There was a sense of heavy foreboding in the air. A smell of something figuratively fishy the likes of which Chayote was unfamiliar with yet. On the one hand, nobody around her had any capacity of striking fear in her so, whatever their business was, it wouldn't have bothered her. On the other hand, all of those goons served the same master, and the wicked emperor calling their shots was not someone Chayote wanted to stand in front of.
"We're headed back to the ship," Chayote turned toward the ship and began slowly strutting in that direction. She wanted for Gohan to catch up before she takes off but, judging by him lingering where he stood, he never did. This prompted the Saiyan woman to turn back with a sullen stare. One that left the child leaning back with wide and twitching eyes as he instinctively put his arms up in between him and the Saiyan he only heard his father speak of but hasn't known for too long.
"B-But… Grandma…" Gohan muttered. "Also, won't those soldiers try to stop us?"
"Everyone else can look for Bardock's wife all they want. I'm sure that one of them will find her. I'd rather make sure that we're ready to leave as soon as possible. This isn't some sick joke. The Ginyu Special Squadron aren't the only ones here–it's Lord Frieza too." Chayote grit her teeth, completing her uptight expression.
"Dad's energy it's… He's not moving for a while now. Maybe something happened?" Gohan continued to whine, looking toward where the Ki of Goku, Krillin and, strangely, Vegeta were. Judging from the fact that neither Krillin's nor Goku's Ki were involved in a heated battle with the Saiyan prince, Chayote assumed they struck some sort of deal. Either way, whatever deal that was, she'd not pull any punches if she sets her eyes on the prince who forced her to transform into a Great Ape and threaten the Earth against her will.
The lid tipped over with aliens forming a circle around the group. Chayote had been looking out for that specific formation–an early indicator of an incoming hit though she was expecting the entire group to circle around her and Gohan, not just the alien half of the army surrounding some of their own people as well and aiming at their backs. The hit squad didn't wait. The moment a chubby Saiyan noticed the fact that his comrade was aiming an energy channeling gauntlet at his back, a bright flash snuffed him out.
Gohan froze in place. He had been in a battle before, but he hasn't encountered a synchronized execution. He's been familiar with combat, but not genocide. It took Chayote more than a few hole-ridden Saiyan bodies until she made the connection in her mind. When a blue alien with a skull-shaped head aimed his cannon at Gohan with a wicked smile, Chayote blinked in front of him, swatting the bolt aside even though it wouldn't have killed the brat.
"Sorry, nothing personal, it's just that you've arrived at the worst possible time to be a Saiyan on Planet Vegeta…" the skull-faced soldier cackled while a handful more soldiers surrounded them. It wasn't until he had made that proclamation that Chayote finally put everything together and confirmed what was going on.
"How cruel!" Gohan gasped. Something had snapped in him, however. His teeth clenched and the two separate rows began competing against one another in strength while his watering eyes squinted inward as the boy's body stiffened. His Ki had shot up as well. That was odd, Chayote didn't see or hear him using the King Kai's Fist, though the escalation of power was easily comparable to that technique.
"This isn't our business." Chayote tried calming Gohan down. "We can't save everyone on this planet. If we try, we're bound to run into the Ginyu Special Squadron and put ourselves on Lord Frieza's crosshairs."
Gohan wasn't listening at all. His booming power made the soldiers holding the pair of Saiyans at gunpoint sweat and grow restless as their scouters activated automatically as a warning and began counting up. As their data input went into the five digits, the soldiers all fired at Gohan. Like a downpour in a stormy ocean, all the energy blasts rippled and disappeared inside a bubble of Ki emerging and growing around Gohan.
In a single, resonant roar, Gohan popped his own golden, protective Ki bubble and unleashed its shatters as homing Ki waves that took out the soldiers surrounding them all at once. Yet the kid didn't completely obliterate them, merely leaving them an unconscious, smoking mess littering the grounds. Whether he lacked the power to decimate the alien soldiers or he still had a modicum of sense keeping him straight in his mind. The kid settled down and looked at Chayote with a wavering, enormous pair of eyes and a twitching lower lip. In a blink, the kid went from a ruthless Saiyan warrior back to a whiny brat.
