Dragonball M, Chapter 4: Kidnapping! Invasion! A new Threat Strikes First!

[Sub-Zero MKA]

He nods.

“Standard payment, but that should be doable fer them.”

"That works. Should I pay you now or wait until our training is complete?" she asked.

[Yun Lao]

Adam nods.

“I am backing all data up, and there are multiple external drives acting as back up as well.”

He leads Charco into a clearing where two men and one cyborg are standing over a smoking hole in the ground the size of a baseball. Wheelo, an older hunched man in a lab coat is jabbering about extreme heat and longevity while Wilhelm just shakes his head.

“It won’t…..work. The gun will….melt down faster….than it can fire. Judge?”

The tall cyborg, whom Charco might recall was responsible for Held and others deaths, stands with a massive rifle leading against a table nearby. He shakes his head.

“The rifle can fire the shot with a few modifications. It normally takes a specialized connection with my own Ki and type of solar battery designed by my creators to fire my attacks with it. The shells Dr. Wheelo wants to test will melt through the rifle in its current configuration.”

The situation seemed simple enough to figure out; the ammunition was too much for the weapon. What wasn't simple was what his role in all of this would be. Various memories bubbled to the surface of schematics and weapon-making, but the lessons of the past weren't going to help with such hi-tech weaponry.

"Yo," He eventually said, declaring his presence, although he practically knew none of these people in particular.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

The situation seemed simple enough to figure out; the ammunition was too much for the weapon. What wasn't simple was what his role in all of this would be. Various memories bubbled to the surface of schematics and weapon-making, but the lessons of the past weren't going to help with such hi-tech weaponry.

"Yo," He eventually said, declaring his presence, although he practically knew none of these people in particular.

Wilhelm nods in greeting.

“Excellent. Charco…..please, we need…assistance. We cannot….harness the energy long enough….to forge bullets for the Judge’s gun. Our…..containment of the energy…is insufficient. Can you….help us? We would…need you to hold the energy….steady…while we worked around it.”

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

"That works. Should I pay you now or wait until our training is complete?" she asked.

“After is fine. Now then, back to practicing!”

[Yun Lao]

Wilhelm nods in greeting.

“Excellent. Charco…..please, we need…assistance. We cannot….harness the energy long enough….to forge bullets for the Judge’s gun. Our…..containment of the energy…is insufficient. Can you….help us? We would…need you to hold the energy….steady…while we worked around it.”

So that's what it was.

It had been his forte at the beginning; he could remember the pride he felt when Eva had praised him after successfully doing it for the first time. It felt quaint thinking back on it now, considering everything that had happened to the boy.

"Hmn... I suppose it wouldn't hurt."

Despite his words, if this energy was enough to deal with Sakin then it would probably hurt like hell, but he wouldn't know until he tried. Cracking his knuckles, his pale flesh changed, bristling with hunter green scales and keratin as he prepared his body for the worst.

[bruceleegreyhulk]

Month 11

While searching for Planet Amperior and charting down objects in unknown space. Praxat tunes the GP shuttles communications to pick up foreign signals. ( Knowing my grandmother and her tech. her home planet, Amperior should be advanced enough to have communication system I can pick up on," ) Praxat thought.

( Just the fact my grandmother travel from her home planet Ameprior to Qaceria many years ago before my mother was even born. Means that Ameprior has space technology," Praxat thought.

[Yun Lao]

How long had it been since she had made that journey? Days, years, eons? She couldn't tell, for her mind had been scattered out of time and space. It had taken time to rebuild her consciousness, one emotion, one sensation, one experience at a time. The quest for knowledge had been fruitful, but some things were not meant for mortal minds to bear and she had not been prepared for the abyss's gaze. She had survived, however, for it had been the only thing she had ever been good at. Living to see another day, what had been destroyed was built anew. Reality had to be redefined, limits placed on what was once infinite potential, but within those limits could existence be achieved. Singularity was shattered and data poured forth from the abyss, binary bringing life to what was once nothingness from the shards. Atoms spawned and combined into chemical elements whose programs uploaded artificial bone, muscle, flesh. Synapses booted up, sending and receiving diagnostic results.

