Metal

Chapter 84: Bound to a Name

A/N: I have to say- I feel pretty friggin' good about this chapter! Hope it lives up to this two-sentence hype! Enjoy!


Before the blue-colored dust could even start to land, Retu pulled on her sleeve. 'That was pretty cool,' he murmured.

Suno shrugged him off of her. 'Yeah- whatever.' Her gaze narrowed. 'Hey, Chi-Chi- where'd you come from?'

'Where?' Chi-Chi kept her back to them as she started to stretch her arms and legs, limbering up for a fight. Their enemies were either patient, kind, or cocky enough to let them talk uninterrupted as they incrementally spread out. The pink one, Ebi, stayed directly in front of Chi-Chi, while the green one flanked her from her right and the yellow one moved to her left.

She lost her train of thought as her stretching slowed, eyes warily watching how her opponents were positioning. 'Where?' she said again to remind herself what had been asked. 'I came in the same way as you and snuck in here while you and these three were distracted. Then it was a simple matter of jumping up to the highest platform, and…' Her hands pressed together, making a fluttering motion like a bird. 'Fall to the Earth.'

'You make it sound a lot more graceful than it was, teacher,' Suno said humorlessly.

'What are you talking about? It was super graceful.'

Retu, looking up, pushed past a scoffing Suno. 'So the others are up there, too?'

'Others?' Chi-Chi spotted a foot sliding back to her right. She stepped forward and left. 'I was the only one up there, and I know how hard it is to sense ki in this clamshell… but I don't think any others are coming anytime soon. Relatively.'

'Relative to this battle,' Retu realized, grimacing. 'Okay.' He exchanged a glance with Suno before slowly padding off to his right. 'Well, now we know.'

'Hah!' the yellow fighter gave a gut-busting laugh. 'You three really made it easy for us, spelling out your odds to us! Three-on-three?' His posture lowered, dappling his face with shadow. 'Piece of cake.'

'Don't get too comfortable, Miso,' Ebi reminded him from his right, raising his pink arms in a similar manner to just before launching a beam of pure cold. 'We were very explicitly told not to underestimate them.'

'Then we do this quick,' the green, raspy-voiced, reptile-like fighter said from Ebi's right. 'And we do this dirty. The doctor will appreciate it if we don't take any chances playing fair.'

'Well said, Kishi.' Alongside a growing smirk, Ebi's outline shimmered, throwing blue and white in the air around him. 'No reason to build this up any further, then. You three, quite simply-'

Halfway through his sentence Chi-Chi's red-tinged first swung up through his guard, knocking his arms skyward, exposing himself to a rapid series of heavy blows. The black and spied armor splintered, chips skittering across the stone-and-tile ground, until the pink warrior slammed his back foot to the ground and pivoted, gaining space to raise his arms again. His palms connected again, spilling cold into the air- and Chi-Chi, a red visage, appeared in front of him and point-blank blasted his upper chest. A red slingshot of ki pelted his body, broke apart his arms from each other, and launched him flying across the room and into the room's far wall.

His arms were gripped, pinned above his head, even before his back had fully settled into the body-shaped metal dent behind him.

'Guessed right, then.' Chi-Chi casually stepped in, further drawing his arms above him and gaming a frustrated growl from him. 'You can make some serious cold when your hands are pressed together.' Her gaze dropped to him. 'What that isn't the case, though, you're not much of a fighter.'

Ebi snarled further as she leaned forward, jabbing a finger to his chest. 'So let's cut straight to it- who the hell are you and your friends, and what is this place?'

'You don't know?' Recognition flashed in Ebi's eyes, and a cruel smile stretched across his face. 'You don't know.'

'That's why I'm asking questions,' Chi-Chi said, irked. She jabbed again. 'And you, of all- fssssssss!'

Her hissing trailed away from her mouth as Chi-Chi jumped back, cradling her right pointer finger. She could feel the cold radiating into her other hand. The thing was frozen solid.

With a flick. Chi-Chi threw out her frozen finger and blasted apart the ice encasing it. 'So you can make ice from wherever.' She tried to ignore the seeping sting that pulsed across that arm. 'That's annoying.'

'Useful,' Ebi corrected her, hunching further as greater and greater waves of blue and white cold emerged from him, radiating across the air like bands of light. 'And, really… too bad for you. There was a time not too long ago when your guess would have been right.'

As her red aura kicked up again around her, shooting like fed flames, Chi-Chi smirked. 'Is that supposed to make me feel better?'

A huge pulse of cold air hit her, tipping off what was about to happen before she could see. 'I don't care! Ebi roared as he charged forward.

0o0o0

Their coordination- both of his allies and his enemies- surprised Retu: he was still balancing on his front foot when the yellow fighter, Miso, barrelled towards him in a storm of pink. His breath hissed like his footwork as his boots scraped against the ground, cutting to his left as he narrowly avoided a full-body slam. Retu landed on his side, pivoted, and swung on his hip to hop back onto his feet. As his clear aura pulsed faintly, he watched Miso slow his momentum and turn.

'You're big,' Retu said.

Miso squatted down, holding his weight off the ground like a bull. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah.' Before Retu's mouth had stopped moving, his outline blurred away, dispersing along with his aura like dust in the wind. Miso's posture tightened; his eyes started rapidly darting around, oblivious to the red smear in the air diving towards him. Only at the last second did his head shoot up, eyes wide. Retu shifted out of his superspeeded state, his aura flaring out before him like a spray of incoming power, and his interlocked fists raised above him and smashed into Miso's round, flat head.

Pressure compressed the ground beneath them- and Retu was shocked to see Miso's body compress as well, flattening and filling the newly made impact like cake batter, and was even more shocked when the blow came back at him as Miso's body sprung back, headbutting Retu's chest. His sternum rubber-banded in his torso as he was flung upward, trying to understand what had just happened.

His mind was whirring as Miso suddenly appeared below him, pink aura silhouetting his speed, and Retu wisely called upon his red Kaioken aura to veer to his left. He half-landed, half stumbled onto a metal platform, rolled on his shoulder, and finally stopped himself by slamming his hand down. He caught his breath as a heavy clunk came from behind him.

'So that's one ability of yours,' Retu said, palming his chest for any broken ribs as he stood. He met the exact haughtiness he expected once he faced his enemy. 'I assume you have more?'

Miso said nothing, choosing instead to smirk and fall into the same pose as earlier as faint pink energy coalesced across his body. Retu thought there was a reason for that, but...

With a flare of his aura, Retu crossed his arms and started calling on his energy- his reserved energy. Flickers of blue shot through his red Kaioken aura as the platform below him began to shake. He and Suno had been able to do a lot of experimentation during their time spent training in the Gravity Chamber. One of their most consequential discoveries had stemmed from him complaining about how everything was more taxing when the gravity machine was cranked to its highest level. In a show of unexplained brilliance, Suno theorized, tested, and confirmed that the same principle was true for the Kaioken. The less of your base power you augmented, the less strain there was on your body and the longer the Kaioken could be used.

A rush of sapphiric blue encased him, pushing his red cloak of ki out further. The other thing they had realized- or at least understood the importance of- was that the Kaioken should be used for as short as possible when going for a knock-out.

The platform below him wrenched back as Retu screamed into the air, energy rattling like a screech. His red-enclosed face, taut with pained concentration, reached Miso's guard and vanished, his outline breaking against the yellow fighter like mist. His opponent glanced up, getting a glimpse of a swirl of red rushing towards him, and quick-as-lightning, sprung to his full height and raised his guard above him, limbs coated with a thin shell of pink energy, smirk ready again on his face.

But the blow never came. Retu's leg swung down and through him, split in two by Miso, and as the yellow fighter's beady black eyes readjusted past the dispersing remains of Retu's afterimage, his expression dropped.

An aura twice as large and twice as powerful, pure energy coiling and slapping against the platform, stormed around Retu, who increasingly sunk to the ground like a weighted stone dropping through water. It was almost like his energy was being shaped into a burden, settling against his straining, aching back. The longer Miso stared the more of a shape he could recognize- something round, three-dimensional, like a package or box. It wasn't very defined.

'Needed time,' Retu breathed, his exhale amplifying his voice as he twisted, gripping the lip of the growing mass of ki on his back, 'to ramp up my Kaioken… I was warming up- and getting you out of position.'

Dread shot through Miso. His arms were still locked above him, faint pink aura clinging. He was out of position against this- this!...

