Living Legend
The eighth chapter has arrived! It's a bit longer than usual because I wanted to cut some bullshit out-of-the-way. By the way, I've been watching all of DBZ: Abridged chapters so I will include some jokes from time to time during my stories. Credits for that go to TeamFourStar.
Nothing else to say about this, let's read!
Chapter 8: Facing the Challenge
The pack of four humans stared at their short funky-haired midget-sized enemy. For what they could all sense, they were all evenly matched in strength. But Inuzama seemed the strongest. And that was without her special power boost kickass technique.
Tarble was sweating buckets and he hadn't even moved at all into a fighting stance. As powerful as he was he never intended to have his first serious fight against too many opponents. Specially not four that outclassed him like a common third-class clown. Because the humans were the clowns, not himself! Never himself!
"So Shorty is our enemy?" Inuzama asked with obvious sarcasm dripping from her tone. Her eyes darted into the sky almost like if she were talking to the highest gods that surveyed the universe. Not that she knew about that "Give us a challenge, please" The other humans snickered by their friend's antics. At this point it was just a regular thing.
The Saiyan enemy, however, was balling his gloved fists in anger. A blonde slut was making fun of him! And openly so!
"You will eat those words, you bitch!" The short-sized alien cursed, a white aura covering his runt-sized frame. Before he had known what hit him, however, Inuzama had already closed the gap in-between the two at dazzling speeds and delivered a casual but very painful knee to the guts. The PTO armor cracked slightly under the onslaught, the air knocked out of Tarble's lounges in a hard way. The Saiyan hadn't expected that one for sure.
"Please, you are not even a warm up for any of us" The blonde fighter casually replied, backstepping and letting shorty fell to his knees in throe. The mad warrioress turned her head around towards her fellow human males "You guys want to handle this?"
"I'll do it. Seems easy enough" The former desert bandit stated stepping forward. As dangerous as the situation could be, the bandit felt very confident about his current level of strength.
"I'll...kill you all" The second son of the king stammered mid sentence because he spat a small gush of blood from his mouth into the ground. Just one attack had brought him down to the point of incapacitating him. And it had been a woman who did it! That infuriated the second born to no end.
The former bandit reappeared right behind his dwarf enemy, his kick hitting the back of his opponent sending him sprawling away like a rag doll. Tarble's body bounced hard against the rocky ground, each rebound clearing the soil from any grass for a couple of feet from the place of impact. The scar human materialized in his enemy's way, his hands cupped to his right.
"Kame...hame...HAA!" the Turtle student enchanted the school attack, the blue blast wide enough to swallow Tarble's body in full. The attack sent the Saiyan soaring through rock cliffs that were blasted into floating molecules of dust.
"So much for a threat. Maybe your fellows will prove to be a decent challenge" Yamcha snidely commented towards the beaten alien invader. Tien and Krillin looked at each other with a bad feeling running on their guts. While they had expected something better for a fighter, they also knew that things couldn't be so black and white just when they started. In their case, weak or strong but the point still stood.
There was certain uneasiness flowing in the air.
Tarble smiled to himself, lying face against the hard granite. His smirk was rather evil-meant for someone in his dire beaten situation. That was when he slowly took something out of his pocket. The humans were so busy dancing in victory that they saw nothing strange going around. It was a small dark orange-colored fruit. It looked like a peach but with some sort of nubs on its surface. It was barely a quarter size of Tarble's hand, smaller than the one Vegeta and even Nappa had taken for themselves. But the size didn't matter for him. It would be the power of godhood that truly mattered.
Goku, Raditz, Piccolo and Gohan stared at their taller bald armor-dressed enemy. The armored Saiyan general let go of his scouter, knowing it wouldn't work against so rapid-changing powers. He casually let it fall on the ground. The object remained unscathed.
"You guys want to go first?" Goku asked towards his son and green friend, former nemesis "We'll interfere if you need help" Raditz folded his arms annoyed. While he wanted to pay back Nappa the snidding mockery he had received for the last decade or so, he knew he was too powerful compared with the General. He would end up beating the bald guy before it could be funny.
