[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (105/?)
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.
[8 February 233 Before Age. Planet Quadzityz.]
Unless Luffa acted quickly, the Planet Quadzityz was doomed.
Only moments ago, she had battled a Saiyan possessing unusual powers, powers that were now seeping into the ground where his corpse now lay. Luffa didn't understand the unnatural ki energy that was contaminating the soil, but she had her suspicions, and they didn't paint a very optimistic picture. As the ki soaked into the ground, it was absorbed into the soil, seemingly infusing it with power, a power Luffa sensed to be unstable. With each passing moment, the contamination expanded deeper into the ground and across a wider area. Luffa was beginning to think that it would eventually explode. The only question remaining was how much of the planet's crust would be destroyed when that finally happened.
Luffa had tried to quarantine the affected soil using her own ki energy. As a Super Saiyan, her power was far greater than the energy she was trying to contain, but she had to exert a greater effort over a large volume, and with each failed attempt, the volume of soil to contain grew ever larger, and the problem became that much harder to solve. Brute strength wasn't enough; she lacked the 'leverage' necessary to accomplish the task. She felt like a champion weightlifter trying to pick up a barbell with both hands on the same end.
She was worried about her wife. The dead Saiyan, Jolok, had managed to damage Luffa's communicator, so there was no way to warn Zatte about the impending catastrophe. She was tempted to simply abandon Quadzityz to its fate, grab Zatte, and get to their ship before it was too late. The act of a coward, but in her heart of hearts, Luffa always thought of herself as cowardly. Her immense Super Saiyan power didn't make her any braver; it just made her more secure against most threats. If anything, being a Super Saiyan only made her more afraid of situations she couldn't punch into submission, like the one that was unfolding before her eyes.
On top of that, there was the Mindworm. Jolok never said how he acquired his strange increase in strength, but he did mention that his benefactor wanted to keep it secret. To protect Jolok against telepathic intrusion, he was given the Mindworm, a psychic 'program' that replicated itself in Luffa's mind when she tried to probe Jolok's mind for answers. It didn't actually do anything to Luffa's own consciousness; it simply copied itself over and over again, taxing her own mental resources. It felt like the telepathic equivalent of eating something much, much spicier than expected, and being overwhelmed by the hot sensation. Luffa had managed to dispel the worst of its effects, but she was still distracted by the lingering "heat" in her brain, as the Mindworm still struggled to continue growing in her thoughts.
She slapped her hands on her cheeks and shook her head. "Focus, dammit!" she said to herself. "Everyone on this planet is dead if you don't do something! Chanisp would have figured this out by now!"
Chanisp was the last Super Saiyan before her, and Luffa often looked to the ancient hero as a source of inspiration. The stories said that a demon cut off his tail to prevent him from becoming a Giant Ape under the full moon, but Chanisp refused to give in to despair. He trained in secret, shoving heavy blocks of cut stone for lack of any other means, pushing his body to become stronger and stronger, until he no longer needed the Giant Ape form to claim victory and avenge his lost tail. The moral was that a Saiyan was greater than the sum of his parts. Denied one path to success, a worthy Saiyan would always find another. Luffa looked at the end of her own tail, which glowed yellow from her Super Saiyan form. She supposed looking at her tail was one thing she could do that Chanisp never could. There had to be a way out of this.
And then she had it. Chanisp beat his demon by moving large blocks of granite. Luffa would do the same.
She flew two miles from the center of the ki-infused mass, and dove straight into the ground. Had anyone been there to witness it, they would have seen a brilliant golden light shining out of the tunnel she had created. A moment later, the hole in the ground expanded into a trench, as Luffa carved a path through the bedrock below. Once the trench formed a complete circle around the affected soil, she began to cut at the bedrock beneath it, slicing through millions of cubic feet of rock with a thin beam of ki energy. When she was finished, she imagined the result looking something like a giant mudpie, four miles across, sitting upon a rocky crust.