Retu heaved, entire body dropping, and in the same motion his back foot floored forward and slammed at a half-angle against the platform, leveraging his momentum forward instead of down. In the span of a second he bucked, aura whirring, and with his other hand wrenched the construct off of his back and swung it, twisting it before it left his grip so that it spun through the air like a crude disc. The ki was blue, harshly bright, and as it spun slivers of reflected like scales shimmering with water.

Miso choked on his breath. This shell!?

All sound faded away as the blue ki hurdled towards Miso, overshadowing the faint pink aura coalescing around the center of his body. Retu nearly toppled forward as he halted his momentum, gasping for breath, and forced his head to look to his left. The shell spun, cut through the air, and he watched the edge of its blue-laced rim touch against Miso and sputter.

And sputter. Retu blinked sweat from his eyes as he saw the shell seize in the air, straining against something even as it continued to budge forward. Glancing to the ground. Retu saw Miso's feet remain motionless, even as his attack continued to inch. So either his opponent was being slowly minced… or…

Retu's heart clenched as a growing pink ki, unable to challenge the might of his attack but nevertheless strong enough to grow beside it, appear around what he could see of Miso and tighten around the shell like a vice. Two distinct protrusions, like incisors, cut into the shell's top and bottom as Miso's arms finally descended from their guard above his head and gripped the attack. Retu's breath nearly ceased as he saw two arms, shrouded by pink aura, struggle against the hissing, spitting, failing attack. Somehow, Miso was staying whole and alive against what should have been a body-ending slice.

Retu despaired at the shell, and then it exploded. Blue ki, somehow triggered, splintered apart and broke apart in all directions, shards scattered by a resounding crack. Retu saw Miso's feet definitively move as the force of the explosion wrenched the yellow fighter into the air and careening off the edge of the platform. Retu couldn't see where exactly to, as a plate of ki from the shell spun towards him, racing towards his outstretched lower body; with a quick blast of his ki, the shell piece burst apart further and dove, slicing into the platform a few feet in front of him.

Which was probably the worst possible outcome of that chain of events excluding death. Something in the platform below him lurched as the last bit of whatever was holding it and him up here gave away. He gulped.

'CRAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaap!...'

0o0o0

Suno was on her game before anyone had even moved. She had been looking for someone to unload her frustration on since the debacle in the last room. As Chi-Chi, a blaze of red and flame, was speeding towards her opponent, Suno appeared in front of the distracted green fighter and rammed a red-tinged fist into his gut, bucking his body. Eyes bulged as Kishi's arms raced to his gut, then flailed outward as Suno's leg dove under him and knocked his feet out from under him. That same leg ducked back, cocked.

'FORE!' Suno's brilliant red leg slammed into Kishi's side, sending the fighter screaming into the air. Suno landed on that leg, hopped back onto her other, and scowled. The Kaioken had a way of worsening existing injuries; if she wasn't careful, the barely knitted scabs tucked in the cuts in her forearms would break apart and start pouring blood again. She would have to be judicious with her use of the augmented levels.

Brumph. A far-off clunk, beyond more immediate sounds of combat, reached Suno's ears. Wary, she looked up again, and to her immense surprise, she saw her opponent, nothing more than a stroke of shadowy green, had hit something at the top of the chamber. Must have been… the ceiling.

'Holy shit.' Suno muttered. 'This guy is outmatched.'

'What was that?' A raspy voice asked.

Eyes scattering, Suno spun, narrowly avoiding a crackling yellow whip from wrapping itself around her ankle. As the weapon came back to its green owner, golden sparks raced up and down it like an electric current.

'An electric whip,' she said, eyes not leaving the weapon- the technique, she now realized, as it coiled back into his skin as easily as a sword fitting into a scabbard- for a second. 'Never seen that before.' She fixed her drawn face into a cocky grin. 'Heard of it, though.'

The whip burst in and out of reality again as Kishi cracked it against the floor next to him. 'You're not going to ask how I get down here so quickly?'

'The answer's already pretty obvious there.' Suno dipped her head down and to her left slightly, waiting. A second passed before a splotch of green matter slammed into the ground behind her, splattering like thrown paint. She glanced victoriously back to him. 'You don't look that well put together, buddy.'

Kisho's entire body clenched with livid emotion, which unfortunately highlighted the chunk of flesh missing from his right side. 'A small price to pay!' he roared, as he rushed forward, throwing his right arm in an arc above his head. As before, the whip's sparkling edge reappeared and darted towards Suno. She nimbly backpedaled, letting the whip snap to its length off-target, and then dodged several more lashes without moving to counter-attack.

It was important to get a good idea of this thing's range. She also had to alter her earlier assessment; through every lunge and swing, the whip's basic construction remained the same, suggesting that it really was stored whole in some regard in the green fighter's body. The more she darted back-and-forth, jumping and ducking beneath a lightning-quick strike, she got a better idea of that, too; Kishi was almost modular in how his body appeared not wholly united. Even his color wasn't consistent- she could make out several different shades of green at various points across his skin.

It was clear what kind of work whoever this "doctor" was did. And then Suno remembered why she was here and that she didn't have all the time in the world with gaming her opponent's range.

The latest whip strike crested past her face, lurched towards her, but by that time Suno was already propulsing forward under the weight of her red aura. Kishi was left over-extended, awkwardly turned away from her so as to fully swing his whip, and without any effort at all Suno flipped and slammed her legs into him, ramming him into the ground.

The floor immediately sagged, straining to hold her blow's force, and eventually gave out and collapsed wholesale. Her aura instinctively whisked her higher into the air to avoid the plume of dust and debris that was sure to spew up, but without any hesitation she aimed her ki downward and plunged through the storm. She cleared herself a path into a sub-basement darker and bleaker than the room above it. Still, she could distinguish Kishi's half-buried body at the room's far end, his body even more misshapen than it had appeared previously.

Her feet gently tapped down onto the biggest rubble pile. 'Give it up.'

'Give up?' Kishi spat. 'What for?'

'For your life, for one,' Suno said, weighing her energy. Her Kaioken had dispersed as she descended, letting her natural white-blue aura take its place. 'I've never killed anyone and I don't want to change that now.'

'Funny for you to say,' Kishi rasped. The pile restraining him shook but he came no closer to standing 'You don't want to kill? You seem you'd be pretty good at it.'

'Better than you,' Suno said quickly before frowning, realizing that there was some banter better left unsaid. 'Better than you, hypothetically,' she corrected herself.

'I can believe that,' Kishi said, body now definitively straining to get free of his pile. Suno's energy burned brighter around her in response. 'You're stronger than me by far…'

A slight smile graced Suno's face. 'Glad we're on the same page. Now; if you want to live, I'd like to hear more about this "Doctor".'

'Sure.' Kishi went motionless as two whips, electricity cascading to their tips, shot up from the rubble pile below Suno and wrapped around her ankles. 'Let's talk.'

A surge of pain, manifesting as squirming muscles and spasming legs, raced up Suno's body to her waist to her chest to her arms to her head. The first wave was so terrible that a black film swept over her vision and left it riddled with starry dead spots. She realized she was on her arms and knees, and staked her shaking head forward.

Kishi was walking towards her, green flesh draping from his legs. At the end of that bodily trail, the whips fed into the rubble and snaked under the ground- towards her.

That raspy voice accompanied another incomprehensible flash of pain, constricting the muscles in her chest hard enough to momentarily lock her lungs. 'Looks like you'll join your friends and family as an asset after all!'

0o0o0

The massive wooden chair flexed admirably as the Ox-King tilted away from the table. 'Oolong?' He called down the hallway. 'Are you sure you don't want any more tea?'

The shapeshifting pig, disguised as a human male, cringed at the mention of his name. He sheepishly oriented himself back down the hall. 'No- I'm fine!' he assured him. 'To be honest, I think I had a little too much caffeine!'

A confused look crossed the Ox-King's face. 'Too much?'

From across the table, Puar leaned over on her arms and whispered something to Ox-King. His face flexed. 'Oh- take your time!' he called down the hall again, jovial. 'I just redid the brick wall in there! It's down the hall, on the right!'

Oolong glanced at Puar, liked nothing of the grin on her face, and ended the conversation with a raise of his hand. Then he was off again, turning and continuing down the hallway. He sorta wished he was lying, and that he hadn't tried to discreetly visit the bathroom, but when nature called, nature called. Even if he had originally left the table to do something entirely different. Standing always seemed to remind him of- of, well, nature.

