[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (87/?)
Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.
Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.
Previous chapters conveniently available here.
Totaymo had something to prove.
Everyone on Planet Saiya knew about the mysterious "Super Saiyan" who had emerged a few years ago. No one could agree on the details, but the general consensus among Saiyans was that it was all an elaborate hoax. There were conflicting reports on the Super Saiyan's name, gender, and appearance, but everyone seemed to agree that their defining characteristic was a transformation that turned the hair into a glowing yellow color. A truism among the Saiyans was that their hair never changed from the day of their birth. It never grew beyond a certain proportion of their body, and it never changed color. There were mixed-blood Saiyans who inherited unusual hair traits from their alien ancestors, and some Saiyans indulged in cosmetic hair dyes, but the "Super Saiyan" was something else entirely.
When King Rehval III invited the Super Saiyan to Planet Saiya, the news spread quickly, followed by rumors about the purpose of this gesture. Most believed that the king was going to get to the bottom of the Super Saiyan mystery once and for all. Some thought that he merely wished to challenge the creature to battle. As the strongest of his race, the king lacked a worthy adversary, something all Saiyans craved. Others wondered if the king was seeking a political alliance to preserve his rule. And there were others who believed that the "Super Saiyan" had been an agent of the king from the start, and she was merely being recalled to receive new orders for some devious scheme.
Totaymo didn't care what the king was up to. Like most of Rehval's subjects, he respected the king's immense power and his right to rule, but he also chafed at many of Rehval's "cultural reforms". Fighting was carefully regulated on Saiya. If two Saiyans wished to do battle for personal reasons, they needed written permission from the crown, and a designated battlefield. Killing was strictly prohibited, and so was unauthorized pillaging. These rules would be relaxed for those Saiyans who complied with Rehval's breeding policies. Literacy was also rewarded, along with participation in cultural exchange programs. Paradoxically, the Rehval Dynasty seemed to be obsessed with increasing the Saiyan population, only to try to turn them into something that wasn't Saiyan at all. Nonetheless, Rehval was the strongest-- and the king-- and Totaymo was willing to let the man plot and scheme as he saw fit.
But the Super Saiyan was a different story. Like everyone else on the planet that day, Totaymo had felt the incredible ki power when King Rehval had requested a sparring match. It seemed to prove that the Super Saiyan's reputation was true. She was indeed stronger than any other Saiyan, including the king. It seemed to prove her strength, except this demonstration of power had been conducted in private, with Rehval as the only witness. The ki had felt real to Totaymo’s senses, but what if it had been some sort of illusion? How could anyone be sure it had actually come from a single Saiyan?
He had seen photos of this "Luffa", the young woman the king had claimed to be the Super Saiyan. Aside from the deranged, baleful look in her eyes, she looked Saiyan enough, but she hardly possessed the grandeur of a mighty warrior who could outmatch the king. She was a woman, after all, and he was certain that no woman could have produced the ki intensity he sensed that day. There were Saiyan women who were strong, yes, but the old heroes were all men. The king was a man. The top generals in the king's army were men. Totaymo was a man, and he prided himself on being one of the strongest Saiyans outside of the royal military.
And so, when he sensed the same immense ki today, coming from a small settlement far away from the palace, Totaymo resolved to see for himself. He would expose this Luffa's secret, overpower her, and kill her in front of as many witnesses as possible. The king might object to that, but Totaymo suspected that the king had secrets of his own mixed up in this. Perhaps Rehval might be willing to grant special privileges in exchange for Totaymo's discretion...
As he approached the source of the disturbance, Totaymo noticed other Saiyan powers converging on the same location. He increased the speed of his flight, for he expected his quarry to withdraw, but there was no retreat. Whatever it was remained stationary, as though defying anyone who confronted it. His senses could tell that they were fighting, but little more than that. He pushed himself to fly even faster now, desperate to see with his eyes what his ki sensitivity could not discern.