Moving such a massive object would be impossible, even for her. Cutting it into smaller pieces would certainly help, but it would take days to move them all one by one. Fortunately, Luffa didn't need to move the entire thing. She tunneled under the center of the "mudpie" and charged enough ki to destroy it. She had enough raw power to destroy the entire planet if she wanted, so blowing up a small piece of it was easy. The trick was to direct the destructive force up and away from the part of Quadzityz that she didn't want to destroy. If Jolok's ki had been allowed to explode on its own, it would have potentially damaged the planet's crust, or worse. Luffa's plan would do a lot of damage to the surrounding area, but with any luck it wouldn't be much worse than the devastation caused by the war she was trying to stop.
She sensed the outer fringes of Jolok's power in the soil, and focused her attack on it. At the same time, she enveloped the entire "mudpie" with a ki field that would help channel the force of the explosion straight up. All of this seemed rather strange to her. Usually, the things she did with her Super Saiyan power were just a scaled up version of things she he had used her ki for as a teenager. What she was doing now felt more like some sort of engineering problem, even though the techniques she used were simple enough. There was no enemy here except for time and uncertainty.
When Jolok's posthumous ki energy finally detonated, the force of it proved almost too much for Luffa to hold. Her own power was superior to his, but the mass of the soil was a factor now. Somehow, Jolok's power had infused into the earth itself, making things difficult. That was why Luffa had made the "mudpie" so big. There was enough "good" dirt surrounding the "bad" dirt that it helped dampen the lateral force of the explosion. Luffa just had to make sure nothing got through. It was hard work, but reasonably straightforward. After several minutes, the destruction subsided, and Luffa could sense no more of Jolok's ki in the "mudpie". As she burst through it to emerge onto the surface, she saw that the soil that remained had been completely reduced to ash. There was no trace of Jolok's body at all, which was hardly a surprise, since the corpse had been at the center of Luffa's maelstrom.
The Mindworm still bothered her, but it had faded into little more than a mild annoyance. In another hour, it would probably be gone altogether. She wanted to lie down for a while, but there was no time for that. There was still a war going on, and she had just lost a lot of time saving the lives of all the people who were trying to kill her. With a sigh, she flew back to the island she had been using as her base. The mystery of Jolok's appearance on the planet would have to wait.
*******
"Why hasn't Unit 6 reported yet? Captured?! Then we'll have to divide the Third Corps to hold the perimeter... What do you mean there's no way to reach Third Corps? Blast it, you had better be working on it, mister! If I don't get--!"
The commanding general of the Red faction had been having a bad day. Luffa had destroyed his cyber-slorgs, mechs from the Green Army had nearly taken his headquarters twice, and communications had been spotty at best. So when the invisible intruder crept up behind him and injected him with an anasthetic she had stolen from his own medical staff, she decided that it was probably the best thing that had happened to him all day. By the time he woke up, she planned to sabotage his base to such an extent that he would be completely unable to command his troops. Maybe he didn't want this unscheduled vacation, but from the sound of his voice, he probably needed it.
When the general's staff rushed to check on their leader, Zatte picked them off one by one. A kick to his adjutant, then an elbow to his staff sergeant, and then she drew her pistol and stunned the two guards as they entered. The pistol was a last resort, since Zatte's energy manipulation powers couldn't hide the sound it made when it fired, but the guards were the last resistance she faced, and once she kicked their weapons away, she allowed herself to become visible again. Taking a seat next to the sleeping general, she put a portable drive of music into his computer, and hummed along to the tune as she began disrupting the Green Army's logistical network.
Several minutes later, she sensed Luffa flying towards the base, and when she crashed through the ceiling, Zatte turned her chair around to meet her.
"Rough day, sweetheart?" Zatte asked. Luffa was covered in dirt, sweat, and probably slorg remains, though it was difficult to tell. Disheveled as she was, Zatte had seen her in much worse shape.
"Are you all right?" Luffa asked.