Gohan would have to wait. His father had said he was taking a nap in his bedroom and hadn't been very talkative lately. Hopefully that wouldn't be the case when Oolong swung by, because from what he remembered, Gohan had been one of the most pleasant toddlers to babysit in perhaps the history of babysitting. I mean, he didn't have anything to compare it to, because he'd only babysat Gohan, but he had had such a fun experience doing that a few years back that he had become a little invested in how the kid was turning out. The last time Oolong had seen him, he hadn't been able to talk and he had a tail like Kakarot. Oolong felt the former had changed and feared the latter hadn't.

Meh. The bathroom was where the Ox-King promised it'd be. Chi-Chi is one of the more capable people I've met. Oolong's nose wiggled alongside his hips as his pants dropped and he sat on the toilet. He paused his thinking for a few seconds to get the ball rolling. Chi-Chi… well, she might have had a blind spot with Kakarot, but this is her son. Any measure she'd take for herself is one she'd take for Gohan, too.

As the seconds rolled by and Oolong grew content with ending his thought there, he began to examine the bathroom in detail. Toilet paper on a roll to his left, attached to a stone basin sink. Some cleaning supplies and a plunger or a cleaning stick or something to his right. No shower, which probably meant there wasn't a guest room nearby. In front of him the brighter mud-brown of the redid wall contrasted very obviously with the surrounding, older stone-gray brickwork. It looked like it was awkwardly plugging a hole. The slit-window at its top accentuated that.

It wasn't his business to critique someone else's home decor. His shack with Puar was nothing to brag about. In fact, if he didn't know better, he would have thought the haphazard brick laying against the wall facing him was taken straight from the collapsing chimney in their living room.

He stared at the brick. So maybe there was something he'd critique. It was a little weird that this was just lying here. Maybe Ox-King had forgotten it when renovating the bathroom? Oolong couldn't think of a better explanation as he sagged forward and gripped the brick. He ended up misjudging the size of the bathroom, however, and smacked his hand against a mud-brown section of the wall. He ripped back his wrist, biting his lower lip, and shook his hand furiously. 'Ouch! Ouch! Damn wall!' His glare descended on the stupid, mud-stained, piece-of-

There was a second hole. Where his hand had been whacked, a small slice of the outside world was now shining through, showing some grass. Puar, face flat with confusion, looked at the brick, then the hole, then at the brick again. Then he picked up the brick, turned it around in his hands a few times, and pushed with it. A great big hole emerged out of the redid section of the wall as brown unmortared bricks fell out, revealing him and his shuttered pants to the outside world. Birds sang, sun shined, and a stray wind blew into the room, causing the hairs on his leg to jump.

'This?... This was the redone wall?'

His stunned eyes took in the small section of the mountain his unwelcomed view now offered. The rest of the castle ran further to his left, just barely giving enough space for a small ledge of grass and dirt to coexist before the ground fell off entirely. And Puar couldn't help but notice that there was a child-sized depression in that ledge that looked like someone had rolled and tossed around in. And, of course, he couldn't not see the purple dragon, big eyes blinking, staring at his brick-in-hand, outstretched pose from atop his throne. He knew this dragon! He KNEW.

'Oh… Gohan… Why'd you have to run off in the bathroom?'

0o0o0

A breeze pushed past his body, tracing against his skin before moving on and down the slope. Breath dispersed as Tien sagged, frowning into his lap. He had been in a good headspace for meditation. Today had been a good headspace. Even if that thought had remained out of reach. Even if, on the edge of his mind…

Tien sighed again as he opened his eyes, destacked his legs, and stood. But that was over now. Someone was approaching.

'Tien?' He turned at the mention of his name; at the bottom of the slope, Chiaotzu stared up at him, hands cupped around his mouth, clothes thrown onto him in a hurry. 'You sensed it too, right?'

'I did.' Without losing any of his sullenness, he descended the slope, legs jolting against the pebbly run of land. 'Unfortunately.'

'Unfortunately,' Chiaotzu agreed, grim. 'There's no way that surge wasn't Suno preparing to fight someone, right?'

'Afraid so.' Tien's gaze drifted to his left- somewhere to the north, from what he could sense. 'That was full power- or, at least made to feel that way.'

'Oh.' Chiaotzu's expression dropped with thought. 'So… more like a beacon, for us to head to.'

'That's what I would bet.' Mist clung to the horizon, obscuring the sun as it climbed into the sky. 'Shouldn't be too far.' Tien's gaze narrowed. 'Shouldn't be…'

Chiaotzu followed Tien's attention- and eventually turned back to his friend. 'Tien? Is something on your mind?'

'Recently, continually, yeah.'

'The Kaioken?'

Tien remained silent as his slitted gaze searched the horizon, leaning leftward… before drifting back north. 'Mostly.' He sighed again. 'Doesn't matter right now. Let's get moving.'

0o0o0

'Woah.' Korin's head drew his body to his right, pivoting on his staff. 'You feel that?'

Yajirobe, knees aching, dropped the sack of rice and stretched out his back. 'Felt what?'

'You didn't?' With angelic patience, Korin waited for Yajirobe to turn around and look at him. 'Put a feeler out there, Yajirobe,' he said in a voice that sounded less aggravated than he was. 'What do you sense?'

Still unkinking his body, Yajirobe grunted and flopped onto the pile of rice sacks he had neatly and dutifully moved from the central platform above them. He didn't know why, in a tower he wasn't even living in anymore, Korin ordered him to bring the food into the storeroom. What difference did it make? If anything, it was more convenient to eat upstairs than down here.

Yajirobe made a show of sighing and rolling onto his front. 'Alright,' he grunted, closing his eyes. 'Give me a minute.'

'You're not going to try and nap, are you?' Korin asked, suspicious.

'Why would you think that?'

'You are the laziest person I've ever met.'

Yajirobe huffed and called on his ki sense. He could be super productive when he wanted to. After doing a bunch of useless grunt work that made him hungry, though? No. But Korin was a pain. So he flipped on his energy, searched, caught it, and rolled again onto his back.

'Suno.' He eyed Korin with a bored expression. 'So she powered up. What's the big deal?'

Korin's staff tapped forcefully to the tiles. 'Does her powering up feel like a training session to you?'

'Could be. I dunno how she trains.'

Their glares met for a second. Even if Yajirobe wouldn't outright say it, Korin knew he was, at some level, aware that it could be something more than training. Which underscored Korin's total lack of an idea as to what was going on. He didn't want to call this a false alarm, but for every other bad event that had hit Earth the past couple of decades, he had felt it coming in his gut in advance. This time? Nothing.

And of course he was stuck with the least knowledgeable and laziest fighter out of all of them. His evil twin, almost.

'Do you still have Bulma's pager?' Korin asked, causing Yajirobe's eyes to flutter open.

'Hmm? The pager?' Yajirobe's face wriggled around. 'Well…' He patted himself- which was really him just drumming his belly. 'I don't think it's on me.''

'Is is up here, then?' Korin asked sharply.

'Hmph.' Yajirobe tilted his head up and scratched the underside of his chin. 'Nah. Think I left it at my shack.'

'Your shack?' Korin repeated, dumbfounded. 'The one you haven't been to in five years? That shack?'

'That's it.'

'The one you stopped at when we were coming back from Capsule Corp that time with the ship?'

'Yup.'

Korin paused. The staff went deathly still. 'Are you telling me you rid yourself of that thing at the first possible opportunity?'

Yajirobe yawned. 'What's the big deal? It's not like it's hard to reach West City from here. Just fly.'

'I can't fly, moron!' Korin fumed.

'What about that cloud thing? Use that.'

'I don't have it anymore! I gave it to someone as a favor!'

'Huh?' Yajirobe's chin rested comfortably on his chest. 'Who?'

'GRAAAH!' Charging forward, Korin swung his staff like a sword, forcing Yajirobe onto his feet. 'GET OFF THE RICE SACKS, IDIOT!'

0o0o0

The cockpit was darkened, lights unused and console indicators dimmed, as stray bands of light from space outside flitted and skipped into the room. In the pilot's chair, Launch weighed herself on her knees, head propped and half-covered by her hands, as she gazed at the brown-and-black outline out in space through the viewport. Her hands liked to shake, rhythmically jolted by her restless legs, and as such her head made a continuous bouncing motion like a fighter balancing their guard in the ring.

'Well?' Launch spoke aloud, pressed hands lifting from her face. 'What do you sense?'