He regretted his arrival almost as soon as he reached his destination. The photos he had seen were taken at a formal ball thrown by the crown. Luffa had been dressed in some elaborate gown in a style favored by the court. In such a setting, Luffa looked out of place, but subdued. He recognized the woman below him as the same person, but now her power was on full display. Her hair was glowing yellow, only the stories didn't do justice to how bizarre it looked. It was her tail that unnerved him the most. It moved so naturally behind her, so much like any other Saiyan, and yet it burned in that same terrible color. And then she turned and glanced upward, turning her green eyes in his direction. With a savage smile, she reached out with her hand, and gestured for him to come down and join her.
Suddenly, Totaymo found he no longer had any interest in solving the mystery of the Super Saiyan. Still floating in midair, he backed away slowly, hoping she hadn't noticed how aggressive his approach had been a moment ago. As he drifted through the sky, he spotted the other Saiyans he had sensed earlier. They were all wearing military uniforms, and while they were still alive, they had all been brought to their hands and knees by some powerful force. Totaymo had a pretty good idea what that force was. She was eying him like a big cat about to pounce.
He turned around, preparing to flee the scene at his maximum speed, but before he could even try, he felt someone grabbing him from behind. Faster than he could react, he was caught in a full nelson, and her hands locked over the back of his thick neck felt like a vise.
"Leaving so soon?" she asked. Totaymo didn't understand how Luffa managed to catch him at such a great distance, but he knew there was no point in asking. It was her, and she really was as strong as everyone said. Maybe stronger.
"You should be giving your fellow Saiyans a hand!" she said as she flung him to the ground. Painfully, Totaymo rolled over and struggled to get back to his feet. When he looked up, he found Luffa already standing in front of him, looming over him like a specter. He turned away, not because of the brightness of her aura, but because it disturbed him to look at her, now that he knew what she was.
"I have some questions I'd like to ask you," Luffa said. "General Rattijio already answered them, but I've got trust problems when it comes to this planet, and I'm not confident about my mental abilities right now."
Totaymo swallowed hard at the words “mental abilities”. He could only guess what sort of awful powers this monster possessed. He was about to protest that he didn't know anything, but then he noticed one of the soldiers had gotten up and was running towards her from behind. He didn't know if he should warn the soldier to stop or remain silent so as not to give him away. The soldier raised his arms to attack, but then Luffa suddenly swung her fist back to catch him squarely in the jaw. Dazed, the soldier stumbled forward, and Luffa grabbed him by the collar of his uniform and tossed him over her shoulder.
"As I was saying," Luffa continued. As she reached for Totaymo’s face with her hands, her own expression twisted into a sadistic grin. "Normally I'd just read one person's mind, but I think it'll be safer to read a few dozen or so, just to make sure everyone’s memories match up. Now... hold still."
He did as she said. As her fingers pressed into Totaymo’s cheeks and forehead, he realized that he was too frightened to do anything else.
*******
Luffa's telepathic interrogation of the planet continued this way for the next two hours. Wherever she went, the locals-- military and civilian alike --tried to resist her, only to be completely overwhelmed by her power. She toyed with them at every engagement, only fighting back when it amused her to do so. Eventually, the military adopted a strategy of pursuing her and pooling their collective power into larger attacks, but was little more than a nuisance to her. It wasn't until she started fighting in the citadel, Planet Saiya's capital and major population center, that the Honor Guard entered the battle. Five of their number flew to intercept her, their faces concealed with metal helmets.
"Where's the king?" Luffa asked.
"Surrender immediately," said their leader.
Luffa shrugged and held out her hands, inviting them to attack.
The Honor Guardsmen took up positions around her and started firing beams of ki energy from their fingertips. These criss-crossed around Luffa without actually hitting her. She watched as the beams from one Guardsman were absorbed into the gloved palms of another, and so on. With each passing moment, the intensity of the beams grew stronger.
"You're amplifying each other's power," Luffa said. "That's a nice trick. Can you hit a moving target, though?"