"So I get the Namek and the hybrid?" Nappa taunted with a stupid grin in his stupid face stretching his arms "You two won't even nick me at all" Piccolo looked at Gohan, both nodding to each other in confirmation. The fact Nappa had sweat all over his brow meant more than any stupid jeering he could muster aloud.
"Want to bet?" Piccolo rhetorically remarked back to the bald alien showing his fanged smile. Before Nappa had registered it and properly mocked back, Gohan was already floating in front of him, his roundhouse kick hitting like a freaking fright train. The tall gorilla was sent careening backwards through a rock mesa that crumbled down to pebbles. His body kept flying though. Two seconds later, Piccolo dashed in his enemy's flight path, his own foot swinging upwards and kicking the invader up into the air. The two strikes had been deadly aimed and perfectly executed. The shaved gorilla-like soldier backflipped mid-air bruised and very angry. Those attacks had hurt a lot. Not that he would admit it out loud in front of the weaklings.
"You low-class wretches!" The towering human-like alien cursed to his enemies, his face showing small wincing gestures of pain that the Earth fighters saw with neat sight "You cannot equal commander Nappa, a top Saiyan Elite!" His taunting, however, lacked a lot of confidence he once had once starting the fight.
"You want to see me try?" Gohan materialized from behind his giant enemy, his left hook shaking Nappa's head his brain rattling inside his skull. Not that he had a lot to rattle with but the blow still rankled the Saiyan. The bald General clutched his scalp feeling fresh trickles of blood in his hair-less skull. Piccolo took that opportunity of distraction to super speed and uppercut his enemy in the guts. The dumb Saiyan spat blood out of his mouth when his bowels were disintegrated to less than cinders by the strength to crush charcoals into diamonds.
For what looked like minutes or maybe hours, more likely hours, Nappa suffered the most painful beating he had ever received in his life. The fact that a child and a green man were carrying the deed only angered the gorilla man even more. Not that he could do something to stop them. His energy was going lower with each painful hit he took. The fact they were all to his face helped because brain damage was no possibility for him.
"Well, that kid and the Namek are one heck of fun show" Raditz stated towards his brother the amazing beating going all over the sky with resounding shock waves that shatter boulders every once and then. It was rather impressive for the long-haired fighter.
"It's amazing how they can coördinate with each other after only two weeks of training" Goku said back with a proud smile. It was crystal clear that Piccolo had never been evil as he had known. And training with Gohan had surely mellowed the killing thoughts into more grumpy antics. Not that killing evil people was wrong.
Gohan dashed up into the sky with his white aura burning around his body, reaching high into the upper layers of the atmosphere in a couple of seconds. The hybrid descended with terminal velocity the friction burning his orange gi, his double feet hitting in the shoulder blades of his taller opponent. The Saiyan lackey was sent careening down, miles of earth trembling with immeasurable earthquakes rocks flying by the backlash. The Saiyan stood up on jelly shaking legs his body getting weaker. He was outmatched in all possible ways in this fight.
"Time to end this, Saiyan" Piccolo was surprisingly behind his enemy in the split of seconds. Nappa had only widen his eyes in shock, when the Namekian drove his knee up to the Saiyan's coccyx. The following sound of shattered bones echoed over the land like a painful bomb to the ears.
It took a couple of seconds for the action to be registered by Nappa's little brain. And when it did, the gorilla man screamed to the Heavens in white-hot agony. He fell to the ground, the nerves connecting his legs to his spine completely severed by the devastating blow.
The two special aliens of Earth descended back next to Goku and Raditz.
"Well, that was it, wasn't it?" Raditz exclaimed a bit annoyed that the fight was over. But maybe he could still get the finishing blast of the day.
The commander stopped grunting in pain trying to collect his thoughts. He had to do something quickly. He only had one chance, as Vegeta had planned for everyone if they found themselves in a hurry. And having his lower limbs snapped away fit that kind of hasty situation.
Vegeta's wide blast engulfed Bardock all over his black-dressed frame. The attack had the concentrated ki to devastate cities without leaving any weak creäture alive in is wake.
"Easier than squashing a bug" The royal alien said with mirth in his voice.
