An Earthling soldier in a winter coat, donning a red ribbon around his left arm placed his hands over his head and leaned in on the front plane window. The pilot could not quite believe what he'd been seeing. It appeared like a native girl with war paint and feathers standing atop of a black cloud. The teen was just standing there, in mid-air, staring blank right back at the lines and formations of the planes that approached to scout the situation out.
"It's not Taopaipai… I repeat, it's not Taopaipai!" the pilot leaned into the communicator to report back to the headquarters. Before he could begin to report about what it was exactly that he's been seeing, the black cloud exploded in a burst of speed and disappeared out of the range of the pilot's vision. The plane shook from right to left.
Par the proper engagement protocol, air-force soldiers were supposed to rush the wide wingspan and unleash living hell matching the right miniguns attached to each carrier plane. For whatever reason, the Red Ribbon army had found slower carrier planes with the heaviest possible weaponry and the capability to carry an additional squad of soldiers atop of its massive wingspan superior to whatever aircraft it used before.
On top of that, the mechanical, unmanned buzzers went wild all of a sudden. The smaller vehicles that were meant for blitzkrieg speeds and thunderous enemy suppression started buzzing about as if the enemy had just engaged them but… Where is the enemy? Deafening screams made the pilot's heart sink to his toes as he observed in horror dozens of soldiers being flung from the wings and plummeting below. All of them came equipped with parachutes but it would still be less than a fun landing in the middle of an unforgiving mountain range.
Still, it was either crossing that or heading through the Sacred Land of Korin to the nearest point of civilization where they could request a pick-up. That's even if the Red Ribbon would bother offering pick-ups to some low-ranking no-names.
The entire warplane trembled and quaked. The radars and screens providing damage reports lit up red before going black all at the same time. It did not require one of the most advanced in the world radar systems to register a six-ton warplane going down. Wings separated and flew off right before the pilot's very eyes. A pair of verily confused and frightened beyond anything the man's been frightened like eyes.
The same native girl appeared in view, right beside the left illuminator, forcing the pilot to stick to it and get a better look at the deceased attacker. The struggling with accepting his demise pilot had always known that something crazy has been going on in the Sacred Land of Korin as there was a nasty tendency of any foot-traveling soldiers to be found pinned to trees by massive spears or some similar manner of bad dealings. This… Why would those crazy natives ever leave their little paradise?
Also… Was that a tail waggling right beside the girl's knees?
The eyes of the warrior shot wide open as the black cloud caught her and carried her upward. The pilot looked up and tried to follow the tailed girl's ascension for as long as he could.
A cascade of bright and thunderous flashes lit up the snowy floor of the mountain range beneath. Chayote kept maneuvering around these explosive projectiles that Earthlings kept firing her way. That last one seemed to hurt a little, more than anything else the force behind it tossed the Saiyan off of the plane and sent her plummeting. There was little to none actual pain involved, her clothes were completely tattered though.
"That's what we bomb cities with!" a soldier yelled out to his fellow, lowering his large, automated lead cannon shortly after Chayote landed firmly atop another carrier plane. "Who is this kid!?"
"Damn it!" a dwarf-sized man with red hair and a red ribbon tied around his arm raged while sitting in front of a room-spanning radar screen. He could hear the muzzled sounds of his men being thrown about like ragdolls by an unknown enemy force. "I knew that it was far too soon for a confirmed kill, even for Taopaipai!"
"It does not seem like the airforce can hold the enemy back for much longer. It might be wise to pull some of it back and use it to protect the base once the enemy reaches it." A dark-skinned man in a rather loose, even for his own impressive build, suit observed in a cold and calculated manner.
"And bomb my own base!? Forget it, you idiot! Damn it! Why now!? Right when we're so close to being done with our radar, right about when we discover the secret of what these Dragon Balls can do…" the angry, middle-aged dwarf of a man threw his fists up in the air in a hissy fit. This appeared to greatly displease the blue creature of wide ears and blood-red eyes sitting on his lap, the outrage forced the deadly pet to hiss and leap away from its master.