"Sure," Zatte said. "What happened with that Saiyan? I couldn't raise you on the communicator, so I thought he must have damaged it. Then your power skyrocketed..."
"I almost got you killled," Luffa said.
"Oh?" Zatte said. She stood up from the chair and approached her.
"I was thinking... maybe you should get to the ship and get into orbit where it's safer," Luffa said.
"I think I'm safe enough right here," Zatte said.
"Somebody could drop a bomb on this place any minute, and I wouldn't be able to sense it," Luffa said.
"The base has alarms for that," Zatte said. "I took out a lot of their systems, but not the early warning stuff."
Luffa smiled somewhat bashfully. "Uh... something else then. There's enemy mechs in the area."
Zatte pointed at the general sleeping in his chair. "Not anymore," she said. "You can thank him for that when he wakes up."
"Oh. Well good," Luffa said.
"Are you batting your eyes at me?" Zatte asked.
"Huh? No, I'm just blinking. Got some dust in my eyes from earlier."
"There's a sink in the general's quarters," Zatte said. "You can go freshen up."
She took her hand, as if to lead her to the general's room, and Luffa suddenly pulled her close and embraced her.
"I really think you should get to the ship," Luffa said in a low voice.
"Only if you take me," Zatte said.
"I can't. I need to get back out there."
"Stay," Zatte said. She reached for the back of Luffa's neck and ran her hand through her short yellow hair. "I want to hear how you almost got me killed."
"It's... kind of embarrassing, really," Luffa said. Her throat was suddenly dry.
"Well, let's go to the general's quarters," Zatte suggested. She pointed at the soldiers she had knocked out. "Plenty of privacy there. Not that these guys are going to give us any trouble."
Luffa looked over Zatte's shoulder to see them. "You took them out yourself?" she asked.
Zatte showed her the knuckles on her left hand, which still bore bloodstains from one of the soldiers she had punched. "Does that answer your question?" she replied.
"You're good," Luffa said. She looked at Zatte's hand like it was a sacred relic.
"You still think I'm in danger here?" Zatte asked.
"Yes," Luffa said. "I know you can handle yourself, but..."
"Go on," Zatte said.
Luffa leaned in closer and spoke softly into her ear. "There's certain risks involved, and I wouldn't want to expose you to--"
"To this?" Zatte asked as she moved her left hand closer to Luffa's nose. Zatte didn't really understand Saiyans--not even after marrying one-- but she knew that the smell of enemy blood on her person drove her wild. Her left nostril twitched, and they both smiled.
"Maybe we should go to that general's quarters," Luffa said.
"Absolutely," Zatte said. She put her hands on Luffa's hips and worked her fingers into her pants pockets. "It'd give you a chance to get more comfortable."
*******
An hour later, the General in command of the Red faction awoke. Finding his subordinates missing, the base empty, and his communications equipment inoperable, he located a weapon and staggered through the corridors in search of answers. Eventually, he made it to his own quarters, where he found two alien women making love in his bed.
"What in blazes--?" he gasped. There were no words to adequately express his shock. It was truly the last thing he expected to find, and he had no idea how to respond. Luffa's nonverbal yelp--roughly transcribed as 'blaaap!'-- was probably more indicative of the common mood of all three persons in the room at that moment. Without really thinking, Luffa swung her arm out to fire a ki blast at the general, and might have killed him on the spot if Zatte hadn't reached out and caught her.
"Don't shoot him," she cried. "We need him to surrender his troops!"
"What the hell are you doing in here?!" Luffa shouted at the man.
"I--! I--!" In that moment, the general wasn't entirely sure what he had ever been doing anywhere. It had finally dawned on him that one of these women was the Super Saiyan who had been shellacking his armies all day long. In all the confusion, he had completely forgotten about the plasma weapon he had in his right hand. Truthfully, he had forgotten that right hands and plasma pistols existed as concepts. Now that he remembered, it all seemed very pointless. Falling back on his earliest days of basic training, he dropped his weapon and raised his hands over his head.