"You are referring to my victory, right?" The time traveler joked/taunted right from behind Vegeta. The prince spun around to see his enemy unblemished. But it was impossible. The attack had been too close for a normal dodge. But if one could feel the time traveler's energy then there would be no surprise when looking at his light-speed sprints.
"How did you do that?!" The prince yelled in barely-contained wrath "No one can be stronger than me!" Bardock casually stretched his neck without needing to respond immediately towards the pseudo-prince of the extinguished race. A fact that was angering Vegeta to no end and Bardock knew it.
"Well Vegeta. You're going to find out that I am stronger than you" The palm-haired scar fighter replied with his own taunting "And don't get too confident, I'm not even at my peak of my normal self" The comment actually made Vegeta's brain think for a couple of minutes. If such thing was true, which he doubted at the full meaning of the world 'doubt', then maybe, just maybe his plan could...
The amazing train of thoughts from the prince was halted on its tracks when Bardock unleashed a devastating kick to the guts. His boot bulged on the prince's back, a spit of blood flying out of his mouth. On pure instinct, the prince doubled forward in pain. The scar alien casually shot up his free right leg up, the knee cap striking harder than meteor into Vegeta's obnoxious face. The Saiyan prince was sent head over heels, his body backflipping without control for a couple of miles end.
The alien returned to his senses rubbing his head. His nose was heavily injured, blood oozing down. The red-lensed scouter was amazing still there, only a small vertical fissure on its surface.
"Okay, bastard, let's see how you...!" The flame-haired blurted out but stopped mid sentence. Because there was no one for him to hassle around.
"Hey princess!" Bardock's taunting reached Vegeta's ears, right after the Saiyan had shown up from behind him, his axe strike from above and just on top of the cranium rocketed the prince' senses to its foundations. The short-sized armor alien became a living projectile flying downwards towards the rock mesas of the desert below. The resounding impact kicked up the sandstorm, gales of wind with floating particles of rubble fast enough to lacerate human skin. But to the Saiyans that wasn't even an advantage.
Debris exploded over the landscape, Vegeta yelling at top of his lounges in anger. The purple aura bursted around his body, his muscles constraining against his blue clothes and white-cracked armor.
"I'll kill you!" The Saiyan bellowed, his wrath boiling. He shot through the air faster than the eye could see, his fists and feet flying around into deadly attacks that could turn the hardest metals into dust. Attacks that Bardock was casually dodging while flying backwards, eluding without as much as exertion from his part.
The prince felt something he never thought he would. Impotence. He was just impotent to beat his enemy. He found himself bested by a forsaken third-class clown!
But maybe...
Vegeta's punch amazingly landed on the scar fighter's abdomen, the time traveler doubling in sudden pain. For just a tiny moment, the prince felt a re-bubbling triumph coursing through his veins. One shot was all that he needed to get the advantage to claim victory.
That was until Bardock showed the smirk in his lips, his after image fading like a hologram. Too late did Vegeta saw the obvious charade.
"Oh you motherfu...!" The prince cursed but only felt a blazing flash of blue that burned with heat hotter than lava, illuminating miles around the uninhabited desert. Only a miracle would save the arrogant prince now, the blast radius caving the soil.
Tarble casually stood up from his lying position, though his legs were not very cooperative with his commands.
"Hey kid, I know you want to keep fighting because of all that, 'Saiyan pride' and alien bullshit, but face it, you are barely and desperately hanging to your existence" Inuzama casually stated towards her enemy surprising her fellow Z-fighters by her profoundness "You are like that stupid pop singer than sings about beavers and saying never over and over like a pansy drone" She shuddered after mentioning that "I have to never say that again if I want to keep my sanity"
"She almost had it" Krillin said supportive of her friend. She was almost sane for a couple of minutes. But for Inuzama, sane was rather lousy term to live with. The bleeding invader would have shocked his head by the moronic antics if it didn't pain him to do so.
"Your madness won't save you from my wrath. You and your friends won't leave this place!" The armor-cracked Saiyan taunted with a smirk, his left hand tight with something in the palm. Even when he surely had a broken bone, the alien wasn't paying heed to the pain "With all of your limbs intact, I mean!" The humans sweat-dropped by the very cliché monologue. And apparently Tarble wasn't over with it.