Behind her, and beyond Mark and Recoome who were huddled together like spectators, Bez kneeled on the floor, calm breath leaving and exiting through his diminutive, flat nose. The first sign of movement came from his face, twisting, until his eyes began to glide back-and-forth behind closed lids.

'Some people in there would give us trouble,' he said, not opening his eyes.

'For all of us?' Launch asked.

'Yes. Even you.'

'Well, shoot.' The chair wobbled as Launch rose to her feet, hands pressed to her hips. 'First plan is out. Can't beat up everyone.'

'That was a plan?' Mark asked in a small voice.

Recoome nudged him with his elbow and a smile. 'It's not that bad. Worked pretty well for the guys I was with.'

'You were with maniacs,' Bez interjected, opening his eyes and pushing himself off the floor. 'Surely we're better than maniacs.'

Launch made an amused face at him as she leaned back on the console and let the others' silence speak for her.

'Surely?...' Bez repeated, less confident as he glanced around.

'You're with the whacko crew now, Bez,' Launch said with a smile. 'You're just gonna have to roll with it. Nothing like those schemes those stiffs Yamcha and Tien ran.'

'Stiffs?' Bez said, astonished at her word choice.

'So… what are we looking at?' Launch, Bez, and Recoome all frowned and turned- Mark had walked right up to the console and was leaning out to look at the space station through the glass. 'Not the place, but what we're up against. 'Cause once we know that, figuring out a plan should be easier.'

'Not maniacs,' Bez decided, half-smiling. 'Alright. So- from what I can sense, there are two groups in the base, one with two people and one with three.' Bez walked forward and with a swipe of his hand flung a rough projection of the base's diagram into the cockpit's center. His finger went to a small spherical segment in the station's bottom half. 'The pair is around here.' He pointed then to the much similarly sized oval section at the top. 'And the group of three is up there. Considering the three ships we saw come here and the abandoned shuttle on the station's other side, I would guess that's where the attack pods are.'

'Our targets,' Launch said, crossing her arms. '... Probably. You really can't sus them out by their ki?'

Bez scratched his head. 'It's hard to tell ki signatures from each other, especially when I don't know what I'm looking for,' he replied. 'I mean, what does a Saiyan even feel like? This sensing is still a little new to me.'

'What do you mean, feel like?' Mark asked, looking back.

'All five had similar-feeling kis to me.'

'Shouldn't you know what to look for?' Launch asked. 'You fought that giant ape same as me.'

'Yeah… but the ape was different,' Bez said. 'That was a lot of energy. Kinda hard to forget what that feels like. This is a bit more tricky.' He frowned at Launch. 'If you're doubting me, why don't you sense them out?'

'Can't,' Launch grunted, eyes looking past Bez. 'Too busy keeping tabs on the other group heading here.'

Recoome continued to stare at the diagram. 'I'll take your word for it,' he murmured, as his hand pointed to the station's large upper sphere, the largest section of it. 'I think that's the cargo bay. We'll have to land there.'

'Huh?' Launch scowled at the side of Recoome's face. 'Why?'

'Where else are we going to land?'

There was silence like gears turning as the other three slowly realized what Recoome was saying. Mark squinted at the station. 'That's the only place the ship's gonna fit?'

'Think so.'

'First limitation to this ship,' Bez said glumly. 'We can't pierce the station wherever we want like the attack pods.'

'Well,' Launch regrouped, moving to the center, 'it's not like that's a big deal. If our goal was to fight everyone, it doesn't really matter where we land.'

'Still unclear why that's our goal,' Bez reminded her. 'Because, going by this projection, we'd be likely to run into the group of three, here,' he said, pointing to the smaller, more oval segment of the station not too far away from the cargo bay. 'Let's assume those are who we're looking for- Vegeta and his guys. If we attack them immediately, doesn't that expose us to the other group attacking us from behind?'

Launch glanced up and down the station. 'I guess, hypothetically.'

'For sure,' Mark jumped in. 'That's rule number one of group-fights in wrestling. If someone is doing too well with the crowd, everyone else gangs up and beats the shit out of them!'

The others stared as Mark's clenched fist swung through the air, emphasizing shit. 'If I were them, I'd attack you guys from behind.'

'Good to know.' Launch's flat expression jumped to Bez. 'I think-'

'I think we should engage as late as possible,' Bez cut her off, 'or at the very least wait until the two groups have already clashed with each other. 'Because that helps our Plan B- if we can't beat them all up, we take one of them with us, right?'

'What?' Launch snarked. 'You already calculated your cowardice?'

'Something like that.' Bez glared at her. 'I've done more surviving than all of you combined three lifetimes over. So I'll brag and say I've gotten pretty good at it. And being pretty good at something includes having an idea of what to do when things don't go your way.'

'Right, right,' Launch, eyes closed, waved him away.

'But that's your best-case plan, Launch?' Mark asked, drawing her gaze. 'Beat them up? And after?'

Launch eyed him. 'After? I rough 'em up. I get my answers.' She shrugged. 'Maybe kill them.'

A shiver went through Mark. 'You say it so casually.'

'Killing is casual out here because life is cheap,' Bez said. 'No other way to put it.'

Mark's frowned deepened. He looked at Recoome for support, but the red-haired giant glumly nodded. 'They're right, Mark.'

'But we don't have to do that.' Mark found some courage in his voice. 'We're from Earth. We can be better than them!'

'Being "better" than Saiyans isn't a high bar to meet,' Launch said cooly. 'Besides- I'll give them a chance to defend themselves. I'll ask about every little murder they've ever done and ask them to explain it all. When they can't, then I'll know what to do.'

A breath, mirthful, passed out of Bez's nose. 'Pretty sure that, if you did that with me or Recoome, you'd have to kill us.'

'Ah- but there's a difference,' Launch corrected him. 'When you two lost, you gave up your ways- though-' She frowned at Recoome. 'I'll be totally honest- I'm still not super cool with you.'

Recoome good-naturedly gestured with his hands. 'Understood.'

'-But with Vegeta and his cronies,' Launch continued, 'There's no doubt in my mind that losing didn't change them. If anything, it probably committed them more to their way of life. Fighting, taking, killing. It's what happened with Kakarot all the way to the end, barring a brief moment of clarity- or insanity. Hard to say,' Launch said, sounding tired. 'You know… we let him go over and over… and even if he saved us in the end against Raditz, if he hadn't been around, we wouldn't have needed saving.'

She closed her eyes, sighing into her thoughts. 'Sometimes… man, I don't know…if I could go back in time, stop that suffering from happening…'

'I dunno what you're talking about,' Recoome said, 'but Saiyans do what you say. Beat 'em up, and they do it stronger.'

'That's been my experience, too,' Bez added in a heavy voice. 'Frieza would sometimes slap them around a bit in public, and that only made them nastier towards everyone else.'

Mark studied the room and noticed the resignation on everyone's faces. That only made him more stubborn, frustrated. 'Anyone can change- especially those who don't know it yet.'

One of Launch's eyebrows lifted. 'You're an expert?'

'I was one of those people who changed,' Mark argued, jabbing at himself with his thumb. 'If you had met me five years earlier in the professional wrestling ring, I would have bodied you.'

Launch's other eyebrow arched.

'In a certain way,' Mark conceded, frowning. 'With my personality.'

'Yeah, whatever.'

Skirting past them, Bez went to the pilot's chair and hovered over the controls. 'Alright- I'm going to take us to the cargo bay.' The ship lurched around them, panels buzzed, and the station began to draw closer. 'I've got one last thought, though,' he continued. 'Once we're inside, we'll take it slow, choose our battles, try and skirt around the two groups until they fight. In that time- how about we try to find out why everyone is here?'

'Find out?' Launch said, looking down her right shoulder at him. 'Find out what?'

Bez leaned on the controls, his weight pushing the ship forward. 'There's clearly something going on here if three separate groups are closing in on this station. We know the PTO is going after the Saiyans. But that doesn't explain the second group already here. And why are the Saiyans at this station? All I'm saying is we have questions, and if we're not fighting, we should spend time getting some answers.'

'I agree with that,' Mark said.

'Me too,' Recoome joined in.

Her gaze traveled from each of them and landed again on the projection filling the center of the room. Launch tapped a few buttons on the console beside her and the diagram dispersed. 'Alright. Can't argue with that.'

This was a four-person crew, after all. If they wanted to avoid combat as long as possible, that was fine with her. But Launch knew there would come a point where the station was going to turn into a cage match. It was just a matter of time. Their mission required defeating someone in a fight.