Despite the new software, the sentimental value had been placed upon the vessel, for it lacked what had streamlined its interior. For all its flaws, however, she had deemed it perfect.

During all of this, time and space had to be reviewed, each timeline and branching choice studied. 99.9999% would fail, tossed aside from her consideration; each life lived sequestered into folders and files never to be brought forth again. Within the 00.0001% remaining was her point of origin, a desiccated husk in which little remained, others being the alternatives needed to function, and last yet not least, her desired destination.

Her arrival lacked presentation, for she simply was there. Sensory overload nearly took her as she felt the rushing wind against her skin and the warmth of the sun, could smell the floral scent of flowers of the grasslands beneath her feet, and could see the endless blue of the sky above the horizon. It was almost too much, her mind threatening to break as what was once infinite was now so very limited. How long had it been since she had been human? The answer was much akin to the amount a grain of sand was considered a desert and she could only wonder whether or not she could regain that sensation of life ever again. Still, once her mental seizure ceased, she would realize how pleasant it was to be back.

She was back on Earth, her home... in one way or another.

BGM: Bury The Light

While her entrance had been subtle, it had not been unnoticed. She could feel it, like the sputtering and trembling of a volcano ready to burst, the malevolence pushed against the thin boundaries of time and space. Circles of glyphs and runes burned into the air, rings turning to align in different patterns like a combination lock being fiddled with. It had been eternities ago for her, but it had most likely been just brief moments for him, burning with relentless rage. Spider-web-like cracks fled from the circles and all at once, the pressure was too much. The chaotic underworkings of reality were revealed from the hole the portal had made, yet it would settle as a figure stepped forth.

"We... are not done yet."

Clad in the pure white and gold vestiges of a priest, the man easily looked the part of a saint yet she knew beneath that mask of purity was only darkness. Eyes, golden with divinity, sought to burn her alive, yet she felt nothing but the determination to end this conflict.

"No... I believe we are. All that is left is to purge all traces of you from existence," The skin of her palm rippled before a staff emerged, the weapon and her eternally bound.

"You think you can it, little Hibachi?" The man's words held a mixture of poison and glee as he desecrated that name. It might have hurt, once, but she had long since given up that name, "I am Shōchū of the Last Stand... and I renounce you, Charco White."

[grampagen]

By then the damage had already been done. Fibreglass split under the effort at the sides of the boat, as if destroyed by its own buoyancy underfoot in the combat. The last dark grin had freed its malformed master and leaving the lifeboat adrift. Surrounded by miles of sea, the Old Crane felt not a single breath of the tides, the splintered vessel upon his feet the only thing separating from the depths below. Chahan lift a finger and felt the breeze.

It was then that the vessel shattered under his feet. In an instant his limbs were seized as he was pulled under, and swiftly he drew what may have been his last breath. He felt a weightlessness at first, then the hollow sensation of falling. Stealing a stern glance downward, as he was dragged downwart, he could spot some enormous shape below the waves.

It felt as if he'd been falling for hours. Beset by silence and darkness, Chahan had only the slow, welling beats of his heart for company through which he kept the time afforded to his burning lungs.

Dragged through the jetsam, light came only in the wake left from bioluminescent jellyfish as he continued to fall in utter silence. The sun atop the waves were far gone by now, not a ray to be seen, only the jagged, decrepit shapes he'd been dragged down towards. The marine salt brought with it the quiet association of rust and rankness; could these have been the vessels that had been sunken? The last of the light passed and even his Old Crane's keen eyes soon became useless; nestled in the fanlike projections of coral growth, in broken black he though he saw the Shisa crest of the Royal House of Senbei, but the impression melted, unresolved, for soon even these faint sparks in the deep had and the further from the light he went. Water, isolating, and heavy in his coldness, the further Chahan fell the more he felt its weight creep against him. Soon the lids of his eyes had closed, futile shields against atmospheres of pressure in the darkness.

Alone, breathless, deaf blind and dumb to this watery realm, consciousness bled, ink-like, as if a faded sensation into a half-waking dream. Nothing there but visceral feeling, ice-cold, then hotter than hell. Until the Deep One turned its faceless self to end it, he had nothing but his thoughts for company.