"Bear no false hope, maggots. I haven't yet tapped into my full power" The hurt fighter explained, his hand displaying the orange fruit he brought from outer space. The others jerked an eyebrow by the weird plan "Just remember you brought a painful death to yourselves by your actions against the prince of Saiyans" He gladly munched on the fruit, basking in its sweat empowering taste.
"Actually, you brother was the prince, you were just the weak baby that nobody wanted to ever see again..." Inuzama stated not remembering that the guy was literally eating the fruit of Gods in front of her. Her statement was cut short when the shockwave exploded from Tarble's body, his yell of strength cracking the ear drums. The humans had to cover their faces from the lashing hurricane wind. His white aura came alive with some lightnings, his muscles amazingly buffed up. All of his wounds were gone, no trace remaining from the just-a-moment-ago beating he received.
"His power...just duplicated!" Tien stammered in amazement. His senses were blown by the new well of ki.
"But how could he do it with just a fruit?" Krillin asked. He used to be a vegetarian when doing his monk training in the temple. But never did apples increased his powers. Bitches.
The recovered stronger alien grinned in victory.
"Your hopelessness has only begun, weaklings!" The funky-haired midget stated amused. His right hand rose up and a white sphere of ki shone upon it with a great glow "Do you recognize this?"
"Looks like a ball of ki cheese" Inuzama responded with full honesty, not minding the fact her murderer for an opponent had just triplicated his original powers.
"No, you mumbling whore!" The Saiyan yelled angry tired of the nonsense babbling. The fruit had also shorten his mood apparently but it was hard to say knowing his family was Vegeta "This is the Moon!" Instead of gasps of shock, however, Inuzama only snickered and tried not to laugh.
"We already have one. Right in the sky. At night" The blonde fighter said now amused that someone would like to create a moon in a planet that already had one.
"Oh just shut up and die!" The empowered alien shot his arm up, the sphere heading high into the air "Moon Blast!" He closed his palm and the ball exploded with a flash of white light. The Saiyan' smirk was full-faced when the pumping of his blood, shot up beyond the normal rate. His frame started getting taller and taller the limbs stretching for what looked like many meters. Fur started to spread over the body, the remnants of the PTO armor stretching without problem over the new muscles. The monkey tail wiggled in anxiety, the black eyes turning dark red.
The humans that used to know Goku since the Martial Arts Tournaments recognised the sudden physical changes. And they knew it was nothing good to come. The male warriors aimed and started firing blasts of energy. But the barrage did no damage to the ever-increasing giant.
After minutes, the monkey Ozaru towered more than a hundred feet tall, his brown furry maw smirking with fangs towards the speechless humans.
That was when Inuzama looked at the people, who were looking at her from the real world.
"Someone will sue us for the copyrights"
The long-haired Raditz casually walked forward, ready to finish the job his nephew and the green Piccolo had started. He rose his booted foot on top of the crippled general. It would be a quick death. More than what Nappa truly deserved to have but the Saiyan wasn't going to look the horse in the mouth. It was sweat revenge without effort. Not honorable but Raditz could live with it. If Nappa were to try that, he wouldn't live with himself. Quite the ironic twist.
The sideline fighters, however, had other things to concentrate on.
"Guys did you feel that?" Goku asked in shock, the others looking to where the martial artist was staring at. A new signal was easily detected even from miles away. And it was getting stronger and stronger. While Raditz hadn't heard his brother talking, he still felt the new power rising far away and near Inuzama's ki. His sight drifted there, his foot dangling and leaving Nappa there, lying on the soil still barely alive.
The bald general saw that as the only opportunity he would have. Clutching the orange fruit from space, Nappa wolfed it down his throat without even bothering in biting it. But the result was just as Tarble's, the godly energies coursing through his body in less than a second. The wounds closed and the energy reserves were fulled out at maximum. The closer appearance of a new ki source brought the long-haired alien back to his current situation. But never he would have thought that Nappa would be suddenly restored to full power and beyond. Much less that the shave gorilla would grab his raised leg and whipped him into the ground with a downwards motion. The new strength reminded Raditz of some beatings Nappa had given him because the general had been bored during some old days. But the Saiyan wouldn't sit idly to recall those awful days.