"I… I beat them up, sorry, Chayote-san!" Gohan whined out. He was one nudge away from a full-out crying fit. For whatever reason, looking at him slobbering and weeping like that made Chayote kick her panic out the window and just sigh.
"Oh well, I guess I couldn't have avoided it forever," the Saiyan shook her head. "Let's scram until…"
"Well, well… What do we have here?" an annoying, low-pitched grunge filled Chayote's ears. Gohan's kept her occupied long enough for one of the alien parties to sneak up on them. It was only natural–there were too many pieces on the board. Some of their Ki Chayote could recognize, and some not so much. Either way, she had never sensed the Ki of Frieza or his henchmen, so it wasn't like she could pick and choose whom to fight. "A terrified Saiyan family?"
"Dodoria?" Chayote muttered, turning to one of Frieza's better known goons whom she had seen around a few times during the tyrant's visits on Planet Vegeta, though had never seen him actually fight. He did occasionally kill people on his master's command, but his Ki didn't feel like anything special. It was his standing with the emperor that left Chayote hesitant at engaging him and his party of soldiers he had brought with him.
"That's a whole lot of bodies around you two. Then again, I guess the power level of over 10 000 was just too much for these soldiers to handle. It's just too bad that it's exactly what I was looking for–a pair of easy heads to smash in." Dodoria chuckled to himself as he cracked his knuckles, extending his massive arms to the sides as he ordered his platoon to stay back. While the reputation of this one suggested that he was anything but the strategic type, he had enough brain matter not to throw soldiers away where he couldn't handle the threat.
"Huh… I guess that battle power belonged to the mother." Dodoria smirked, turning on his scouter and measuring the input coming out from Gohan and Chayote. Of course he'd think that. Gohan's Ki had plummeted down to near irrelevancy after settling down, while Chayote's strength stayed down at her insistence not to invite unwanted attention toward them. "Why don't you guys finish off the child while I do away with her. Make sure not to kill him before she's good and stiff. Saiyans get wild bursts of power when they're crazy mad."
"It's not like Saiyans are model parents, Dodoria-san," a balding, purple-skinned alien with an oval-shaped head jested, helping Dodoria to a laugh.
"I guess not. Still, this one looks to be protective enough for us to be careful." Dodoria grumbled out while he lowered himself down onto an outside café platform on top of a rocky mountain that opened up to a lustrous natural panorama of a small forest and a glittering lake. That way he stood directly in front of Chayote.
"You must fight, Gohan," Chayote turned back. "There are too many soldiers for you alone to handle meanwhile you should be able to handle one, more powerful opponent far better than an army of weaker ones."
"B-But… He's from Frieza's army, isn't he? Won't we… Get in trouble?" Gohan muttered out with tears in his eyes.
"It's way too late for that. Now we'll just have to survive, somehow." Chayote replied after turning her back to the kid and taking off into the air, leaving him to cower all by himself in front of a thick alien individual with a spiky head and a nasty attitude.
"Well, well… I guess Saiyans really are lousy parents…" Dodoria took a bold step forward, imposing his tremendous physical advantage over the frightened child who hadn't even turned ten yet. "Oh well, it's not like snapping a child's neck is beneath me or anything…"
Gohan clenched his fists and positioned them by his sides. His fright turned into resolve even though his lips still whimpered and the corners of his eyes were still wet with round, tiny crystals. Chayote felt his Ki stabilizing somewhere in between his previous, wrathful explosion of force and his powerless, childish innocence. He'd need to discover a way to become more powerful or to survive until Chayote dealt with this rabble.
Chayote vanished in a snap, smacking a soldier with the back of her hand while she gripped his heel and swung him around like a bat, smacking aside his pals that stayed in a tight formation around him before the female Saiyan pressed her hand to the chest of the battered ram in her grip and blasted him into dust with an expulsion of wild Ki. The brutality and force of Chayote's attack sent Dodoria into a stumble.
"Power level of… 92 546!?" Dodoria's eyes blanked out. "This must be a malfunction. Her battle power was just a tenth of that just a moment ago!"
"You've made a colossal error, Dodoria," Chayote stated calmly, looking down at the pink alien with the spiky forearms as he cowered just like the literal child right in front of him. "That child in front of you isn't mine. So go ahead. Try to kill him, if you can, but know that I'll be right with you by the time you're just about done and I'll be even more pissed off than I am now. If you run away with your tail between your legs, however, well… I don't really care about the likes of you at the moment. Also, the power level you've traced here chasing wasn't mine either–it was this child's."