Her hands flexed as she felt a flash of energy flow through her veins, racing up and down her body. They can do whatever they want meantime. But when shit inevitably hits the fan, she'll have all the time in the world to finish the job.

0o0o0

Teeth ached. The taste of blood filled his mouth while something wet sledded across his face. His world was shaking, jostling, as he felt his limbs connect and reconnect to him, floating, flailing, and ceasing all in the same instant. There were many instants- and an incredibly long pause, when his mind felt and saw nothing and could only hear the deep, thoracic, almost unliving beat of his heart. Da dum. Da dum. Da dumph. Like seconds ticking away from a clock or sands falling through a glass. Turles remembered one such device on some planet he had drained with the Tree. An old mechanical dial was still chirping away in a house split by one of the tree's roots, balanced precariously over a chasm. One push, and it fell into oblivion. It had spun, ticked, dropped, but Turles never saw it hit anything. He had simply watched it plunge into the darkness. Tick tock. Da dum. Tick tock…

His jaw locked and ached, and Turles threw back his head, gasping, as air started hissing all around him. Something wet dripped onto him from above. His hands, unsteady, felt his cage, his ship, and came back red, red, red-

Vegeta's patience had run out long before arriving at the station. Before the hatch had finished swinging open, the Prince bent, thrust his arm inside, and ripped Turles out by his armor. The beaten Saiyan, his own blood matting his hair and face like spoiled paint, stumbled onto the metal grate, gagging, coughing, wheezing, squirming on his belly like a worm plucked from the soil.

The indignity never ended. To think this was one of his underlings!

'Nappa.' Vegeta's eyes, coiled with disdain, landed on his other companion, who had stood motionless, unflinching, and silent to his left. 'Get him up.'

The old Saiyan's face creased as he nodded and crouched down. He was surprisingly gentle as he turned Turles onto his back and met the bloodied Saiyan's gaze. They stared at each other for a moment until Nappa held him by his shoulders and stood, dragging Turles to his feet along with him. It was necessary, as judging by how Turles's weight teetered against Nappa's grip, it was clear he couldn't stand unassisted.

'Good,' Vegeta said. 'Now that you're awake, Turles- do you have anything to say for yourself?'

Split lips prevented Turles from speaking immediately. Instead, his mouth opened and closed as he studied their surroundings. 'Where?... I was with that guy… his name…'

'We are on a station, Turles,' Vegeta informed him, irritation bleeding into his voice. 'Much has happened since you failed to stop Bardock and his son, Kakarot. So, again- do you have anything to say?'

It was clear to anyone that Turles, blood dripping from his chin, had little to no idea of where he was and what was going on. It was clear that, again, he could barely stand, let alone was cogent enough to answer questions.

He still tried, though. His bloated eyes stared down Vegeta. 'That brat?...' He murmured silently. '...hit me, or…'

'Let him go, Nappa.'

'Vegeta?'

The Prince was not going to ask a second time. Under his glare, Nappa lifted his hands and stepped back. To his surprise, Turles didn't collapse- though he did begin to sway like a drunken flag.

'See that corridor?' Vegeta pointed to his left. A small hallway curved out of sight to the right, presumably leading towards an intersection with the larger, bigger hallway that was in front of Vegeta and to Turles's right. 'I want you to scout it.'

Pain blared through Turles's skull. 'Scout?...'

'Yes,' Vegeta interrupted him, black eyes piercing him, 'scout. After the laughingstock you made of yourself in letting Kakarot defeat you, I think you'll agree your competence is at an all-time low.' Suddenly, Vegeta surged forward, gripping Turles again by his armor. His grip closed around the collar of his armor, gloves just brushing against the fresh blood dripping from Turles's face. 'So I've given you an easy assignment. Something even you can't screw up.' He yanked Turles forward so that his head flopped onto his chest. 'Got it?'

There was no response. No conscious one, at least. Nappa couldn't help but see the seizing, though; Turles's entire body laggardly tried to jolt away from Vegeta, almost like an instinctual response. But the Prince's gloved grip was firm and steady enough to whip Turles around and push him down the smaller hallway. Again, it was shocking that Turles didn't fall. The Saiyans stumbled two, three, four steps forward, but never lost his footing and continued on the trajectory Vegeta had set him on. Blood, marking his path, splashed through the metal grate flooring as he soldiered on.

By the King, Nappa didn't envy him.

'And you're alright, Nappa?'

Vegeta's critical gaze fell on him. Weakness was never acknowledged. In this reality, Nappa currently wasn't feeling a heavy pain in his chest, a dull creak, deadened by whatever sense-dulling compound was pumped into his lungs during spaceflight, nor was he favoring his left leg over his right. Vegeta didn't care for it.

All of this made him angry. Everything was going to be more difficult, now. Kakarot had screwed him. If he had been given enough time alone with Bardock, he would have beaten that cheat and never needed to chase them into space to this abandoned station.

'Vegeta- you've noticed that there's a second group here, right?'

The Prince checked his scouter. It beeped. 'So there is.'

'Which group are we going for?'

Vegeta was silent for a moment as he stared down the main hallway. The badly-flickering light and dreary gray metal now gave this entire place an undeniable sense of trouble. It had a risk to leave their planet to pursue Bardock and his brat. A calculated, worthwhile one, but a risk nonetheless. These corridors, unexplored, were dangerous.

'Well,' Vegeta said eventually, 'that's what the operations center is for. We get there, turn on the station, and figure out what we're dealing with. Lucky for us, we have time to take this slow. If Bardock and Kakarot left their shuttle in orbit around the station it will take them some time to get back to it when they leave.' Vegeta scowled at a spot of darkness until the light above briefly flickered. 'The one fault to their plan. Even if we don't know exactly where they are now, If we keep pace with them, it'll be impossible for them to successfully escape.'

Vegeta turned sharply on his heel, turning away from the smaller corridor. 'In any case, we should get moving. Time is a finite resource.'

The old Saiyan's gaze lingered on the alternate path. Their companion by this point was long gone and out-of-sight. 'And Turles?' Nappa asked. 'We're letting him wander in the meantime?'

'If he lives, he lives, and we'll collect him at the end of this.' Vegeta's rethreaded red cape, shorter and duller than its previous iteration, cut against itself as the Prince started down the dim, larger hallway. 'But a half-dead, dazed, wasting Saiyan is of no use to me. Let him wander- and die if he is weak enough.'

And that was that. Nappa steadied his breath and set off after Vegeta.

0o0o0

Day was draining from the sky beyond his muddled windows as a knock reverberated through his house. He was lethargic as he rose to answer it. Today Dr. Frappe had spent whatever emotional energy was left inside him for… perhaps the rest of his time alive. It was one thing to dedicate his entire life's work to a deceiving fantasy. It was another thing to acknowledge that. As much as Bulma Briefs had helped to clarify things… the cost of that had been too great. He couldn't bear to look around his house anymore. Too much of his time, hacked away for nothing except to feed a useless dream. Love had blinded him, and he hadn't let go. Because letting go meant letting go of-

Enough. He shoved the thought from his mind. He wasn't thinking clearly. He realized, belatedly, that he hadn't been thinking clearly for years. At the very least he was now aware. So he did owe something to Mrs. Briefs.

His hand molded around the doorknob and the door cracked open just wide enough for him to leer out. 'Yes?'

There was a man on the stoop; any detail of him or another man standing on the grass beyond was lost as Dr. Frappe's eyes adjusted to the day's natural light.

'Dr. Frappe?' An aged voice asked.

'You're speaking to him.' Dr. Frappe's eyes narrowed further. 'Who are you?'

'Me?' A weight settled on the door from the other end, just barely applying pressure back towards him. 'Am I that old of a friend?'

Something whizzed past Dr. Frappe's face; in the next second, he stumbled backward as the chain lock stopping the door from being opened further splintered in half. A hand, pressed into a flat palm, drew back from where the chain had been and gripped the door's edge. 'Please,' the old man said, eyes twinkling as he pulled the door wide open, 'step outside. I'd like a better look at you.'

'What?... You're... ' Dr. Frappe's eyes bounced around. He could see most of a face. '...Gero?'

'Please step outside?' Gero implored him, a slight smile coming over his face. 'It'll make things go along much faster. I have a gift to give you.'

Birds were chirping from the trees on the other side of the block. Dr. Frappe wasn't sure why that stuck out to him as Gero stepped aside to let him pass. Perhaps because he couldn't believe. He didn't want to believe. Who would be with Gero, after years and years and years? He wouldn't acknowledge it. He couldn't.