She shoved one of them aside and flew around, keeping her distance without actually withdrawing from the battle. The Guardsmen continued to gather energy, but they shifted their positions, the leader turning to face Luffa at all times. When they were finally ready to fire, Luffa made no effort to avoid the blast. She was engulfed by a wide beam of magenta light that came from the leader's helmeted face.
And she emerged unscathed.
"Very good," Luffa said. "I can see why everyone around here takes you guys so seriously. A couple of years ago, that might have given me some trouble. Of course, if you can only manage one shot at a time, it doesn't do you much good--"
Without warning, the leader fired again. And again. This time, Luffa dodged the attacks.
"Hey, not bad!" she said, genuinely pleased to have underestimated her opponent. "I was starting to think you guys were robots or something, but you've got real skill under those shiny domes. Well, if you can amplify each other's blasts, maybe you can handle this!"
She drew back her hands and launched a Gallick Gun at them. It was a classic Saiyan technique reserved for finishing a battle with as much power as a warrior could muster. In Luffa’s hands, the Gallick Gun was just a minor weapon in her arsenal. The Guardsmen scattered, but one of them couldn't escape in time, and was caught in the blast. To Luffa's amazement, he survived the attack in one piece, though his uniform was badly scorched.
"Nice!" Luffa cheered. She pointed to her chin and smiled. "Now give it back to me! Let's see what you've got!"
The Guardsman suddenly went limp and fell to the ground. Luffa watched his body for a few seconds and decided that he wasn't getting up again.
"Fine," she muttered to the rest of them. "Now that we have each other's measure, let's start over. Where's the king?"
******
Arracash wasn't sure why she bothered following Luffa. The Super Saiyan was her only granddaughter, but they had only discovered this relationship a few days ago. The only things they had in common were their family resemblance and a mutual disgust with Luffa's father, Arracash's son. Briefly, Arracash found herself able to take some pride in her daughter's power and prestige. That was before Luffa transformed into a shiny golden thing in the middle of her living room. Luffa really was a Saiyan, and not some alien pretending to be one, but Arracash now understood why that theory was so popular among their people. Even when a Saiyan knew and believed the truth, it was still very disturbing to accept it.
Whether Arracash realized it or not, this was what drove her to seek out Luffa after she left to begin her rampage. Surely, she hoped, the transformation was as unsettling to Luffa herself as it was to any other Saiyan. Maybe Luffa had gotten used to it by now, but Arracash felt she finally understood Luffa's discomfort with the Saiyan homeworld. Luffa's alien wife had brought her here, hoping to foster some sort of good will between Saiyan and Super Saiyan, but the poor girl didn't really understand what that meant. The two of them loved each other, certainly, but they both had a lot to learn about each other.
"Pity" wasn't a word Arracash used much in her seventy-five years of life, but she felt it for Luffa. She didn't understand what her granddaughter was going through, but Arracash suspected she had a better idea than anyone else on Planet Saiya at the moment. That meant she probably had the best chance of defusing this situation.
She eventually found Luffa sitting on a deserted street in the citadel, tearing the helmet off of an Honor Guardsman. Arracash's blood ran cold at the sight of this. The old Saiyan had never seen a Guardsman before. They were King Rehval's secret police, only appearing to suppress dissent and enforce the rule of the crown. They were supposed to be unstoppable. Luffa had stopped five of them, judging from the corpses littered around the road, and she didn’t even look winded.
"Bah!" Luffa growled as sparks flew from the inside of the helmet. The Guardsman's unconscious face was pale, as though he had been covered for years. "Maybe these clowns really are robots. It'd explain their lack of personality, but there's a stink of magic to them... Maybe--"
"Luffa?" Arracash said, drawing her attention. This was normally a busy walkway in the citadel, but the battle had driven most of the Saiyans elsewhere. Arracash’s voice seemed louder than she had intended.
"What's on your mind, Arracash?" Luffa asked cordially. "You here to watch the action? Want to join in? Those soldiers might be back to make another try, but I can't promise you much in the way of excitement. A fight’s a fight, though, right? Beats staying at home peeling vegetables."