"Luffa, he lives here," Zatte said. As Luffa had gathered up his bedsheet to cover herself, Zatte resorted to using one of his pillows and a bath towel that happened to be lying beside her.
"I thought you knocked him out!" Luffa said.
"I did," Zatte said. "The sedative must have worn off... What time is it?"
"If you had just gone back to the ship like I asked--" Luffa groaned.
"Oh, you knew what you were doing," Zatte said. "Telling me you 'almost got me killed', like you don't know how much that turns me on..."
Luffa was already blushing, but somehow she managed to turn a shade redder. "Zatte, he's standing right there!" she growled.
"So?" Zatte asked.
"So you don't need to tell him every detail of--!"
"Luffa, he saw us," Zatte argued. "What am I gonna tell him that he doesn't already know? What did you do with my underwear?"
Luffa turned even redder. "Don't talk about--! Arrgh!"
"Honestly, you can be such a big baby sometimes," Zatte grumbled. "Like you'll shrivel up and die if anyone finds out you have a sex life. Oh, that's why I couldn't find it. He's standing on it."
The general looked down and saw pair of briefs under his left boot. "I... I... surrender," the general said.
"You stay out of this!" Luffa shouted.
"Hi," Zatte said as she waved hello to him. "Can I just get you to move your foot... Thanks. Yeah, so I know I'm not supposed to say this, but she and I are married, and we have sex all the time. It's pretty terriffic."
Luffa covered her head with the sheet and lay in a fetal position on the bed.
"You'd think one of us would have sensed you coming down the hall," Zatte said with a shrug, "but I guess we were distracted. You know how that goes."
"Uh... uh-huh," the general said. He finally found the wherewithal to move towards his chair, and he gingerly lowered himself into the seat.
Zatte turned herself and her clothing invisible as she dressed herself. For a moment, the only evidence that there was anyone else in the room was the depression Zattes's body made from sitting on the bed, and the whimpering heap that lay under the covers.
"So yeah," Zatte said, "we need you to order your troops to stand down. I mean, as awkward as all of this is, we did capture you just now."
"Of course," the general said. "Of course..."
"Luffa will escort you and your troops to the island with the other prisoners, and it shouldn't take too much longer to get everyone back home."
"Anything you say," he murmured.
Zatte finally faded back into sight, now fully dressed. She fetched Luffa's gear from various parts of the room and tossed it all onto the bed. "She's actually really nice once you get to know her," Zatte said as she gestured to the bed.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded through the halls of the base. Zatte and the general both looked up when they heard it, for both of them knew what it meant.
"Enemy mechs," Zatte said. "Guess they didn't know the base was already captured. Hey, Luffa! Break time's over, buster, we've got company."
"Go away," Luffa said.
Zatte tossed Luffa's clothes on top of the covers and took the general's hand. "Let's give her a minute to straighten up," she said as she led him out of the room.
The two of them were about halfway down the corridor when Zatte heard a loud crash from inside the general's quarters, indicating that Luffa had smashed her way out through the ceiling on her way to deal with the mechs.
"So," she said to the general. "While we're waiting for her to deal with that, maybe you can tell me what you know about that other Saiyan who showed up a little while ago. You know, the one who almost blew up the whole planet?"
*******
Later, after the Green faction surrender had been completed and Luffa had replaced her damaged communicator, she focused her efforts on shutting down the Blue forces. Her main objective was to destroy any and all slorgs on the planet, and since the slorgs were being used by the Red faction, she knew she would find slorgs wherever she found their prey. As she fought on the flight deck of one of their flying fortresses, she and Zatte discussed what they had learned from the Green general.
"The Greens had no idea that a Saiyan was on the planet," Zatte voice explained into Luffa's earpiece while Luffa ripped apart a plasma turret. "The general's no dummy. He knew any Saiyan activity on Quadityz was sure to draw you into the war."