"We don't know anything about this enemy. Who is it? Someone assisting the village chief that we're interrogating? Perhaps one of his loved ones is more dangerous than we assumed…" the taller, dark-skinned member of the red-ribbon donning army force shared observations to himself without an end in sight.
"And you said that hiring Taopaipai to exterminate them and grief the village chief into telling us about Dragon Balls was a bad idea! You need to remember who's in charge, Staff Officer Black!" the not quite fully developed, one-eyed commander of the army observed. It was only when much more deep-seated malice ran through his mind and very veins that the man calmed himself for a moment.
"Of course, Commander Red. What is our course of action?" Staff Officer Black inquired.
"Activate all our defenses! Blast that damned enemy right out of the sky!" Red replied with previously unseen fervor. "Activate the Metallitron Squad, how many high-ranking officers do we have present to defend the base?"
"Just Colonel Violet and General Copper, Captain Yellow is amongst the welcoming committee. The rest are setting up their bases, just as you instructed. Are you sure that activating all defenses is a good idea, Sir? They'll rip right through our own planes!" Staff Officer Black objected.
"Shut up and do as you're told, you ungrateful bastard!" Commander Red yelled so loud and with so much passion that he dropped the still smoking cigar right out of his mouth. "I'd like to see you do a better job running this operation…" he observed with much more contained spite.
"O-Of course, Commander Red!" Staff Officer Black bowed his head and ran off to the communicator to issue the orders.
"Heh, heh… Just a little girly!" a man strangely similar to the sabertooth tigers that Chayote seldom brought for food, the likes of which Bora also liked to hunt, observed once the rushing, airborne Saiyan warrior landed right on top of his plane. These large ones were a genuine pleasure to ride – they served almost like a guiding pathway for the Saiyan. Chayote leaped on top of one, kicked everybody's ass, punched the wings off and then moved on ahead.
Serves these primitive Earthlings right for relying on bird-like aerodynamics for their aircraft!
The tiger-man pointed a relatively large, likely custom-made, handheld arm-cannon at Chayote and fired a pair of massive slugs at her face. The Saiyan just observed without a bother as the large-caliber projectiles ripped right through the imbecile's own illuminator and pressed the tiger man to the busted glass while rushing out air threatened to suck the tiger man right out through the glass shredder.
If he was puny enough to get shredded by the mere glass, he deserved this grisly end. It was a pity, his jacket was insanely cool! Chayote made note of how kickass the gear of Earthling airforce soldiers was and wondered if perhaps the military base she was working towards had any storage units of just the same kind of gear. The aircraft in the midst of battle tended to explode and the soldiers tended to plummet down before Chayote could rob them of their clothes to replace her own busted outfit.
A loud shriek preceded a powerful blast that tossed Chayote swinging back like a ragdoll. It barely hurt at all but the force of tossing that the blast offered was considerable enough. Dark Kinto managed to catch the Saiyan without much problem. The teen identified how troublesome these anti-aircraft cannons on the ground were. If one of them hit her on top of Kinto she'd crash down and have to walk the rest of the way not only there but also to Papaya Island once the time came for the tournament.
"It's been fun but let's leave these guys to crash and burn, Kinto…" Chayote mumbled, knowing full well that in the hectic conditions of a burning aerial battle there was no one but herself to hear this command. Almost as if it came instinctively, Dark Kinto blasted onward at the speed of lightning, rotating and outracing every single one of the ground anti-air blasts.
The base was now in sight. It was a relatively impressive establishment, rivaling historic Saiyan barracks before they were contacted by King Cold and offered all of the amazing scientific advancements, accumulated by the Cold Force. A thick, red brick wall surrounded an assortment of buildings of various sizes, men littered the entire encampment like ants. Bullets and rockets buzzed about Chayote's current aerial position while the teenage Saiyan prepared to swoop down and not leave the place until there was nothing left.