"The brat's!?" Dodoria turned to Gohan, his arms spread to the sides, quaking, his eyes open wide and bloodshot as his pupils seemingly vanished completely from his expression. "No way, this has to be some sort of malfunction! The purpose of this alternative model of scouters is to calculate remarkable power levels, that's why they must be telling rubbish when dealing with little, insignificant fries like you!"
As Chayote lunged at the soldiers, smacking and kicking them senseless by the handful, Gohan prepared to engage his larger and much more ferocious opponent down on the ground. Recalling the fundamentals of his training, Gohan engaged his opponent first, doing his best to push Dodoria to take the defensive position in this clash so he could fight it out for more time and prevent the brutish alien from imposing his physical advantage.
Surprised by the emerging will to fight in what he thought of as a weak and defenseless Saiyan child, Dodoria skipped the first rushing blow to his jaw. By the time that the pink brute recovered, Gohan had let the gravity take him down below and delivered a crushing blow to the alien's gut, kicked on the inner side of Dodoria's knee before jumping back up with a flurry of body shots. As Dodoria began backing up, Gohan delivered a high kick to the other side of the alien's jaw before kicking off of the air with a one leg missile kick straight into the center of Dodoria's chest.
The bulky enforcer looked up with a wicked smirk, having taken only minor damage from a whole assortment of Gohan's toughest blows and this display of his attack having little to no effect stunned Gohan in mid-air. Dodoria's arms shot out to the sides, his fists smashed in from both sides of little Gohan's head while the child's body jerked violently from the impact. With his opponent having lost his senses and succumbing before him, Dodoria grabbed Gohan by his head and flung him into the air.
Smirking with a full-toothed smile, Dodoria threw an uppercut so vicious that that a small whirlwind dyed with pink Ki howled in around the point of impact to the bottom of Gohan's chin as the child flew out as if shot out of a cannon after taking that shot. Chayote noticed the one-sided direction in which the battle was going through her Ki sensory, she couldn't yet waste time turning to Gohan as multiple soldiers tried to attack the child while he fell, hoping to draw Chayote in a foolish attempt to body-shield him. While the female Saiyan did rush to protect Gohan, she did so by grabbing hold of a soldier's head and pushing him through the wave of Ki blasts, using his body as a shield instead before throwing him aside.
"What's wrong!?" Chayote yelled out. "Use that King Kai Fist technique, fight seriously or you'll die!"
Had she known that Gohan would actually hold himself back from fighting as much spirit as he had in him, she'd have put both of them in danger by eliminating Dodoria himself and leaving him at the mercy of the soldiers. Maybe if Chayote took Dodoria on at full-power, she could have eliminated him quickly enough. Now she's stuck in between two dangers with Gohan busted open and as good as dragging her down.
"B-But… Mom doesn't like me using that technique unless I really, really have to…" Gohan muttered, crawling back as he lacked the force to stand up. A vicious, bloody bruise shined in front of his face, spraying blood to where it obscured the boy's vision by preventing him from opening his eyes.
"Heh, your mom's alright. Maybe I'll thank her before I kill her next?" Dodoria pat his spiky head, proud of the beat down he dished out on a child several times weaker than him.
"Don't you dare!" Gohan cried out, the powerful energy enveloping him wasn't the red of the King Kai Fist but it boosted his desperate power level several times and forced Dodoria to put his arm in front of him to withstand the rushing air pressure without falling over. "I won't let you hurt my mom or my dad!"
It was a neat power-up, but it still paled compared to Dodoria's strength. The flash of it gave Chayote some more precious seconds to lay into the horde of soldiers. Every merciless blow she threw was a beat of the clock, a race against time as she didn't want to have to tell Goku that she ended up getting his child killed.
"King Kai's Fist X 10!" Gohan cried out as he once again rose to his feet, crossing his arms out in front of him as he let out his resolve and rage all out in a prolonged shout while he placed his hands beside him and channeled up a red, massive energy sphere in each hand and put both of his hands forward repeatedly, hammering the energy blasts to spit out homing waves of Ki that arced toward Dodoria even as the wary muscle attempted to swat the energy blasts aside or evade them.
