Happy Friday, have a chapter!
"Are you going to listen to me now? Huh? Because I can keep this up all day!"
Top stood and brushed dirt and grass from his uniform. "What's gotten into you, Dyspo? Why are you behaving like this?"
"Don't you dare ask about my behavior! You were going to destroy somebody because he messed up your mustache! After you beat him half to death!"
Half was generous. Very generous. It felt more like ninety-five percent of the way to death from Hit's perspective. He figured there were still decent odds he'd succumb to his injuries. The chance to watch Dyspo chew out his boss was just more pressing than seeking medical intervention at that moment.
"It wasn't about my mustache! He's an assassin! He came here for one purpose!" Top snapped.
"Yeah, but it's not the purpose you think! I've been trying to tell you since the second you landed but you've ignored me!"
A flicker of doubt crossed Top's face. "Then explain his presence."
"I invited him here as a training partner. I never thought he'd just show up; hell, I never thought he'd bother replying unless it was to tell me to get bent and leave him alone," Dyspo said.
"You invited him," Top repeated flatly.
Dyspo chewed the inside of his cheek compulsively and then turned to Marcarita and Vados. Much like Hit, the Angels had ambled over to watch the drama. Unlike Hit, they hadn't had to stop every few paces to catch their breath or give their head time to stop spinning.
"Play it!" Dyspo shouted. His cheeks flushed pink.
Vados raised her staff but Marcarita waited for Top to nod his assent. Once she had the future Destroyer's permission, she joined her sister in perfect synchronization.
The same tragicomedy Hit had already seen now unraveled for Top's viewing pleasure. Or Top's shame-quickly-descending-into-blatant-horror. The Pride Trooper looked restlessly from Dyspo's cringe-inducing outtakes to the assassin he'd spent the early afternoon pummeling.
By the time the video ended, Top was staring straight at the ground and Dyspo's face was about the same color as Hit's eyes.
"Believe me now?" Dyspo asked.
Top's only reply was to wordlessly point at Marcarita and then gesture to Hit, who had found a cozy little spot to slump down on.
The Angel nodded. "At once, my Lord."
Hit eyed Marcarita warily as she approached. He was in no position to even crawl away from her, but that didn't mean she had his trust, just his compliance.
After offering a smile Hit didn't trust either, Marcarita pointed the tip of her staff at the assassin. It happened instantly, with no fanfare, like the Angel had flipped a switch. One moment he was in generalized agony and the next it was as though time had been rewound to before Top had handed him the worst ass-kicking of his life. Hit blinked in shock and examined himself. He could move every limb freely, his mind was clear, there was no longer the taste of blood in the back of his mouth, and even the grass stains had been scrubbed from his coat.
"That's better, isn't it?" Marcarita asked.
Hit nodded, then realized that was pretty damn underwhelming considering what the Angel had done for him. He instead bowed his head. "Yes, thank you."
Marcarita grinned again and returned to her original position near Vados. It seemed like the pair exchanged a few words but they were too quiet for Hit to hear. He wondered if Dyspo with his radar-dish ears had picked anything up.
If Dyspo had heard any juicy angelic gossip, he didn't let it distract him. He was still glaring at Top, who, to his credit, looked like he wanted to dissolve into the ground and never be heard or seen from again.
"Great start, now how about an apology?" Dyspo prodded.
The hefty Pride Trooper, his eyes downcast, turned to Hit. "What I did today was the very opposite of justice! I have shamed not only myself but everything I hold dear! I have violated long-held traditions of hospitality and defiled the trust of my friends!"
"Without the theatrics," Dyspo muttered.
Top must have heard "crank the theatrics up as high as they can go and then break the dial off" in place of what Dyspo had actually said. He threw himself down in a dramatic kowtow worthy of kabuki. Hit recoiled. Amazing, a long lifetime without it and then two cases of second-hand embarrassment in one day. How lucky could an assassin be?
"Get off the ground," Hit said.
Top sprung to his feet. "I am honor-bound to make amends."
"I don't want your amends."