"You've got to calm down," Arracash said. "I know the king deceived you somehow, and you're upset that he isn't around to answer for that, but this won't solve anything--"
Luffa looked at her with her radiant green eyes, and suddenly she rose to her feet. "From where I'm standing," she said, "this solves everything. That royalist fool and his witless subjects have been screwing with me ever since I turned into this thing." She crushed the helmet in her bare hands and held up the crumpled remains. "I'm pretty sure this 'Honor Guard' is the best they've got, and none of them can even touch me. So Rehval can either show his face and take his medicine, or I pick his precious kingdom apart. Sorry if that upsets your quiet life on this planet."
"Quiet?" In spire of Arracash’s concern, she was still proud enough to take umbrage at Luffa’s remark. "Hey, I was busting heads before your father was born."
"Well, you sounded like you were trying to play peacemaker there for a minute," Luffa replied.
"I'm just trying to get you to settle down before you accidentally blow up the whole world!" Arracash shouted.
Luffa laughed. "Stakes are too high for you, huh?" she asked. "You think I can't control it? Don't worry."
Without warning, her hair and eyes changed back to their normal dark colors, and the pulsing aura around her body vanished.
"I can turn it on and off pretty easily these days," Luffa said.
Arracash was stunned. "You... you're back to normal!" was all she could really say. She expected to feel relief at this moment, but it never came. Instead, Luffa raised her arm and pointed at Arracash.
“I’m not normal,” she said.
Instinctively, Arracash ducked, just as Luffa fired a thin beam of ki from her fingertips. Arracash rolled away and saw that she had shot a Saiyan soldier who had been approaching from behind her.
"Wait, I get it," Luffa said with a chuckle. "You thought I had some sort of personality change going on. Like I become a different person when I’m transformed. Like those chumps who can't control themselves when they turn into giant apes."
"I... don't know what I thought," Arracash said as she watched the downed soldier clutch at his still-smoking wound. "I just want you to stop this."
"Tell it to the king," Luffa replied. With a harsh grunt, she suddenly transformed back into her Super Saiyan form. "He knows he can't beat me, so he's been playing some stupid game. So he must have known he'd push me too far, which means this rampage I'm on fits right into his plan, doesn't it?"
She grabbed Arracash by the hair and pulled her up to her feet. "Or maybe Rehval didn't see this coming!" Luffa said with a scowl. "Maybe his scheme backfired on him, because he's too clever for his own good. Kind of like what happened to my father when he tried to play games with me."
Arracash's eyes went wide with horror. She had despised her son--Luffa's father--for most of his life. She considered Orij to be an honorless, conniving fool who put too much trust in his misbegotten schemes. Now, as she looked into Luffa's unholy green eyes, Arracash could see the legacy of his brand of opportunism.
"He did this to you," she gasped. "Somehow, Orij turned you into..."
"I did this to me," Luffa insisted. "Because he left me no other choice."
It was easy to guess the rest. Luffa had already admitted to killing Orij, and at the time, Arracash was happy to hear it. But now, as she saw what Orij must have seen in his final moments-- the sight of his own daughter transformed into his final judgment-- she felt a twinge of pity for her son. Whether Orij deserved his fate or not, Arracash wouldn't have wished it on her worst enemy.
"You... you're saying the king is no better than Orij was," Arracash said.
"Now you're catching on," Luffa said. "He's no warrior. Just a trickster who longs to be a more successful trickster."
"Then all this time I've lived here," Arracash said. "I've been enabling..."
"Hold that thought," Luffa said as she shoved her grandmother unceremoniously to the street. Before Arracash hit the ground, Luffa had turned to face the opposite direction. Arracash was about to ask what was wrong, and then she finally sensed it herself. Three ki signatures emerging from seemingly out of nowhere, localized in the ground beneath them. They had a Saiyan quality to them, but not quite. There was something unusual about them, but before Arracash could ask what it was, the ground erupted beneath her.