"Damn you, brat!" Dodoria cursed in discomfort as the Ki waves began pushing him back and actually hurting him before he expelled his own wrath as an explosive wave that cost him far more stamina than he would have liked to spend on such a favorable to him engagement. As Gohan's disappearing energy lingered on becoming irrelevant again, Dodoria couldn't retaliate immediately as well, for Gohan's desperation move left the brutish enforcer panting.
"I'll… I'll kill you hard, you urchin!" Dodoria grunted, taking off like a living missile looking to clobber Gohan to death with a headbutt. Gohan's eyes widened in terror as he wasn't used to staring his own mortality in the face like that. It was only when a beaming pillar of emerald energy beamed down from above and swallowed Dodoria whole in mid-flight just a few meters away from Gohan that the fear-stricken child gathered the courage to look around.
Bodies of unconscious soldiers with terrified expressions of fear of their impending doom frozen in their faces. Gohan could recall having seen many times more soldiers than this accompanying Dodoria, but he couldn't see them anywhere now. They might have been a part of the ashes raining down from the sky. Chayote's yell echoed from inside that booming pillar of energy. It was her!
"Lima Spear!" the maddened Saiyan roared out as she emerged from the crater she had left with her empowered shoulder charge that she slammed Dodoria into. As Gohan crept up to the edge and looked into the chasm, the pebbles he sent tumbling down appeared to be plummeting without meeting the bottom as bright crackles continued to jolt about in the electrified crater. Not a trace of the terrible brute that beaten Gohan within an inch of his life inside.
"Come on, kid." Chayote picked Gohan up by his waist and put him under her armpit.
"You've gained some weight…" Gohan noted with a weak voice, referencing the increase in musculature that went through when Chayote powered up. It was nowhere near as noticeable as when she forced herself to become stuck in between her base form and her Great Ape transformation, but it was still noticeable as Chayote's build was leaning out once again as her will to fight faded out.
"Haven't fought seriously in a while. Let's take you to your father. I'm sick of being responsible over you. Let's just hope that Krillin had enough common sense to take him to a healing pod and that there are some spares left over," Chayote sighed, giving Gohan a brief glance before turning to the direction that his father was recovering in.
"You've powered up to your limit, even though it exposed you…" Gohan muttered.
"Yeah, I guess I couldn't have lived inside of a shell forever." Chayote nodded as she took off slowly so she didn't aggravate Gohan's injuries. "At some point I'd have had to confront Frieza. I had hoped to protect the Earth from his army as I've grown to like it. You and your family are a part of Earth. If I can't be a soldier for the Frieza Army, maybe I can at least be a soldier that protects the Earth from it."
"Is that all you see yourself as? A soldier?" Gohan wondered. His eyes were weighing down heavily at him, and it felt like the kid would go asleep at any point now. Chayote wondered just how much of this conversation he'd recall when he woke up.
"That's the only purpose I know. Life's been preparing me to become a soldier since I've been born. Most Saiyans don't get to choose anything but that, but I guess you can. It's too late for me to choose. Live or die, I'll be doing it as a soldier, but you can become whatever you want. That right is something I want to protect too, even if it is as my last act." Chayote's rough stare softened as she looked on ahead and rushed toward the towering building in the horizon where Goku, Krillin and Vegeta found their shelter.
"You're… Really strong, Chayote-san. You make a noble soldier. I don't enjoy fighting that much, but… I do like martial arts…" Gohan's speech became a coded message of puny peeps and mumbles. Chayote didn't rush to keep him from sleeping. Unlike with Earthlings, Saiyans actually passed out as a defensive mechanism and preserved their bodily functions by doing it.
"You'll get stronger too, kid. You're already way stronger than Kakarot was at your age, way stronger than I was too. Even I wouldn't have lasted a second against Dodoria until not too long ago." Chayote looked down at her passenger but squinted after realizing that he fell asleep to a rhythm of breathing that was just cute.
Either way, there was no going back from this point–Chayote had just killed one of Frieza's most trusted enforcers. No matter what she says or does or where they try to run–there'll be a certain, chilling kind of hell to pay for this.