"That goes for all three sides," Luffa said. "But I'm here anyway, on account of the Reds using slorgs. I'm thinking someone decided that I was going to pacify the sector sooner or later, so there was no use in holding back. Right now, the war is about which side can make the greatest gains in the rest of the sector while I'm bogged down on the planet. Even if Quadzityz was completely destroyed, or made uninhabitable, it would still-- Hang on a second."
Luffa stopped speaking while she confronted a mech. The machine was twenty feet tall and shaped like a winged man. A pilot rode in the robot's chest, and fired cluster bombs and missiles at Luffa in a desperate attempt to distract her from the flying fortress. Luffa could have destroyed the entire vessel in a single blow, but her goal was to disable its offensive capabilities while sparing its propulsion. That way, when its commanders ultimately surrendered to her, it could follow her back to her demilitarized island under its own power, and thus make a very tempting target for the Reds. The only downside to her plan was that she had to fight very carefully, holding back most of her power and carefully choosing her targets, while the enemy could strike back with no such constraints. Accordingly, the mech's pilot used Luffa's own tactics against her, positioning himself in such a way that Luffa would risk hitting the fortress if she attacked it.
To cope with this, Luffa decided to go on the defensive, hoping that would throw the pilot off balance. When she flew away from the mech, he hesitated before chasing after her, and this allowed her to circle around and flank it.
"Okay, I'm back," Luffa said as she cracked the mech's cockpit and hauled the pilot out into the open. She tossed him to the flight deck and watched him scurry back to the relative cover of one of the hangars. "Where were we?"
"Jolok's employer," Zatte said.
"If he had one," Luffa replied. "Maybe he really was a lone wolf looking for revenge."
"It's a safe bet that someone paid him to come to Quadzityz," Zatte said. "Sure, he might have had personal reasons for coming here to attack you, but he still had to arrange for transportation, and any of the warring factions would have been happy to reimburse him at the very least. Small price to pay for taking you out."
"Yeah, that adds up," Luffa said, "but whoever paid his way wouldn't have done it directly. Most people know that hiring Saiyan mercenaries is a great way to get my attention. They must have gone through a middleman."
"And if there really is someone secretly setting up mercenary work for one Saiyan, then he probably knows where we can find others," Zatte concluded. "Maybe we finally have a lead on this."
"It's his accomplice that worries me," Luffa said. "I only sensed him for a second, but it was definitely another Saiyan energy."
"You think he's still on the planet?" Zatte asked.
"If he was working with Jolok," Luffa speculated, "then he probably bugged out when he thought the planet was going to explode. If he was an independent operator, then he must have had some other business on Quadzityz. He must have been suppressing his ki so I wouldn't notice him. Something must have gone wrong, and he had to reveal his power."
"Then he probably fled as soon as that happened," Zatte said. "We might find a clue in the general area where you sensed the guy. If he left in a hurry, he might not have been too careful about covering his tracks."
"We can check it out after I get the planet pacified," Luffa said.
"Wait, really?" Zatte asked.
"Something wrong with that?" Luffa asked.
"I'm just surprised you're willing to wait that long," Zatte explained. "I know how badly you want to find King Rehval. I thought you'd want to drop everything and check this out."
"A few more hours won't change anything," Luffa said. "It'll be easier for us to investigate when we don't have people shooting at us. I'd ask you to go alone, but the area's too big for you to cover by yourself. But if you want to get a head start, that's okay with me."
"No, I agree," Zatte said. "I'm just impressed, is all."
"You've seen the devastation on this planet, Zattie," Luffa replied. "There's kids who don't even have clean water. I can't call in a Federation relief fleet until this place settles down, so every minute I waste, things get a little worse. I never should have let it get this bad in the first place..."
"You were busy putting out fires in other parts of the galaxy," Zatte said. "You can't be everywhere at once."
"No," Luffa admitted. "But I can still do better. I have to do better."
There was a pause in their conversation, during which Luffa descended below the flight deck and began smashing weapons systems and disarming soldiers as she made her way to the engine room.