They tore through the pavement like alien larvae bursting out of egg sacs. Each of them was at least fifty feet in size, and appeared to be made out of the earth itself. The surfaces of their bodies were covered in arcane looking engravings that glowed purple that pulsed as if some monstrous heart was pumping the light in and out of them. Their bodies seemed partially humanoid, but with six limbs instead of the usual four, and a thick cylindrical column in place of a neck or head. Upon their chests, Arracash could see what looked like a relief carving of a Saiyan body. Then, to her revulsion, Arracash noticed the figure moving slightly, as it writhed and quivered on the creature's chest.
"Lamentations to you, upworlder!" said the lead creature as it stepped toward Luffa. "You have broken the helmet of an Honor Guardsman, thereby unleashing us to come forth where he fell!"
"Yeah, that was me," Luffa said. "You three work for Rehval too, then?"
The second creature screamed with a voice so deep it seemed to reverberate in the air. "Does the stone 'work' for the mason?" it moaned. "Does the mason spare a thought for the agony of his materials? The Rehval conquered us, little upworlder! We who dwelled beneath the surface of this, our home world! The world he now profanes with the name Saiya!"
"Once we were many," wailed the third, "before he cast us into these forms with his dark magics! He merged us into these beings who stand before you, and sealed us away beneath his citadel!"
"But the cruelest measure of all was to bind us to those of his own race!" the leader cried. It pointed its massive fingers at the Saiyan fused to its chest. "The one called Finule is but the latest sacrifice to bind us to his spell, so that we must be forever condemned to defend his realm!"
Arracash had never seen Finule, though she could only guess that the woman embedded in the creature’s chest was the same one Luffa’s wife had been worried about. She had no idea what Finule was experiencing, but a sinking feeling in her stomach told her that it was surely a fate worse than death.
"That's too bad," Luffa said. "Best I can offer you is to put you out of your misery. I can’t make it painless, but at least you can die in a fair fight."
"Fool!" the second creature moaned. "We are not warriors who would fight you fairly! We are damned souls, doomed to service our tormentor without honor or mercy! We will crush you together!"
As one, they closed in on Luffa and fired beams of purple light from their eyes. Luffa leaped into the air and fired back with her own ki blasts, knocking them off their feet. The dove down and kicked the leader sending him flying into a nearby building.
"You think three-on-one will do you any good?!" Luffa screeched. "Do you really believe you have enough power to beat me?!"
Arracash watched as the three creatures tried to answer her challenge. Her mind was still reeling at the revelation that her sovereign was capable of such treachery and dishonor. She had lived on this planet and supported its regime because she thought it stood for something the Saiyans could believe in, but it was a lie. Whatever Finule had been fused with, it was an abomination. At the very least, King Rehval had allowed it to happen. More likely, he had commanded it, knowing that his subjects, people like Arracash, would never notice the difference. She wanted to hit something, but fighting was impossible now. Luffa's battle had escalated beyond any mere Saiyan.
And so she fled, sticking to the alleys and shadows to avoid being spotted by Rehval's troops. She didn't know where she would go, or if she would ever see her granddaughter again. But she knew the only future on Planet Saiya was death.
*******
Even with the three creatures, even with the rest of the Honor Guard, the Saiyans were unable to stop Luffa from going where she pleased. They continued to try, however, and Luffa suspected that this was because she had been too easy on them. In showing restraint, she had led the Saiyans to think that she was weaker than she really was.
As twenty of them tried to pin her down with a combined ki blast, a plucky soldier rushed at her with a spear. "You're finished, you filthy sow!" he shouted, his eyes fiery with hatred.
Luffa vaporized his weapon and broke his neck. With a furious scream, she brought her own ki to bear, and repelled the other twenty enemies as easily as an animal shaking water out of its fur.
"Don't fool yourselves!" she called out to them as she tossed the corpse of their comrade to the wayside. "I may be having fun with you, but you ought to be fighting like your lives depend on it!"
Another squad of Saiyans flew in from a different angle. She turned and fired on them, spewing what looked like golden fire from her mouth. A few of them managed to narrowly avoid the attack, but only by veering so far off their approach vector that they ended up crashing into nearby structures. The rest took the full force of the blast, and while the hardiest of their number survived, they were in no longer in any condition to fight.
