEHIND YOU!'

It was like they had been trained like a dog- Cui immediately straightened and tensed, and spun around towards the wider ocean surrounding the island. 'Where!?' They babbled. 'Where is that Saiyan?! I knew he was here- I knew he had betrayed Frieza, that he was nothing more than a sniveling, traitorous, monkey!'

Tien had nearly toppled over from the last blow, which had come close to shattering his knee into pieces. But Cui's abrupt outburst gave him a precious moment to think- and prepare. He glanced over to Yamcha, saw him hold one of his hands with the other, glowing, and rammed a knee into Cui's back, knocking the alien to the ground. Instead of pursuing, however, Tien immediately jumped back, avoiding a retaliatory punch- as the words 'Time! Get me time!' rang through his head. He hopped back again and avoided a lightning-quick jab from piercing his gut, spun, and finally failed to avoid a blow from Cui reaching him. With a pained gasp, he felt his bones in his forearms nearly buckle from a centered, heavy punch.

Behind the outstretched fist, Cui was fuming. 'I'll kill you both, and then I'll find Vegeta, that coward!' They screamed, slamming another agonizing punch into Tien's guard. 'He'll tell me everything I need to know, once I rip off his tail and make him pay for every prick comment he's ever made!'

A strong, staggered kick slammed through Tien's guard, knocking the breathless human flat onto their back. He could soak up no more- he felt the bones in his arms fracture in too many places. Another blow, receiving or giving, and he was sure they'd break.

And yet, despite this, he smiled. Cui, who was stepping into his view above him, probably didn't even see his expression- a ball of white-hot energy slammed into the alien's back and carried him above and over the lake in the center of the island.

0o0o0

Yamcha, sweating profusely and bleeding badly, nonetheless kept the grip on his left arm on his right steady. With a series of rapid hand movements from his right hand, a sphere of ki flung through the air around Cui, bouncing and slamming into the alien from every direction like a volleyball.

Hmm… like a volleyball… but that would be an extremely silly name for an attack.

'HYAAAGH!' Yamcha yelled out, directing the ball to zoom around to Cui's back and start crashing into him from below. With a snarl the alien began to flail his limbs in an attempt to grab the ball- but the attack was moving too fast now, and zipping around the purple alien like mad. One, two, three, four, five times the attack slammed into Cui's gut, knocking the wind out of him, and then with a flick of his fingers, the ball hooked to the right and ducked up, and slammed Cui down from behind.

The inevitable tipping point came- physically shaking with rage, Cui spun around, and just before the ball smacked into him once more, he threw out his arms and released a short-range wave of dark purple ki, sweeping up the ball in its flow and pushing it up higher into the sky. The purple storm snagged and tangled with itself, wrapping itself around Yamcha's attack, and before he could free it, the whole mess of ki exploded. The ground below Yamcha shook as the air around him shuddered and a massive shockwave rang out from above, flattening the grass around him. He wobbled, half from exhaustion and half from the link to his attack being severed.

High up in the sky, Cui grinned satisfactorily- for a time. As his attention was drawn back to the pest that had just treated him like a sack of foodstuff, a gentle wave of air brushed down on the top of his head.

They wrenched their head up towards the sky, and far above, saw Tien hovering in the air. His hands framed a three-sided, 2-D shape.

Then, the words: 'TRI-BEAM, HAH!'

A massive triangle of golden, bristling energy shoved down from above, easily encompassing Cui's frightened form and entrapping him. The energy, indifferent to him, then shot down to the ground and into the lake in the center of the island. A massive pillar of water erupted into the air and then splashed apart into a mess of mist as the tri-beam came to a rest against the lake's bed and exploded.

0o0o0

Visibly slouching in mid-air, Tien touched down next to Yamcha. His ally looked grim. 'You think that killed him?' Yamcha asked, in a tone that gave away his true thoughts.

'We're not sticking around long enough to find out,' Tien said. 'Where'd you leave Bulma?'

A handful of seconds later, they called upon all the energy they had left to balance Bulma and a near-dead body between them, and burdened by their own lack of energy, they flew off.

0o0o0

With a prod of his foot, Dodoria edged the round, orange sphere to the left and right, back-and-forth. The two stars hidden deep within it, slightly obscured by whatever glassy material separated them from the sphere's exterior, taunted him with their embeddedness. With a growl, he kicked it away.

This village had nothing. Its inhabitants were what he thought they were- dumb, poor farmers. After scouring the village- more like a mess of dingy huts- he even doubted that last fact. While he saw various tools lying around in the fields or the houses, some dropped from when the residents smartened up to what was happening, Dodoria found no food stowed away. It didn't make sense- what kind of farming community didn't have some kind of storehouse? What were they even growing!?