'Is it him?' The setting sun nearly blinded him as it rested on the treeline hemming in the block. Dr. Frappe shielded his face and glanced at Gero, unwilling to look. 'Is it really him?'

Gero gestured down the stoop. 'Remade, as per our agreement.'

His being lingered near the door as Dr. Frappe descended the three steps onto his lawn, eyes making no sense of what he saw. He tried to look at Eighter. He couldn't, because he couldn't see him. First he was blinded by the day's dying edge. Then he was blinded by his memory. The shape was right. The head, torso, waist, abdomen, feet, hands… all were anatomically correct, even if the clothes were more akin to some drifter with a conspicuous red sash tied across his forehead. But it was parody. The presence wasn't there. He had the same skin but nothing of the soul inside it. This wasn't Eighter. This would never be Eighter. The two beady black pupils swimming in two much white would never convey to him what he knew Eighter had. Neither would his gnarled, massive hands or the wide, barreled chest. Without that soul...

Unbroachable horror whispered in his mind. What had he helped to- what had he done?

Dr. Frappe's face, already pale, had gone utterly white. 'You… you did this to him, Gero?'

'Yes.' Dr. Gero moved to the porch's railing. 'He will now kill you.'

Before the words could even register in Dr. Frappe's brain, his creation surged forward and clasped both of its massive hands around his neck- or what was left of it as the android applied too much force too quickly, turning flesh into pulp and popping Dr. Frappe's head like an orange. Listless and lifeless, the rest of his corpse collapsed into a pile at the android's feet.

Dr. Gero leaned his head over the railing and studied the mess pressed against the stoop's base. His face curled. 'I think you were a little overzealous, Android 19.'

'...' Without any change in expression the Android spread apart its fingers and mechanically flung them towards the corpse. Bits and pieces of flesh and bone pattered down.

'Oh,' Gero muttered. 'I forgot to patch your vocalizing software, didn't I?'

Android 19 titled its boxish head towards Gero. Its rough-cut black hair, woven from a wig as best as Gero could manage, was damp and clung to his forehead like wet cloth. '...'

'That's fun.' Gero rose from the railing and descended from the stoop. 'It would have been nice to not be forced to do all of the talking… but, that's an occupational hazard, I suppose.'

He glanced again at what was left of Dr. Frappe. He would be remiss if he didn't acknowledge the slight regret he felt for having killed him. He had been gifted, once. Perhaps he still was. If time-travel wasn't theoretical, it was likely that in some other dimension he'd still have a lab today, tinkering on his little projects, happy to retire with his greatest creation come the end of the day. But that reality had closed to him once that Saiyan had interfered all those years ago, and now this one, too, once he'd chosen his side. Gero would have been happy to leave him to his brooding if that was all it ever was. He might have even told him in advance what was to happen in West City so that he'd have time to leave and save his life. But he had forfeited all that by sitting down with Bulma Briefs. His enemies would be crushed in their own time. Betrayers would be killed immediately to prevent any further harm.

It could have been different. He would have to take certain precautions now. Even though his little spies had alerted him to this meeting, he had little to no idea what Frappe may have revealed to that entire infernal clan of Briefs. His mechanical bugs were too simple and too small to carry a good enough microphone to record speech. But Gero could make an educated guess: Frappe shouldn't have known anything concrete beyond him handing off the capsule containing the specimen. So at the very least, Bulma Briefs and her family knew of him and that he was active in some lab, somewhere.

They were not fighters. So the main risk- the risk to his lab and his work- triumphed over his concerns over whether he could survive an immediate fight. From what he could sense, the powerful fighters were disorganized, scattered across the planet… and those that were alerted were rushing towards Wheelo. The calculus was unchanged. If he was going to make any sort of preemptive strike, this would likely be his only chance to do so.

Hmm. Gero turned, left hand propped under his right arm, and a pink lance of energy erupted from his palm. The house shuddered, then was consumed as the energy attack dug across the land and incinerated any presence of what had been there moments before. Hot air and fire skittered in the wind past him and Android 19. One such ember touched down on his right arm, flickered for a brief moment, and died. What to do...

0o0o0

Another surge of electricity, snaking up and through her like ethereal chains, wracked Suno's body, convulsing her arms and throwing back her head. There was no time to think- no time to breath as her lungs struggled to move air, fighting through a never-ending current, locking her body over and over again with all the rhythmic certainty of a heartbeat. Dun. Dun. Dun. Any more of this and her heart would give out.

Below her, Kishi stopped at the foot of the rubble pit she was writhing on. His arms were crossed just as far as his smile had bent. 'How much more of this can you take?' he asked, his satisfaction carrying through his voice.

She failed to respond as her face stretched and stretched, muscles pulling her skin away from her skull. Teeth gnashed, cracked into each other, and the pile itself began to shift under her, unraveling under the strain of the raw charge running through it and Kishi's current. Even with all this pain- she could feel his grip on her grow as his whips, chains, slowly crept up her legs, searing her flesh.

Kishi threw out some of his power and cleared most of the pile away, revealing the burrowed holes his whips made in the ground below Suno. 'You know, if you give up now, you'll remain conscious for what comes next.'

'What!...' Suno screamed, the only form her will could manifest as, '...comes next!?'

'You'll find out soon enough.' Kishi gave a wave of his hands and another uptick in the whips' charge raced along, hitting Suno with all the force of a planet. Her eyes went as red as her ribboned, freshly bleeding forearms. 'Give up, and I promise you-'

His hand had been smacked away. A surge of red and blue had launched from Suno like a harsh wind, brushing aside his forward movement. His back foot slammed down hard. 'What!?'

Electricity still coursed through Suno, but beyond that arcing yellow interlace was now a second layer- roaring red shot out of her like steam, spilling across the room but aimed towards him in the form of a massive bough of energy. That extension of Suno's will slapped him across his gut, digging into his flesh, and sent him sprawling across the room on his back. The whips feeding out of his back tangled and twisted in his wake.

'Got you now!' Suno yelled as she rushed forward, legs shuffling but overcoming the chains coiled around her legs. She shuffled forward, then ran, as the integrity of his attack weakened with a loss in his concentration. Kishi had barely stopped spinning, body retching and hands propped behind him, when Suno's awe-inspiring aura lifted her off the ground and threw her towards him, all the while her muscles seized and her body jittered in every possible direction. His eyes widened with terror as he saw the energy charging around her abdomen: a film of energy, molded like clay. There was enough undirected energy there to destroy the chamber above them three times over, fatal to- he scrambled, drawing his legs towards him.

Halfway through that, and mere feet away from reaching him with her super-charged aura, a massive yank hit them both, pulling Kishi's feet out from under him and Suno back from where she came. The connected whips, just barely clinging to Suno's legs, stretched but held in the end, and both were flung away from each other towards the burrowed holes on each side of the room.

Kishi landed hard on his front, skin scraping away from his green jaw and sprinkling the ground with purple blood. But he was conscious and quick to push himself off the ground, unlike his opponent. Suno fell limply against the ground, head balancing on her jaw towards him.

'Oh…' she breathed, aura sputtering into nothing. 'Not…'

She wasn't able to finish as a panicked Kishi swept his hands and sent a definitive blast of current through his whips. Jagged electric convulsed Suno for a moment before she fell motionless. His frenzied breathing became the only sound in the room for a few seconds until his whips unclasped from Suno and zoomed back through their tunnels and back into him.

'Shit!' Kishi stumbled to his feet, tripping over rubble as he ran forward. He pulled Suno up onto his back like a bag. 'Shit!' She was strong! Way too strong! Shit! If she wakes up- what do I do?

A great rumble, accompanying some sort of yell from above, shook the sub-chamber, raining chunks of stone from above. Kishi dodged and scampered to the sub-room's other side. His jumping, frantic eyes spotted a hatch to his right.

I need to get the hell back to Dr. Wheelo!

0o0o0

Her pink opponent was strong, fast- but that was only half the story. As their pace quickened and Chi-Chi, red Kaioken aura flaming, continued to zip around every attack and blast, ultracold gusts of energy lashed out past Ebi's strikes, freezing the ground for several yards. The implication was clear- getting caught in one of those afterwinds would be bad news.

She grunted as she dashed into the air, avoiding a longer-range blast of icy white-blue ki. Her opponent must have felt the same. His arms dropped as he glanced up at her.