One of the earthen creatures tried to get the drop on her, and Luffa was genuinely impressed that anything so large could be so stealthy. She suspected that the monsters had a way to teleport, but this only allowed them to draw out the battle without actually taking the initiative. Luffa caught its enormous fist and struck it with her own, forming a spider-web pattern of fractures across its fingers.
"Come on!" she shouted. "You gave me that sob story about being cursed to fight for this planet, so fight! Or do you need some more motivation?!"
She swiped at the air with her arm, and a wave of ki arced out from it, carving a deep trench in the ground and wrecking whatever buildings were in its path. Another band of Saiyans arrived on the scene, and rather than wait for them to attack, she charged at them and started brawling with them in mid-air. Every so often she would grab one of them and toss him down at the citadel like a guided missile, adding to her path of destruction.
They couldn't stop her. Nothing on this planet could stop her. Once, she had told another Saiyan that compassion was the key to her Super Saiyan power, but that lesson was lost on these fools. Rehval's lapdogs would keep fighting her no matter how badly she humiliated them, not because they believed in their cause, but because they were too stubborn and too proud and too cowardly to admit defeat. She didn't need to kill any of them, or to destroy their settlements and homes, but she saw no reason to hold back either. If they hated her so much, if they were so resentful of her power, then she would give them a reason to hate her.
Her only regret was in not doing this from the moment she arrived on Planet Saiya. She had swallowed her pride and accepted the king's invitation, she had stomached the endless contempt of his subjects, and for what? Now, all that pent-up frustration was being repaid upon them in kind, and for the first time since she had come to this planet, she was feeling like herself again. She could finally cut loose and use her powers with reckless abandon--
And then she sensed it. In the midst of the battlefield she had created in the middle of the citadel, there was a ki signature out of place. It wasn't coming from her, or from her enemies, and it wasn't fleeing to safety. This was stationary, and located in one of the buildings she had smashed. It was definitely Saiyan, but it was very faint, and almost familiar...
Once she recognized it, she set her teeth and flew straight for it. Rather than smash through the rubble, Luffa concentrated, and extended her ki around the debris, causing it to levitate up and away from her path. An Honor Guardsman tried to attack her while she worked at this, and she slapped him aside, killing him instantly.
Inside, she found a Saiyan woman, not much younger than herself. She was crouching under a support beam, and cradling an infant.
"Dammit," Luffa said.
"Don't come any closer!" the woman gasped. "Stay away!"
The mother was suppressing her ki, but Luffa's senses were perceptive enough to tell that she didn't have much power to hide. When the fighting started, she must have decided that it would be safer to hide than to try to evacuate the area. It would have worked, except that there was no way for her to keep the baby's ki hidden. Most Saiyans wouldn't have been able to detect the child's power, but Luffa was a Super Saiyan, and her senses were as advanced as her strength. More importantly, she had experience with these matters.
"That's some kid you've got there," Luffa said. She was trying to be cavalier, but the words felt awkward when she spoke them. "I could sense the tyke from outside! He could be a great fighter some day."
"G-go away!" the woman demanded. It was more of a plea than anything else. She wasn't begging for mercy, but she wasn't going to bother with threats either.
"It's all right. I won't hurt you," Luffa said. "I, uh..."
She wanted to say that she was a mother herself, but that happy thought had perished on the Tikosi Hiveworld. Her father had betrayed her to the Tikosi, who captured her and tortured her in the name of 'research'. When they found that she was pregnant, they removed the fetus surgically, and sold the remains to King Rehval's father. Not long after, Luffa became a Super Saiyan, and laid waste to the Tikosi planet, not unlike the way she was currently smashing up the Saiyan homeworld today.
But the woman wouldn't have understood any of this. She was too weak to defend herself, and her only concern was protecting her offspring. Luffa had seen this before. When she had ravaged the Tikosi Hiveworld, she was determined to exterminate their entire race to avenge her unborn son. They were a hive species, with each individual acting as an interchangeable part of a whole. Killing them had been easy, for every adult Tikosi could become a soldier whenever the need arose. Fueled by righteous fury, she had cut a swath of destruction across the planet.