"Time to practice for when I have to wipe out the entire planet's military!" Chayote's face dyed with a malicious grin as she leaped off of Dark Kinto and dove down at the red brick wall, where the rocket and missile wielding soldiers positioned themselves.
A squad of seasoned warriors of the most powerful military force on Earth, a fact that the assailant of their headquarters must have been unfamiliar with, stood in perfect sync with their most powerful and advanced weaponry all aimed at the upper angles of the walls surrounding the base. The utmost edges of the walls were too high up for premature fire to hit them, plus, all those rockets and high-caliber gunfire would be chipping at their own wall so the soldiers waited on standby until the commando responsible for each squad ordered to fire.
An anthropomorphic dog wielding a high-caliber, automated assault rifle allowed his glare to temporarily stray onto the nearest commando. A fright-inspiring individual with muscles for brain and, if initial impressions were to be believed, also their internal organs for their musculature could not have made any reasonable strength. Then there was the fact that most of them wore nothing but a sleeveless shirt with a Red Ribbon insignia in the center or a tracksuit from the morning's running session that got interrupted by this mysterious attacker.
Then there was the fact that those profoundly brave, or just thick in the brain department, soldiers carried nothing but knives or batons into battle. A handful made use of the mini-guns and four-to-eight-barrel rocket launchers but most of those berserkers were almost ready to leap at the threat, that took down warplanes and the entire ground, anti-aircraft defense system with bare hands, armed with nothing but a petty knife or a fancy smacking stick.
The first signals of impending battle announced themselves with the fusillade of raining manpower. Explosions cascaded through the top of the walls, those were the mortar cannons going out in a blink of an eye while every man positioned atop of the wall was killed in a way that sent them flying across the entire military base or high up into the sky to where the men would have woken up in the mountains had they survived their impressive trip.
"What are you waiting for? Fire!" a short, bald man with a blue mohawk ordered the soldiers. General Copper commanded the forces from a military jeep with a riot shotgun of his own in hand. Despite the man's short stature, his arms were thick and his fingers were oddly long enough to handle the massive firepower in his hands.
"B-But our own wa…" one of the foot soldiers decided that it was a good idea to argue with General Copper himself.
The soldier fell dead before finishing the sentence, prompting the rest of the fortune seekers to follow those that wished to see the end of the day and attack the very barrier that was supposed to prevent the enemy forces from making their way inside the base. While the gunfire may have taken the entire day to pelt the thick and tall wall away, the rockets busted colossal chunks of it down in seconds.
In a spectral whisper, the assailant – a measly teenage girl wearing an outfit of a male native local of the Sacred Land of Korin dashed to the midst of the soldiers, unleashing hellfire of fists and feet upon the confused soldiers that failed to turn and face their enemy in time and all met the same high-flying fate of their wall-protecting colleagues. The teen kissed the ground when the semi-automated barrage of riot shotgun fire ground her to the floor. The assailant attempted to get back up and destroy General Copper for attacking her but the commandos began piling on top of the native soldier that had made impressive strides for a sole attacker.
One of the commandos laughed in defiance of their impending doom as General Copper began lobbing incendiary, flash and frag grenades at the body pile. Blowing up most of the present in the southern wing of the Red Ribbon Headquarters engagement commandos but, at least as far as General Copper had hoped, killing the banshee that had made so much progress in sieging the base of the world's most ruthless and powerful military force.
From the deepest tongues of the resulting hellfire, Chayote appeared with the warrior's ceremonial robe granted to her as a gift by Bora and Upa almost completely burnt to a crisp. The Saiyan evaded the wide spread of the riot shotgun's semi-automated fire and grabbed General Copper's hand as he clutched the grenade he was about to use to gain some distance between the two again. Despite his impressive gear, the high-ranking official did not count on Chayote closing the distance between the tiny crater that the previous onslaught of grenades had caused and his jeep.
A deafening blast echoed the demise of the first greeting forces. More and more soldiers rushed from the buildings of the headquarters they resided in. There was cannon fodder wielding cold weapons and mere handguns, soldiers that had no weaponry of their own but ran about with canine companions that they sicced on Chayote only for the canines to be dispatched of with quick and precise elbow and knee strikes.