What does it mean to live if death would be utterly bereft of significance when it comes? To have survived for eighty-six years, it was a cruel irony that he would not be granted a warrior's death. The limbs he'd honed rest quietly to his side for they were maladapted for this arena. Trained to fight less than half the planet, though indeed the number of respectable adversaries he could count on one hand - though for Victory, it was fair play when honour was no longer at stake.

These were indeed strange times, where champions stall, cheat, and put on airs where merits will not suffice. Not for the rabble the World Champion desired.

Nor his grand-niece when she went chasing off after faint titles. Were there any other choice, he'd have granted his to another, but now she saw it fit to take her wings and strike them wide for plumage.

Yesterday's war had left maimed and broken things. Instead of a proud Crane astride the reaches, only a peacock's feathers muddied and hobbling their flight. Those days of glory had long since passed.

Perhaps there was still one out there. He was still alive, but had he turned his back on them completely?

What technique had he used to survive a mortal blow, he mused. He would know, for the burning remained etched in his left fingertip. Suppose I shall never know in the end.

The finest duel of his lifetime from so green a master. Kaibyo, the drunken Tiger, the sort of talent that comes once a generation. //Not 'till I join her in Hell will I get the answer of why he became a turncloak.//

Here in the nadir of pitch blackness, the water boiled, and a sickly hotness spread through his aged limbs as it passed, and yet his assailant drew him yet deeper. More than being able to see such a thing, Chahan felt its abnormal silhouette there,. It was then he became aware that he had stopped moving.

In the distance below, there was a curious thing: a well of ki, animated by somehing exhuding a killer intention forged of both cold malice and primal hunger. His eyes pressed shut, yet reaching into the environs, Chahan could sense its presence rising from the fathoms. First there was an impression, a vanity of horns, then spines, long fins, and great set of teeth behind a mass of feelers. Daringly he opened his eyes, and through the toxic sting a luminous angler then broke the darkness, its light refracting in countless eyes that had surveyed him unseen before melting away back into the shadow. It drew its wicked grin, and here in this airless place, it spoke.

A man...a man...

How could this be? No...it had neither the medium nor the organs for speech. It joined minds. At this crushing depth of thousands of times the barometric pressure, there was no thought in Chahan's mind, but for the black speech that had infiltrated it, but it was so far removed, the thoughts so scattered, and yet somehow he still understood.

It fears...then watch, witness.... The water was dark and full of terrors, a horrid seascape filled with carrion. Through the pain and burning of his lungs, none of Chahan's terrestrial senses could perceive the form of this enemy, but its presence manifest, vast, ancient, and terrible. This deep below there was little sound, only waves of pressure and the tectonic vibratto. Its many-angled limbs twist the bedrock in two, and the sulphur vents below burned so hot, bubbles of steam rapidly escaped in rows towards the Primordial Deep Spawn.

The Dragon has forsaken this world and his toys. Slithered into their skin and watched, we watched.

The Dragon...ah yes, that's what he used to call himself. It was scheme in the making for over ten thousand years. Calamities struck over kingdoms, and the smiling stranger would come promising miracles. This time, he'd been able to shield humanity by being the largest monster, and when he disappeared a month ago, there went his peace. It seems that it was not only the world of Man that was watching, for the long shadow atop the food chain had thinned now that the Dragon's eye had no longer fell upon them. They who dwelt beneath had suddenly remembered their worse nature. The bountiful sea had become a mire of malice filled to the brim with fell creatures of a lost age.

Such perfect peace was not meant for monsters such as these, Chahan thought, and the Primordial One whose thoughts melded with his own recoil.

Watch and see, little man. We of the depths were the first of the Earth's children. The power of a whim, a wish, we could not move for his eye was upon us...

The water shifted, and Chahan felt it move. All about him the magma set in the cracks of the ocean bloomed. For the first time he saw the shape of what held him, effluvial yet unyielding, the crafted echinoderm stone akin to the sea stars. The little barbs anchored into his flesh, and immediately his thoughts grew violent, a sentiment that was curiously reciprocated.

Yes, you understand...for that is the rule of nature...this we agree upon. The strong eat the weak. You shall be consumed, and we shall once again become the masters of this world. Witness!