Until she had found their nurseries.
The Tikosi had kept their young in underground chambers, as hidden and well-protected as possible. But in her unstoppable rage, Luffa had left no stone unturned in her search for fresh victims. She had sensed the collective ki of the Tikosi larvae, and she had smashed into their dwelling, expecting to find more soldiers. Instead, when she had found what was actually there, she hesitated. After a brief pause, she had moved on to find more suitable targets for her wrath. Despite her hatred for those despicable creatures, she couldn't bring herself to kill them all, nor could she attack their young, doing to them what they had so callously done to her.
That decision still haunted her to this day. Luffa never spoke of it, even to her dearest friends who had helped her that dark day on the Hiveworld. As far as any of them knew, she had simply fought the Tikosi until she finally wore herself out. They didn't know she had ever planned to wipe them out, or that she ultimately chose not to go through with it. She was never sure which was the right decision, even after she had made it. She felt ashamed to have considered either option.
"Why are you hiding here?" Luffa asked the woman. "If you didn't want to fight, you should have gotten the hell out of this area."
"Leave us alone!" the woman insisted.
"Answer me," Luffa growled.
She sensed her enemies outside, preparing to attack her. With a loud grunt, Luffa summoned her ki and created a protective field over the three of them. When the attack came, the entire building was vaporized, along with much of the ground beneath it, but Luffa, the woman, and her child were unharmed.
"I'm wasting my time," Luffa said. "Rehval won't come to your rescue, and I have better things to do than play around with these idiots. You're going to tell me what I want to know. Now."
She reached for the woman and planted her fingers over her face. Outside Luffa's dome of energy, the Saiyans fired a barrage of attacks. She paid no attention to them.
When the dome vanished, Luffa launched a furious counterattack, then continued on her way.
*******
Luffa's rampage across Planet Saiya was more than just a chance for her to vent her frustrations. It had taken several hours, but she had managed to telepathically interrogate enough Saiyans to determine exactly how to find Rehval. None of them possessed the entire answer, and most of them knew nothing useful at all, but many of them had enough pieces of the puzzle that she could work it out. More importantly, the information they possessed was generally in agreement. Somehow, King Rehval had deceived her telepathic abilities. Luffa had probed his mind carefully to make certain he wasn't an enemy, but there were facts about him that had simply been absent from his psyche, almost as if he had edited his own memories. If it could happen to him, then it could happen to his subjects as well. The only way to separate the truth from the lies was by consensus. Arracash and General Rattijio had known about Rehval's children, even if Rehval himself had no memory of them. It stood to reason that whoever had altered his memories had neglected to do the same for the entire population. What mind-reader would dare to probe the thoughts of one Saiyan, let alone a thousand, or ten thousand?
Luffa snorted as her grim reflection in the germanium-plated door showed the answer to that question. She had fought almost every Saiyan on the planet, and wasn't even tired. The one thing their minds shared was a deep distrust and revulsion towards her. They feared her. They envied her. They hated her. None of this was much of a surprise, but to experience that loathing firsthand, over and over again, had been... profound for her. But she would worry about that some other time, after her search was completed.
There was an underground complex beneath the citadel. The Saiyans who knew of it were forbidden from discussing its location or existence with unauthorized persons, but Luffa had taken that knowledge for herself. As she had learned the true purpose of the facility, she found herself recalling the Tikosi Hiveworld once again. It seemed that Planet Saiya had its own “nursery.”
She ripped the germanium-plated door from its hinges and entered. There was an Honor Guardsman stationed on the other side to deny her access, but Luffa cut him down with a single kick. Instead of dying from internal injuries, the Guardsman convulsed and twitched like a broken toy, and Luffa was becoming more convinced that this was all the Honor Guard really was. Perhaps they had been Saiyans once, but no longer. Zatte had told Luffa that Finule had tried to kill herself rather than be forcibly recruited into their ranks. Luffa could now understand her reasoning.