"What would you prefer in their stead?"
Hit was about to say "nothing" or "go jump in the lake" when an idea popped into his head. It was uncharacteristically petty and silly, but considering who the victim was, it seemed appropriate.
The assassin reached into his pocket, half-expecting to find it empty after the day he'd had. By some miracle the bag of jerky he'd stuck in there hadn't been dislodged. Hit removed the pouch and offered it to Top.
"I'd like to see you eat this. The entire bag."
"At once?" Top asked. He took the bag and examined it from different angles as though calculating its dimensions and the chances he could scarf it down whole like a snake.
"No, one piece at a time."
"What is it?"
"A local delicacy from the moon I've been calling home."
Top opened the bag and took a delicate sniff. Then he began to cough. It smelled like an ungodly combination of leather, smoke, and clashing herbs and spices, all rubbed on a wet dog.
"I'm all for you getting him back, but I'm pretty sure Belmod will be pissed if you poison his successor," Dyspo said. Hit noticed the rabbit's nose twitching and wondered how his sense of smell compared to his hearing.
"I survived on it for a month," Hit replied.
Dyspo's ears drooped. "If you call that surviving. Man, do they have some crazy food shortages in your universe or did you actually eat it willingly?"
"The latter."
Dyspo whistled. "I'm kinda impressed. Mostly I'm disgusted, but hey, you do you. But if you want to try something that doesn't smell like it got scraped off the side of the road, we've got some decent food here. It's not as good as on Nessfit, but I'm not complaining."
"Nessfit?" Hit asked.
"Yeah, we've got bases all over the universe but that's our biggest and best. This," Dyspo gestured broadly, "is like an outpost of an outpost. Weather's nice, though. The lake monster's pretty cool, too. I'll tell you about him in a second, just hang on. You heard him, it's not poison. Eat it!"
Top succumbed to Dyspo's withering glare and finally fished a strip of jerky from the bag. The rabbit crossed his arms and began to tap his foot, like a parent sick of their child refusing to finish their vegetables. "You wanted to make amends, so make 'em."
It was slow going and required a ridiculous amount of chewing but Top worked his way through the jerky without complaining or dying. He did look a little green by the end of it, though. The moment Hit accepted the empty bag, the Pride Trooper hurried off, either to be healed by Marcarita or to find somewhere he could throw up privately.
Once Top had made himself scarce, Hit waited to hear about the lake monster. Instead of moving on with his promised tale, Dyspo suddenly looked like he needed a touch of angelic healing himself. He flopped to the ground and splayed out like a carcass.
"Are you alright?" Hit inquired, looking down at him.
"No, not by a long shot! I can't believe this. I just attacked my boss and best friend and made him eat pocket jerky and I almost let him kill you and what even was that shit he pulled, damn it, he was looking you right in the eyes, that is cold!"
Hit sat down beside the distressed rabbit. "You're having a crisis of faith."
Dyspo covered his face with his hands. "I'm gonna get fired."
"Hmm, I don't think so."
"What am I gonna do then?"
"Make a living signing autographs?" Hit suggested.
Dyspo continued on as though he hadn't heard Hit's realistic and sensible comment. "Even back when I could hardly break the sound barrier, Top always believed in me. He saw something in me that nobody else did."
Hit hadn't signed up to hear Dyspo's life story, but considering the rabbit had gone toe-to-toe with a God of Destruction for him, he decided to keep his mouth shut.
"Maybe Top understood because he's used to the same treatment." Dyspo paused for a second. "Okay, not now, but before he had the god bod."
Hit couldn't help but snort at Dyspo's eloquent way with words. The point was sound, though, even if the phrasing was terrible; between Top's unorthodox physique, ample mustache, and campy posing, Hit could see many enemies underestimating him, if not outright laughing at him. Dyspo, especially a younger, scrawnier version of him, probably found his first opponents acting like schoolyard bullies.
It was a mistake nobody would make twice.
"That's what I love about the Pride Troopers. We're from all over the universe, different species, different backgrounds, but we're a team. A team with a great leader. Except…" Dyspo trailed off. He removed his hands from his face and looked over to Hit.