The insanity continued to pour into his thoughts, ten thousand chittering voices there below the waves. His lungs burned, his heart stirred. Whatever breath he'd drawn seemed to have been hours ago, and the thing that reached into his mind raked it over for the shame long buried.

The Dragon...the Dragon, its unspoken voice rattled cold, What is this, weathered one...how ignoble a compact to live within another creature's shadow. Nothing more than fodder without your shield. While we sequestered ourselves to survive...you bent the knee to save your progeny?

Stuck within the bestial psionic impression, Chahan felt the cnidarian barb begin to burn at his limbs and mocking laughter he could not stop flooding his mind. A bubble of precious air slipped past his lips.

Then when Chahan opened his eyes, the old master expelled a kiai that blasted a pressure wave that snapped the stony snares upon his limbs. Black blood erupting burst upon the ocean floor. Weighted under the world's oceans, he parted his free hands, and shot them upward, and the water ceased, struck outward, and bore a column cutting to the ocean's surface. The gulf between the upward-cresting wave widened, and its surface shone the sunshine down into depths where no light had previously reached, and exposed to the light the shape was revealed in full. A curved surface, as broad as the stern of the ships it had dragged into its lair, its jagged body held a surface akin to the rust and barnacled vessels surrounding it. The light never reached here till now, and its deathly pallor was unlike the reflected light that passed on the bones of the doomed seafarers it had preyed upon, spackled and broken into fragmented colours. Upon a series of stalks, lenses that shone like rows of pearls beheld the sun for the first time, and pain - pain! Without a mouth, through its telepathy it screamed in agony.

[grampagen]

The sunbeam cut down through the partition in the sea. Here at the bottom in the illuminated dark, he stood upon the bone-white sand ground on the ocean floor.

The tendrils seized, and when the light poured into those widened, poring eyes a thousandfold the brightness they would naturally accumulate, their unblinking lenses flood with opaque blindness in an instant. The Elder Crane rest his feet in the chalky detritus, his shoulders sagging as he drew air - precious air! - as sound and sensation slowly reasserted themselves. The miles-deep well shone white on its walls where it reflected the sun about him, and through the parting of the watery veil, he saw the twisted host, the creatures in the deep crevices of the world.

"You misunderstand, sub-creature. Do not even begin to compare me to you."

Chahan took a daring step forward upon the white ocean floor as the Deep Spawn's tendril twitched. The thin ray of light cut through the darkness around them, giving form to those things behind the wall of the transluscent water-well that separated their two realms. Now the creature that reached into his mind filled his mind with thoughts of fear, and with it a conditioned memory.

Perhaps this was the last time the thing had known what it meant to be afraid?There was a woman who flew above the waves. Her fingertips held before her, all that she brought before her was death.

"Our condition may be fragile, our progeny nurtured from weakness, but that, feeder of carcasses, is beyond what you dare to understand."

Underfoot, pale carcass shells and depleted bones broke where the Crane stepped and sea lice and crabs scuttled from their carrion meals. He cast his palm before him, and the air trench widened ten feet in circumference; the sun shone over the chininous limbs, and as soon as they pushed beyond the veil of water they fell under their own weight upon the tectonic surface, and the flesh began to boil within its own body.

"What have you done to presume your place? Millenia ago you had reached perfection." He flicked a finger through the air, and a thin ray cut through the tentacle into a stony round as wide as a tree trunk . "Perfection, that is, in the only thing you've known. Crawling, lurking, scavenging."

Burning sulphur and toxic fumes filled the air as the exposed geothermal vents hissed about him.

"Pluck me out of my element, dare you to stand within mine? You've found your threshold, creature, and now it shall be your doom."

Slowly he began to rise upward to flight, his bird's-eyes staring still into the darkness. Serpentine tentacles snapped after him. Jaws parted, flashing fangs, and chitinous claws loosed their poisonous barbs. Plucking the fluid medium out from below the gnashing blind thing was a task as simple as sweeping a leg, and striking its hulking limb dead he'd only to target an exposed joint at his leisure.

We are the Ageless! The Primacy! We have survived the eons!