Inside, she found dozens of tanks covered in technological devices. Each one had a window of transparent polymer, which displayed their contents. Luffa checked several of them, but she already knew what to expect, thanks to the knowledge, speculation, or imagination of Rehval's subjects. Within each vessel, suspended in some sort of fluid, was a Saiyan child.
What surprised Luffa was the sheer size of the operation. There were at least a thousand such tanks. Some contained newborn infants, while others housed Saiyans who appeared to be three years of age. It was this nursery that had terrified the Saiyan mother she met earlier. Naturally, Luffa had assumed the woman was worried about the monstrous Super Saiyan, but a probe of her thoughts revealed the truth. She had been caring for her child in secret, fearing that if Rehval's regime found out about it, they would confiscate her child and place it in one of these vats. She needn't have worried. From what Luffa gathered from the officials she had probed, only certain children were taken to this facility for post-natal incubation. It was supposed to make them stronger than they would be if they were left in the care of their parents. The very idea disgusted Luffa to her core. The only reason she hadn't destroyed the facility was because she didn't know how to safely remove the children.
There was no sign of Rehval, but his closest confidants and advisors knew that he went to this place for reasons known only to himself. It was a secret, and Luffa suspected that exposing it would unearth other secrets. After a thorough search of the complex, she found an access elevator which led to a lower level. It required a passcode to use, but Luffa simply tore the doors open and ripped the elevator car out of the shaft. Rehval had told her how much he appreciated elevators, but he had never explained why. Luffa was far beyond caring.
At the bottom of the shaft, she found what could only be described as a laboratory. Luffa had seen similar apparati on Planet Gwarthos, which boasted the galaxy’s most prestigious alchemical-equestrian academy. Aside from the lack of stables, the equipment here was very similar. A large distillation flask hung over blue flames in a brick hearth. The walls were lined with shelves of parchments and scrolls. It looked very much like a more advanced version of the laboratory that had belonged to King Rehval II before he died. Only this room wasn't covered in dust from years of disuse.
She considered destroying this room, as there were no innocents that would be harmed by it, but before she could consider all the reagents and elixirs that might explode, she spotted what looked like a stone gateway built into one of the walls. It looked like it was meant to surround a doorway, only there was no door, just solid wall. Luffa placed her hand on the wall, deciding whether it would be worth smashing through it, when suddenly the gateway began to glow.
The gently pulsing light reminded her of the carvings that had been on those earthen creatures she had fought on the surface. The stones of the gateway bore similar markings, which now glowed in the same color. Then the section of wall surrounded by the stones also began to glow. Seconds later, an image appeared in the gateway. Luffa could see another place. It looked like a city, but not like anything she had seen on Planet Saiya.
Then she remembered having seen it once before. Rehval had shown her his villa, located on some other planet. He had told her that it was his private retreat from the burdens of his rule, and that he went there often to refresh himself. For a moment, she wondered why he kept an image of the place in this laboratory, when he had a holographic model of the entire estate in his palace. Then it hit her: this was not an image at all. She was actually looking at a place many light years away.
She didn't think the Gwarthosians had that sort of ability, but she knew of other magic-users who did. The faerie folk of Nhh-r'cooh lived in a wormhole, a hyperspatial tunnel that allowed one to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in a matter of minutes. She had even enlisted their help in constructing a second wormhole to outfox the Shockmaster's invasion of Extraliga. This gateway wasn't exactly the same, but it probably operated on the same principle.
She found an empty vial on a benchtop and tossed it at the portal. Instead of bouncing off the image, it continued on its trajectory and landed in the background. Cautiously, she repeated her experiment, this time using the tip of her tail. Once she was satisfied that her tail could enter the portal and return unharmed, she leaped through.
Before she could properly take in her new surroundings, she heard a voice calling out to her, and she suddenly noticed that she wasn't alone. It was the king, accompanied by a woman she had never seen before.
"Glad you could finally join us, Luffa," said King Rehval.
NEXT: Idylls of the King.