'Are you going to keep running,' Ebi asked, annoyed, 'or are you going to fight me?'

'I'll fight you on more favorable terms,' Chi-Chi countered. 'If, for example, you agree to stop freezing everything around you.'

Chunks of ice and slickened floor surrounded Ebi, glinting in the room's bright light. But despite the evidence to the contrary, he lowered his guard further, beckoning for her to come down. 'This is my best ability. You're saying I should give it up?'

'It would be nice,' Chi-Chi muttered.

Cold radiated through the air towards her. 'Fat chance of that!' Ebi yelled as he sprung into the air, white-blue aura swirling behind him. Chi-Chi dodged to her left as a wave of ice blew past her- and was pushed further into the air as Ebi's kick slammed into her left arm. She growled, tracking Ebi as he thrust his arms and threw out another wave of cold, but just as before, she dodged and Ebi anticipated her new trajectory, cracking a few quick punches against her guard. Catching a glimpse of a platform behind her, Chi-Chi hopped back, avoiding a limb scything through the air, and landed.

Ebi floated in the air, slowly leveling his hands at her. 'This is your one chance to give up. I can't guarantee anything I do from here won't kill you.'

'Really?' Chi-Chi's feet scraped across the platform's metal surface as she fell back into her guard. 'Someone's cocky.'

Sapping frigidness rode out to meet her as Ebi's eyes narrowed. 'Not really.' His arms lifted.

The platform below shuddered, then broke, as great slabs of ice cut up through it, severing whole plates of metal and boxing Chi-Chi in. Her initial reflex to fall further behind her guard cost her a precious second as thrummm of noise came from above, diving down the newly created cylinder. Above her, an icy blast rushed towards her, freezing the air as it went.

Without losing her composure, Chi-Chi lifted her foot and stomped her aura through the floor below her, breaking away the last of the floor and dropping her into a freefall. But, dropping, she saw the ice continued past the bottom of the platform, and even worse, a blast of freezing air was rushing up from the other open end.

She had to give him some credit. 'Clever!' She yelled, smirking, as her red aura burst into the air around her, morphing into heat and raging, churning flame. It had been a while since she had last used this technique.

Heat flooded from her body as she halted and pivoted to her right, thrusting her flame-cloaked arm straight through the ice and dislodging a person-sized opening in the wall. She blazed out, flame licking and melting what ice remained at the edges, as both blasts of cold crashed together behind her. Spotting her floating enemy, she burned his Kaioken higher and zoomed straight towards him. From the look of his arm movements, he was scrambling, stuck in place-

She screeched to a stop as a wave of wind, just nipping the flames encasing her, swept between him and her. When it passed, she saw Ebi charging to the ground, shrouded by the silhouette of rushing air. Chi-Chi squinted. 'What…'

A high-pitched sound rushed her from behind. Diving, Half of Chi-Chi's flamed aura was cut away and frozen by another ice wave. She glanced back at Ebi, half expecting him to be stumbling from his rapid landing, but he was steady and swinging his arms, directing the cold swarming back-and-forth in the air all around him. It was clear to her that his attention was not limited to one attack.

'You keep surprising me!' Ebi shouted from the ground, arms frantically directing several waves at once. Chi-Chi began dashing through the air, skirting around blasts of wind that increasingly resembled blades of a sword. 'You still surprise me! But you can't keep this up forever!'

Chi-Chi was inclined to agree. A stray breeze caught the top of her head, freezing a layer of her hair, and with increasing frustration used her aura to propel her higher into the air. Melted water ran down her face as she heard the tell-tale thrum of his attacks chasing after her. Dodging endlessly would get here nowhere. She needed some sort of shift in the dynamics. Maybe a long-range attack.

Into her thoughts swung a flailing, spinning, yellow hunk- the big fighter, Miso. Chi-Chi rolled to her left as he plummeted past her towards the ground. She stared, shocked, before she realized where she was and dove away from a dogging gust of ice. This was her chance!

Air blurred past as Chi-Chi collected her ki and plunged downward, flames barely moving fast enough to keep up. With a red streak behind her, she reached Miso and seized him by his round head. An alarmed look quickly stretched into chaos as Chi-Chi harshly checked her momentum, snapping Miso out to his full length, and charged down and to her right towards Ebi with her right hand dragging along her captive behind her.

The pink warrior met her gaze and crossed his arms, raising a newfound wall of frigid air between her and him. Chi-Chi felt a wave of cold wash over her as her flames began to shrink again.

'Fine!' She swerved, pulling her captive out from behind her, and flashed her Kaioken to her highest level. With a great, roaring heave, she dragged Miso across her body and chucked him towards Ebi. 'Take him!'

Her momentum stopped with the throw, pulling her back just before she would have started freezing- which was a fate Miso didn't escape. His entire body was encased in ice as he hurdled forward, his massive size resisting the countervailing winds of Ebi's barrier. The pink warrior was caught totally unprepared as the glacier containing his friend smashed him into the ground, hurling up a wall of dust.

'And from me!' Chi-Chi yelled, slamming her palms together as she aimed down her arms, 'A gift!' A brilliant beam of red energy, funneled from the flames surrounding Chi-Chi, launched from her hands, cutting through the debris and barrelling with incredible speed towards where her opponents had been gauged into the floor. 'INFERNO CANNON!'

Her words just left her mouth as the front of her attack landed, and a deafening boom erupted, flattening the airborne dust against the confines of the chamber and flinging fire everywhere. Flames as tall as buildings swept across the floor, overpowering the last gasps of the frigid blasts swirling around her opponent. So much fire started to burn so fast that a red glow began to stain the room.

Through this, her eyes glared at the center of the impact zone, searching for definite shapes… until she spied two bodies. A quick check with her ki sense confirmed what she assumed. The room was filled with the crackling of fire and nothing else. Chi-Chi breathed a sigh of relief.

'Woo!' She exhaled, letting her aura disperse. 'I did that. Sorta amazed I pulled it off. Guys!' She turned, beaming. 'I-'

She stilled, searching the rest of the room that was free of flames. 'Guys?'

0o0o0

They had flown, landed, scrounged, crawled, and now they were here.

Playing back the events of the past hour in his head was surreal for Yamcha. After Chi-Chi had left, he and Rush had continued flying around, seemingly aimless, even as the land below gave way to so many different shapes, places, and rock. So much rock. He had never seen so much rock. He used to think mountains were all the same, like the rock in his home desert. Now he knew better. Rock had variety.

That was actually exactly what he had been thinking when Rush had stopped and landed. They had ceased flying over a shallow dip in what was a long-running and riverless mountain valley. In either direction Yamcha couldn't see the end of it, nor could he see any way to distinguish any given point along it from another part. But somehow Rush saw something he couldn't, because he had shimmied below a rock shelf and found a hatch, and once beyond that hatch he had found a metal door. A code had been required at some earlier point in time but the keypad beside it was busted, and more importantly, the door had rusted open, curling forward like a sagging, rotting piece of wood. Without any prompting Rush had gone inside, and Yamcha had followed.

And now they're here. None of the lights worked, the floor was sticky, and about everything was as clean as you'd expect for a base abandoned decades ago. He didn't say this out loud, but that was the strangest part to him- how had Rush known this place would be here? The timeline didn't match up. Rush showed up at Kami House about six months ago. Assuming that there was some lag time between when he escaped Gero and sought help, that couldn't have been any more than a few years. This place was way older than that. Yamcha was pretty sure the original Red Ribbon Army had used his place- not Dr. Gero or whoever else was scheming now.

He could have been just annoyed from walking across a perpetually sticky floor. But he couldn't shake the sense that this was all off somehow. It had first come during that outburst, and had rounded back faster and faster since. He wanted to trust Rush. But his desires couldn't hold off his paranoia forever...

Nor could the darkness. 'Rush, do you know where you're going?' His voice echoed somewhere to his left. 'And is there any light there?'

'One moment.' As Rush continued forward, his hands suddenly glowed, casting pallid white light on the concrete hallway around him. 'Better?'

'Better.' Yamcha weighed his thoughts. 'Didn't know you could do that.'

'I didn't, either.'

'Ah. You just remembered?'

'In a way. This place is bringing back memories.'

'So you've been here before?'

'I remember it,' Rush said, body pressing against the darkness in front of him. 'That's different from being here. Fake memories, and all.'

'Right.' Yamcha bit his lip. He had forgotten about that… right?