Now, angry and hungry, he had to think of a lie to tell Zarbon- because he couldn't bribe him with something from his nonexistent spoils. They had slaughtered an entire village and all they had to show for it was a big and dumb orange ball. He felt that he would have been less angry if he had found nothing- but to find one pretty-but-worthless thing just emphasized what a waste of time this way. He should have reined his troops in- this had to be the poorest settlement on the planet, and he had the back luck of picking this one to plunder. He was sure Cui's or the others' squads had found much better loot to carry back at mission's end. Damn bastards.

He made up his mind that instant- his gaze centered on the orange sphere. He wanted to break it.

'Soldier,' Dodoria said, grabbing a nearby, ice-white soldier who was about to vaporize a green, purple-blooded corpse. The rest of his squad was out of sight, milling around the exterior of the village and putting on the finishing touches on their work. 'Hold this in place,' he gestured to the sphere, 'and don't move unless I tell you to.'

The soldier gave him a weird look, but shrugged. 'Alright, sir…'

Dodoria backed up while the soldier crouched down and held the ball against the ground from above and the side with his hands. With one quick stride, Dodoria slammed the side of his foot against the ball.

Nothing happened- and the soldier, screaming his head off, promptly collapsed backward onto the ground in pain. His hands were twisted unnaturally and swollen- the force of the kick had traveled from the ball and into his hands, breaking them. In agony, the soldier began to yell and roll across the ground.

Dodoria looked at him, then back at the ball. 'Huh.' He crouched down closer to it- and saw that he had, indeed cracked it. A sick kind of satisfaction grew in him. All around him, former homes burned and collapsed, and tilled fields were turned into burnt carapaces by his men. One more hit, and it's like this village never existed...

'Sir- my hands! My-'

The soldier abruptly cut out, and curious, Dodoria stood and looked over. A Namekian, plain-clothed and as dumb looking as the rest of them, had his foot clamped down on what remained of the soldier's throat. It was then that Dodoria realized that he could only hear the sound of licking fire from his surroundings. It was dead quiet otherwise.

'So you killed my men, huh?' Dodoria surmised and jeered in the same measure. 'Not very impressive. Some of them died at the start to the happy souls who lived here- but that didn't change the outcome, now did it?'

The Namekian said nothing and continued to stare at him, and yet there was something distant and impersonal to this- like his mind was occupied with another matter far away. Still, Dodoria could see green fingers clenching and unclenching with anger. It was clear that this one intended to fight him.

'Fine,' Dodoria laughed. 'Your funeral- AAACK!'

In the space of a second, the green figure had disappeared and reappeared- halfway inside him. As purple blood- not dissimilar from Nail's own, which frothed and churned in his veins- gushed out of Dodoria's chest and down Nail's arm, forming into a steady stream of droplets that parted at the elbow and splattered onto the green grass at their feet, Nail leaned his head closer to Dodoria's face, regarded the fading light exit the pink's alien eyes, and whispered: 'May you be judged fairly.'

In response, Dodoria retched blood, patterning the left side of Nail's body.

Nail held his pose- both propped against and plunged within Dodoria- for a few seconds more, and then his words came to pass. One last breath graced his glistening skin and he let Dodoria's deadened body collapse to the ground in a ruined heap. One more ounce of his attention was spared for this misshapen, bloodthirsty sump, and then, amidst the wreckage and smoke, he grabbed the dragonball with one arm and sought out what remained of his kin.


A/N: A quick note on Tien and Yamcha's power levels at this point- compared to Gohan and Krillin, they've run through two elements I consider very important for training and improving someone's power in DBZ. First, they've been either training or fighting consistently since Raditz's arrival on the Earth five or so in-story months ago, so in terms of training they haven't had as much as they would have leading up to Vegeta and Nappa's arrival in canon. But, to counteract and overcome this deficit, they've sensed a variety of stronger power levels since Raditz's attack that have induced them to train or fight harder than they would have otherwise- and, more importantly, they were aware of these higher power levels for a longer period of time than Krillin and Gohan were in canon. Krillin and Gohan had a month between sensing a fighter as strong as Vegeta and receiving their power boosts from Guru- here, Tien and Yamcha had something closer to four or three months. Thus, because they were aware of a vastly stronger power than their own for a longer period of time, they pushed themselves in training a bit more/ for longer than Krillin and Gohan in canon.

and some

power levels:

Cui: 18,000

Tien: 16,000

Yamcha: 15,000

Bez: 2,400

Dodoria: 22,000

Nail: :')... won't be that different from canon, just wanna fine-tune the number a bit more.

Alright! Onto reviews:

LWexe: Oooohohhhhhh! Very excited to do stuff with Gohan! His time is coming, for sure!

Titanfire999: May this chapter rock and roll you.