There were more footmen providing suppressive automated fire, even more commandos and even the buildings around the base lit up with flares once in a while due to intensive sniper fire. Why the bunch tried this hard when it was self-evident that their enemy was completely bulletproof and chose to evade or catch the incoming gunfire merely as morning stretching exercise, was beyond the Saiyan.
"You won't win! We're the Red Ribbon, the strongest military in the world!" one defiant and dying soldier decided to announce. Chayote found that very interesting. There may have been even more use in dispatching of these jokers in that case. Not only did they make a mockery out of martial arts and fighting in general by paying fighters to do their killing for them, while they were weak as a sock, not only were they an entire base full of evil people for Chayote to get back on track in her quest of wiping the planet's surface clean for when the Frieza Army finds this planet and assimilates it into its flock of control, they, apparently, also were the most powerful military, making their pitiful resistance a great practice before the main course.
Chayote did not respond nor did she finish the dying soldier off. With a powerful leap, the Saiyan did, however, dash through the window of the nearby building and began engaging the snipers that thought they had holed up in their little sanctuaries nicely. The sniper havens did have some more footmen and commandos inside to watch over the vulnerable glass cannons but those had never provided much resistance in the past. More and more screams signaled the end for this building. After busting through the top floor window and back-flipping onto the roof, Chayote examined the location from a nice vantage point.
Some of the unmanned buzzards with automated cannons buzzed in and formed a little swarm around the Saiyan. They displayed no hesitations in unleashing the full brunt of their weaponry upon the rampaging Saiyan warrior. Truth be told, unless she hopped back onto the Dark Kinto, Chayote did not have many options of engaging those buzzing pests so, for a short while at least, she had decided to stick to a more grounded level. The Saiyan pointed her open palm at a nearby building and let a purple, palm-sized Ki Blast blow out an opening in the side of the building, leaving it with damage resembling a chomp from a Kaiju on the side.
A white flash disrupted Chayote's dreams of following up on her raid. Before she realized what was happening, the Saiyan was airborne and crashed through a dark green dome where even more foot soldiers resided and unleashed even more suppressive fire. These folks seemed split halfway, while one half of them felt encouraged by the partial success of the aerial raid of the warplanes making their presence known again, the other half looked quite willing to ditch the base at its current point of disarray.
"Dammit, the Silver Corps are here now! What are you cowards running away from!?" one of the willing and able soldiers firing upon their own cowardly lot declared.
"This girl slew the entirety of the Brown Squadron, now you expect us to fight with the Silver Corps bombing our own base from above!? You're all crazy!" an anthropomorphic crocodile with shades hiding from behind a table and slowly firing back at his own peers replied. While the wooden table proved to be a poor barrier for the rebelling reptilian, Chayote very much enjoyed her freebie of getting to get back on her feet and rush after the soldiers inside the massive green dome while they were pre-occupied executing their own for disobedience.
"Those cool commando tracksuits… Where are they?" the teen inquired of the bleeding out crocodile after examining the shades of the downed soldier. They were far too big and busted for the Saiyan to borrow. Neither did these Earthling spectacles possess the quality of a scouter, something that may have been useful in the journey to come.
"T-The western wing." The reptilian replied before sticking out his tongue and his eyes taking a cartoonish X shape. Earthlings in this stage of the planet's development possessed the most outlandish quirks.
The swamp-colored dome at the north-southern corner of the base exploded into bits after a coordinated drop of bombs by the Silver Corps. Chayote walked out from the resulting fiery inferno and glared up at the swarming warplanes up above. If allowed the rule over the skies, these troublesome aircrafts would surely make Chayote's quest for the decimation and looting of this base more difficult.
Then again, if she leaped atop of the Dark Kinto, Chayote risked having a single one of those massive bombs killing the cloud and leaving her without any aircraft of her own. Surely there would no longer be any left after she was done with this place…
The siege of the Red Ribbon was well underway.