The base, as it turns out, wasn't that large; a series of dorms and storerooms, all connected by the same hallway, eventually ended in what appeared to be a comms station. By some habit Rush approached the center of a mass of machinery and started flipping switches. And continued doing so. Uhh…

'Hey, Rush?' Yamcha called, trying to get his attention. 'You can see there's no juice in that thing, right?'

The button flipping didn't cease, but Rush did slow and stepped closer to the machine. His hands began to glow a clean white and pressed against a bottom panel. Suddenly the machinery clirred, clacked, and sputtered to life, and without missing a beat Rush started flipping switches again.

Yamcha placed a hand to his face. '...What?'

'I used my ki to power it,' Rush explained, focus centered on the machine.

'You can do that?'

'You can't?'

His hand massaging his jaw started to scratch his scalp. 'Well, I… I just never thought of it before,' Yamcha admitted. 'Not many circumstances where that's needed, I guess.'

'Hrumph.' Rush's button flipping slowed again and stopped entirely. He sighed, dropped his head, and turned around, propping his back against what he had spent the better part of two minutes obsessing over. 'This place is out of the running.'

'Running of what?' Yamcha asked.

'Whether it'd be useful or not.' Rush's affect was all different now- he wasn't nervous. He was flat, steady. If anything, this mood made Yamcha even more nervous than his previous one. 'Turns out this place is too old to tell us what we want to know.'

'And… what… do we want to know?' Yamcha probed, more unsure of whether he was actually occupying the same reality as the one he was in just a few minutes ago.

'Records of abductions.' Rush gestured. 'Logs, manifests, whatever. Anything that paints a trail of where we need to go to next to track Dr. Gero down.'

He couldn't believe this was the same person. Rush was standing straight. It was like he'd been thrown back in time to training, before he had opened up… he really wanted to say all that. He couldn't. He couldn't even focus on the substance of their conversation.

'You seem calmer.'

And there it was. The jitters returned like a band snapping into place. A creasing, folding, twisting dimensionality returned to Rush's expression. 'I… I was?' He murmured, drooping. His hands were working away at their sides again, winding up and clasping nothing.

Yamcha bit his lip. He was. And now I feel guilty. They were stuck in this dark, Kami-forsaken hole, with no light, no lead, and now the poor guy was fiddling nervously with his right hand against his waist, because he had forced Rush to own up to-

'I'M SORRY!' Limbs of pink energy, strong and steady like branches of a mighty tree, swarmed away from Rush, snarling and crashing into the ground. Due to the shape of the hallway, Yamcha found himself in a wind tunnel, ki-rich air blasting past him and his crossed-arm guard. He had to call on his aura-his Kaioken!- and flash red once to break the tide of the surge and dispel the discharged air to his left and right.

His guard didn't drop and his Kaioken, just resting at its lowest level, hummed and thrummed against his skin as he looked over his arms. He remembered what Chi-Chi had said, and spoke forcefully. 'Rush-'

'I'm sorry!' This apology was more subdued, measured, filled with the regret that Yamcha could hear in his voice and see in how he melted against the machinery behind him, trying to figure out how not to stand so that he could retreat away from his outburst forever. 'I- I lost control I'm sorry, but-' he started hyperventilating, but found his voice again, '-but I can't do this anymore. I can't. The lies, deception. I knew what I would have to do. I knew what was needed. I knew, I knew, I knew- but I can't do this anymore!' Rush exploded, frantic, almost crazy, body wracking with the fullest expression of whatever manic alarm had seized him.

'I tried, I tried, I tried- I tried to hold off on this until the last possible second, because I just don't know how things are going to go-' He gulped air, distraught, '-but I can't do this anymore! I can't! I can't be responsible for doing this! It's not right! It's evil! If I don't tell you-'

'Rush!' Yamcha could play the outburst game, too. His red aura flashed across the room, just suppressed enough to knock Rush off his panicked perch on the machinery back onto the ground- and do no more. He let his full strength remain unfurled for a moment, before taking a deep breath and drawing it back, sheathing it like a blade. 'Rush,' he repeated, softer. 'Speak normally. What's going on?'

'I… I tried to hold off on this until the last possible second,' Rush explained, still on edge but calmer. 'For the longest time I wanted to avoid doing this, because I didn't know how things were going to change- but I have to now,' Rush said, biting his lip. 'I can't let this happen.'

In the gloom, Yamcha's gaze pierced all. There was no mistaking the way Rush's body had curled- he was ready for whatever came next, even a fight. His breath slid down his throat, screeching, squeaking, and then he snarled, dragging his voice back out, wobbling, weak, but saying more than he ever thought possible.

'I'm going to jeopardize my existence by saying this,' Rush said, almost crying. 'It's horrible. It's terrible. I'll be killing myself. I'm sorry.' Tears appeared in his blue eyes, streaming down his face and pearling into sullen drops on his chin. He wiped them away. 'I'm sorry- but you need to go now. Someone's going to die- and you are the only person who can stop that.'

'Only?' Yamcha's throat twisted. An unwanted image popped into Yamcha's head. His friends could handle themselves. They would have a chance to live long enough on their own. This was different. And the glances to the west. The west. Something to the west. Someplace, with someone. That's...

'No…' Yamcha said, eyes whitening with disbelief, even anger. 'You're- from here, she wouldn't be-'

'West City.' Like a clock striking. 'You need to get to West City. Bulma is about to die.'

0o0o0

She had taken the long walk back to Capsule Corp, hopping from bus to bus to game her way through a series of city parks. She rarely got the chance to get away from her lab or the gardens just outside it, and considering that she was a human being, she had to acknowledge she had good memories of biking around West City with her parents as a kid. They used to go out a lot more back then. They weren't as much as homebodies as they are now. Same goes for her.

At the close of a crazy day as the last beams of sunlight intermixed into twilight, she had needed some time to think. So she took a trip down memory lane and visited some old spots of her and her family. As these things go, the spots weren't actually that nice to be in in the present, but Bulma didn't let today diminish their lofty place in her mind- or distract her from accepting the inevitable.

As the last bus she took dropped her off in front of Capsule Corp, she thought about the uncomfortable meeting she would need to convene via pager. There was too much evidence now to put it off any longer. Dr. Frappe had confirmed that the Red Ribbon Army was alive and well. And what, at a minimum, did that mean? It meant that they had a Saiyan corpse.

That part was going to suck. Bulma was terrible at admitting her mistakes in the best of times. In a situation as bad as this? Maybe she would have to reveal the information in stages lest someone in the group throttle her neck or she skips out before coming clean. Or perhaps she could get Piccolo to come down and give the news for her. He had made that offer… sorta. But she was 99% sure he didn't have a pager, so Bulma would have to get another friend to get him here. So if there was someone who would do that and wouldn't kill her first...

But first, a nap. Only a guard gate stood between her and a bed. She was tired, somehow. Perhaps because she hadn't had her noon coffee at Frappe's. As she started forward, she yawned, stopping barely a yard away from where she had disembarked from the bus, and stretched her back to the sky. It was going to be a clear sky tonight. As for now, there was something-

Bulma straightened, cutting off her yawn. Someone was hovering in the air above the building. She squinted. 'Huh?'

And then some red orb launched from that person's hand, and then something dove into her home, and then something exploded around her, and then her home was bent into ash and dust, and then something hit her head, and then-

Nothing.


A/N: Cliffhangers galore! Beware, for there are more coming.

Reviews:

Transformers g1's-Prime: Thank you for the review! I wish I could answer all your questions! Keep on reading and you'll find out the answers to them all! And I think I'll do as you say with the History of Trunks equivalent for this fic!

Cityracer: I am pretty sorry for what I did to Frappe here. But… the plan is the plan. Gero is fucking evil.

Yes! Very heavily implied to be Traveler… but expect this to be discussed… never? who knows…

Rush is coming along… his point in the story is going to be super revealed soon…

I really like writing Bardock and Kakarot. Can you tell :^)

Suno's going to get a lot of plot development soon! Had a little here in defeat, too.

Oh, Chi-Chi cleaned up. Not to say that Retu and Suno couldn't have handled it on their own. But Chi-Chi cleaned up.

Answered your last remark via PM. Thank you for the review, as always!

Anonymous: Again, I am very sorry for what I did to Frappe in this fic. Please forgive me :^(

Suno's been in a bit of a weird spot. Kinda acting off? She's the youngest of the "gang". Has a lot to prove.

Major fight over with! Chi-Chi excelled… mostly!