The long-haired Saiyan gyrated his hips now that he was upside down, his other leg aimed for the head. But Nappa reacted amazingly quicker, his other hand clutching the attacking limb. Raditz lost both of his legs to use, only giving Nappa a better ground to whip the former member of the Planet Trade into the boulders that sprayed with fresh blood.
"What the..." Piccolo mumbled not understanding a thing. A moment, his enemy was dying, the next moment the same beaten alien was winning over a stronger being than himself without a blemish of injury in his half-armored body. Next to him, the young Gohan was also gobsmacked by the bizarres of the situation.
Goku wasn't feeling something wrong. He was feeling anger. His brother was still new to his life but that didn't mean Goku outright hated him. The long-haired had been redoing his life on Earth and the palm-haired was happy about that. Even Gohan had grown to like his uncle.
His white aura churned around his orange-dressed body, his body shooting forward like a living white rocket to save his blood relative.
"Leave my brother alone!" The palm-haired champion yelled his fist buckled back and charged into a fist. Nappa heard the yell and smirked. His new strength outmatched every one of the Earthlings pipsqueacks. It was obvious that Vegeta's plan had worked out just fine.
"If you want it, then have it!" The bald fighter screamed in evil glee, his hand still clutching Raditz's leg and whipping him towards his brother. The two would collide like runaway trains with each other.
Bardock casually floated above the new two miles-wide crater in the middle of the desert, arms folded over his chest. The fight had not been that amusing to start with but at least Bardock waited for one last-ditch attack. His brain picked up something, however. Something in the distance.
"Those energies..." The scar-cheek warrior in confusion "One is Tarble, and the other is Nappa. But how did they get that kind of power boost?" His energy sensing kicked up right away again, an incoming blow heading up from behind him. His monkey tail casually swat the white orb of ki into the sky. He spun around to face his royal enemy.
"Something wrong Bardock?" The prince showed up with his conniving voice. He was in a bad shape, no two ways about that. His armor was almost gone, only remaining the abdomen part with some golden-colored shoulder pieces. His blue underneath clothes were torn and blood could be seen dribbling down from some very severe wounds. One didn't need super senses to smell some flesh recently burnt out, the left hand clutching the right arm. His right eye was close and he was panting in fatigue but the prince didn't mind that for a reason. In fact he didn't look angry at all. Just floating there.
Bardock kind of missed that Vegeta's left hand was faking the clutching because there was something already there.
"Okay Vegeta, spill it!" The time traveler ordered without mincing if he had to turn into violence to get the answers "I don't just believe that your grunts were opportunely holding back against the others all this time" The place remained silent for some seconds, only the air moving the funky locks of black hairs of both of the same-race aliens.
Then Vegeta laughed. Quite heartily and without carrying that a broken rib could pierce his lungs. He just wanted the low-class to fully know the mess he and his weak companions were in.
"You aren't so short minded as the common low-class" The flame-haired armored alien complimented with mockery. But Bardock remained cool, something that pissed Vegeta off but the prince wouldn't show it not that he was about to become a living God "Fine, if you want to know" The prince casually took his hand up to his mouth and munched on something he had. The time traveler hadn't seen whatever Vegeta was
The wounds were gone from his frame in an instant, his ki swelling up higher than ever before. Bardock was momentary taken aback by the unexpected actions. The ground rumbled with massive earthquakes with the new staggering might. Until Vegeta finished his power increment, his aura dying out and the wind not flowing anymore.
"You see, on our way here we came across a dying planet with a giant tree on its surface" The prince started explaining towards his enemy with a very arrogant tone "Thanks to some hacking communication, I picked up a secret transmission about that tree. Turns out that it was known as the Tree of Might. And it was known because it can absorb the life force of the planet you plant it so to sprout its fruit. Whenever you eat one, your power will become limitless like a god"
"So you just ate a fruit?" The scar fighter replied, trying to understand the weird logic. But it had no logic so there was a moot point there.
"That's right" Vegeta smiled before responding, his right hand balled in a fist. A fist that had already shot energy in the sky "And what's more, thanks to your beating, the power of the fruit amplified my Zenkai like never before! Right now, I think I could take on Frieza on my own!"