Except every now and then something dark encouraged him to crush his enemy's skull instead of just tossing them out of the arena.
"I think I need to talk to him." Dyspo shook his head. "No, I know I need to talk to him. I've known it for a while, I just didn't know how to start. 'Hey, what's up, did you really need to break all those bones?' At least now I don't have to worry about that. It's in the open."
Dyspo sighed and sat up. "I'm sorry you had to see that. And I'm sorry I waited so long to step in. I should have tried harder to make Top listen before it ever turned into that mess."
Hit sat silently for a few seconds before rising to his feet. The Pride Trooper glanced at the assassin, uncertain. Was his apology accepted, or had he just made an affront to Hit's dignity?
"Tell me about the lake monster."
Dyspo blinked. "Huh? Oh, yeah! That's what got me, K'nsi and Cocotte here in the first place. Only we didn't know it at the time. We were just looking for some missing scientists."
The Pride Trooper accepted the hand Hit offered him without breaking his story-telling stride. "We figured either pirates got them or a solar storm knocked their equipment offline. Nope."
"Lake monster?" Hit guessed.
"Lake monster! They landed in the middle of his territory. Things were fine for a couple days—they had time to unpack and start getting their base up—but they got a little too loud with construction. Or somebody pissed in the lake. I heard both theories."
Hit felt something strange flutter in his chest. Then it was in his throat. Then he was doubled over, laughing like he hadn't laughed in centuries. He had to grasp his own knees to keep himself upright. To think, all of this had started because a scientist had befouled a lake!
"Oh, it sounds like I missed a fantastic joke. How disappointing."
Dyspo could hear the blood pump in an opponent's toe capillaries. Nobody snuck up on him. Except, apparently, Vados.
Hit tried to throw on a mask of stoic sobriety but there was no denying the position Vados had discovered him in. The assassin was still smiling when he faced the Angel.
"I've just finished catching up with my sister."
"And Top?" Hit asked. The smile was gone.
"Yes, and Top," Vados clarified. "He is alive, despite your best attempts to choke him with that...food...you brought."
"I should have processed a few more rats," Hit replied.
"If that's the life you'd like to return to, I'd be happy to drop you off," Vados said.
Hit considered it. And discarded it immediately. "Dyspo hasn't finished his story. He also promised lunch."
The Pride Trooper sniffed. "I didn't promise anything, I just said we had better food than rat jerky."
"You did promise a rematch."
"Ooh, you got me there. Alright, first lunch, then I hand you your second defeat of the day. That sounds good," Dyspo said, rubbing his palms together.
"We'll see about that last part. Vados, would you care to stay long enough to referee?" Hit asked.
"I'd love to, but Lord Champa is most likely finished with his business by now and will be looking either to vent or gloat," the Angel replied.
"So he's issued another challenge. Is it with the Seventh again?" Hit asked.
"Indeed it is. It's apparently an honored tradition from that universe known as a pie-eating contest. I do appreciate an occasional slice of pie, but not if I have to stick my face in it."
That explained why Hit hadn't been invited either. A competition that involved smearing desserts all over oneself wasn't exactly his forte. It did seem right up Champa's and Beerus's alley, though.
"I'll keep in touch," Vados promised. Hit didn't bother asking how. Angels had their ways.
"You sure you wanna stay? Last train's leaving the station," Dyspo said.
"Don't be a coward. Accept the beating I'm going to give you," Hit replied.
"Big words, assassin, big words."
"Have fun, boys. Try not to kill each other." With that, Vados was on her way back to the Sixth Universe. The pair of warriors stopped their smack-talking long enough to watch her depart.
Hit was still skygazing when he felt an unexpected arm against his back and Dyspo's fingers lightly curled around his biceps. He tensed until he realized it was a friendly gesture normal people experienced all the time. "Come on, let's eat. I can't kick your ass on an empty stomach."
Dyspo's arm still slung around him, Hit allowed the rabbit to lead the way.
Thanks for reading!