"Tell you what," Zatte said. "We have a name. Maybe I can pull up some information on Jolok. Find out what he's been up to before he came here, and where he's been."
"He mentioned passing through the Reelor Cluster," Luffa said. "You might start there. Also, see if you can find any records on a fortune teller who was recently hospitalized. He told me he used the Mindworm on some poor lady before he suckered me with it."
"You think she might know something?"
Luffa grabbed a rifle from a soldier and struck him with the butt of it to move him out of her way. "No," she said, "but she didn't recover from it as quickly as I did. If she's still alive, I thought I might be able to help her..."
*******
Many light years from Quadzityz, Lesseri and her team were putting as much distance between themselves and Luffa as possible. With no particular destination in mind, Endive had set the autopilot and joined the others in the ship's mess, which they used for conferences.
"I still can't believe we pulled that off," Guwar said. "When I sensed your ki for that split second, I thought we were done for..."
"We would have been," Lesseri said, "if that other Saiyan hadn't shown up when he did." She picked up the sculpture that had been sitting on the table, and set it back down again. "We even made a little profit along the way. I don't know how much ruthenium is going for these days, but if it's worth more than gold, there ought to be enough in this trinket to finance the rest of our search."
"So who was that Saiyan anyway?" Treekul asked. She was the only non-Saiyan in the party, as evidenced by the lavender hue of her skin, and the dark green stubble on her head. "I can't sense power levels like the rest of you, but Guwar made it sound like he was almost as strong as Luffa."
"Not quite that powerful," Endive said, "but he did manage to keep her occupied for quite some time, which is a feat in itself. He was definitely Saiyan, though I've never sensed a ki like that from any Saiyan I've ever met."
"He's a Jindan user," Lesseri said. "He had to be."
"Maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions," Guwar said. "Most of what we know about Jindan is speculation at best."
"There's no other explanation," Lesseri insisted. "He was no match for Luffa, at least not when she's being serious, so I have no idea why he tried to challenge her, but there was something... off about his power." She pointed at Guwar and Endive. "You both sensed it too, right?"
Endive nodded. "There was something unusual about him. Perhaps he was connected to Salziff."
"Salziff?" Guwar said. "What's he got to do with any of this?"
"You know him?" Lesseri asked. Her left eyebrow rose as she waited for his response.
"We've met," Guwar said ruefully. "I wouldn't call him a friend. And he definitely wasn't that jacked-up Saiyan who showed up and got in Luffa's face. The ki was all wrong for Salziff."
"Well some time back, he paid a visit to the same man we stole this from," Lesseri said as she pointed to the sculpture. "He wanted the same artifacts we did, the pot and that scroll."
"It's not a pot, it's a retort," Treekul said. "You use it for distillation, although the runes inscribed on its surface could--"
"All I know," Lesseri broke in, "is that a Saiyan named Salziff was trying to get alchemy stuff from a private collector on Quadzityz, and then we show up and do the same thing."
"You think Salziff is a Jindan user, too?" Guwar asked.
"Or maybe he's looking for Jindan users, just like we are," Lesseri said. "Either way, he seems to know something we don't, and since Treekul's going to need some time to work with those items we stole, I say we track him down and ask him a few questions in the meantime."
"He's no pushover," Guwar warned her. "He's nowhere near as strong as that guy who confronted Luffa on Quadzityz, but Salziff is nothing to sneeze at."
"Three against one?" Lesseri said. "I like those odds."
"But how will we find him, Lesseri?" Endive asked. "He'll be hiding from Luffa just like every other Saiyan in the galaxy."
"We don't have to find him," Lesseri said with a gleam in her eye that matched the reflection of the light on her teeth as she smiled. "We have something he wants, remember? He was begging that Quadzity collector for the scroll and the pot... excuse me, the retort. So once he finds out we have it, he'll come to us."
NEXT: Dire Warnings.