"Mixing a power up with a Zenkai?" The time traveler asked just slightly interested "Quite a clever strategy Vegeta. I have to reluctantly say that you are very different from your father. Never could he have come up with that intrinsic idea" While the idea was good in the premise, it also sounded like one of a coward's.
"But you are really overestimating yourself" Bardock pressed on his tone not loosing his seriousness "Because I can sense your new energy and you have not even come close to my base form" That was half a lie. Vegeta's energies had gone dangerously up from just that fruit. Bardock could beat him no doubt.
The flame-haired shorter fighter' smirk never faltered when he answered back to his low-class opponent.
"That's why I attacked you just minutes ago with a fake blast" The prince answered with some traces of blood in his teeth.
"What?" Bardock asked. He tried to keep his cool demeanor. Whatever Vegeta was planning wasn't something he would like for sure. But at the same time he was rather curious about it.
"I knew you could sense energy and also knew that sneak attacks wouldn't work on you. But I didn't need to beat you with that. Only fooled you for a moment" Vegeta responded, his thumb up. But not as a positive gesture and as of rather a pointer up "Look up and tell me what you see in the sky" The scar fighter did so his energy sensing on his opponent so to not give him any kind of momentary advantage. His eyes widen. There was Full Moon right in the middle of the blue-skied day!
Bardock remembered what it would do to him and looked down to the ground. His teeth had almost turned into fangs and the lunar form had almost been activated in his tail. While Bardock had always enjoyed the rush that the Ozaru form provided, he also had to unwillingly accept that he had never had full control of his actions. The most he could do was remember some flashbacks like a bad-viewed dream. He just never had the mental discipline to set his thoughts in order and retain sanity.
While for the last year he had done a lot of meditation with his second son, the scar warrior wasn't going to test any theory at this advanced point of the fight. A miscalculation and he would end up killing everyone on the planet by his blinding rage. And the planet too.
"That's it Bardock. That was a Moon Blast. A technique scientists on Planet Vegeta developed just before our destruction" The prince explained further, his body basking in the new skyline Blutz waves "It replaces the Full Moon of a planet so we can transform at any time we want" His black eyes were glued to the shinning sphere of power. His flame hair waved by the flowing new wind around them.
"Imagine these new powers of mine, multiplied by ten!" The prince yelled in evil happiness, his body contorting by the new muscles swelling into existence. Bardock flew backwards and put some gap in-between the two of them. The Giant Ape transformation ended up quicker than he remembered and the human fighter was now sending daggers at his gigantic monkey enemy.
Things just got a lot more dangerous for Earth.
Notes from Chapter 8:
Each of the Saiyans had a fruit. Vegeta, being Vegeta got the biggest while Tarble got the smallest. They were all smaller than the one Turles ate in the movie. Mix the fruit with Zenkai, however, and you get a hell of a booster.
Vegeta was the master planner here. A reminder of the original Vegeta from Manga in the Namek Saga, where he actually thought things out before carrying them out. Also we won't see a lot of him from the next chapter on so better give him the spotlight while I can.
Fourth Wall Break Hidden Joke! Let's guess who finds it.
Okay people, understand right now that Bardock has mastered the Super Saiyan and can transform at will without a glitch. But that doesn't mean he will instantly do so. He enjoys a fight that gives him a challenge like a common Saiyan. Living with his son for one year and one month made him more conscious about not putting innocent people in the line of fire, not about not fighting.
Power Levels:
Bardock:
Base form: 310,000
Goku:
Base form: 15,000
Gohan:
Base form: 9,000
Raditz:
Base form: 12,000
Piccolo: 9,000
Tien: 4,500
Inuzama: 5,000
Krillin: 4,300
Yamcha: 4,000
Vegeta: 20,000
Healed (Bigger Zenkai): 250,000
Ozaru: 2.5 million
Nappa: 6,500
Healed (Bigger Zenkai): 26,000
Tarble: 4,000
Healed (Bigger Zenkai): 9,000
Ozaru: 90,000
So the fight has started, ended and restarted. But what can our fighters do now?