The primal call rippled upward through the shimmering hollow. Blind fish twitched their transluscent bodies about scuttling crabs and wilting sea sprites as the black blood pooled and the creature choked on air and light and shriveled under the salt that licked its softer parts, Already decompression had set in. Chahan stared at the bones decoupling within the flesh as nitrogen bubbles began to expand.

"Is that what you believe yourself to be, bottom feeder? What must it be like to have striven for so long only to find limitation? Contemplate your pitiful state as you perish under your own accumulated girth."

In nothing more than the air, the buoyancy granted to it by the pressures that sustained its structure grew absent. Its flesh began to lose structure like pulling the air out of a balloon, and Chahan could hears its mind scream and carry itself across the land and stick itself like a barb in his mind as its last thought carried like a ripple through the globe.

The Crane-human! Kill him! MY CHILDREN, MY KIN, AVENGE ME!

A man marked by the fell creature's touch. The psychic shout of the Deep One seemed to call out to their bestial kin, and the sunwell's light filled with horns and feelers as a flood of demons descended upon him from all sides.

So it had finally come to this.

The old man lift a finger with no more effort than checking the breeze.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

So that's what it was.

It had been his forte at the beginning; he could remember the pride he felt when Eva had praised him after successfully doing it for the first time. It felt quaint thinking back on it now, considering everything that had happened to the boy.

"Hmn... I suppose it wouldn't hurt."

Despite his words, if this energy was enough to deal with Sakin then it would probably hurt like hell, but he wouldn't know until he tried. Cracking his knuckles, his pale flesh changed, bristling with hunter green scales and keratin as he prepared his body for the worst.

The Judge handed over five odd blue rifle shells to Wheelo, who has currently donned a special type of containment suit over his old body. With slightly shaking hands, he uses a specialized to g to lift a spherical object up and slowly passes it to Charco.

“Hold please.”

Wilhelm meanwhile is standing g back by some computer equipment they had dragged out here, tapping at a few keys and nodding.

“Just…twist the lid off….and try and hold…the energy stable. Be warned….it’s quite…potent.”

[bruceleegreyhulk]

While tuning the GP shuttles communications to pick up foreign signals in unknown space. Praxat turns on the intercom. " Hello, anyone from the Amphintis empire out here. This is Araxat Mcfrogg," Praxat said.

" I'm back from Qaceria. I accomplish what I set out to do. I fixed those filthy Toadians population problem," Praxat said.

"It's been fixed, and I have made their lives better. I helped them establish a modern government. I can't wait to get back to Amperior, "Praxat said.

" My home planet with its uhhuah lovely swamps?" Praxat said. Praxat skin turns blue. ( Dammit, I hope that was believable,) Praxat thought.

(Intoadians are offshoots of my race, so they should prefer living in swampy habitats. Sure it has to be believable. Yeah, How can anyone out here possibly know I'm not Araxat?) Praxat thought.

( Yeah, I think I pull this off. ) Praxat thought.

[Yun Lao]

The Judge handed over five odd blue rifle shells to Wheelo, who has currently donned a special type of containment suit over his old body. With slightly shaking hands, he uses a specialized to g to lift a spherical object up and slowly passes it to Charco.

“Hold please.”

Wilhelm meanwhile is standing g back by some computer equipment they had dragged out here, tapping at a few keys and nodding.

“Just…twist the lid off….and try and hold…the energy stable. Be warned….it’s quite…potent.”

Drawing in a breath of air, he allowed his chi to flow to his hands and palms which were now the darkened talons of a saurian. This flow of energy would serve as a layer of insulation as he cautiously began to remove the lid. Exhaling and inhaling one more time, he steeled himself and reached into the sphere, seizing the energy within. The containment vessel was dropped as the other hand joined the first in taking hold of the volatile ki.

"All right," He said through gritted teeth, "Get to work!"

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

Drawing in a breath of air, he allowed his chi to flow to his hands and palms which were now the darkened talons of a saurian. This flow of energy would serve as a layer of insulation as he cautiously began to remove the lid. Exhaling and inhaling one more time, he steeled himself and reached into the sphere, seizing the energy within. The containment vessel was dropped as the other hand joined the first in taking hold of the volatile ki.

"All right," He said through gritted teeth, "Get to work!"

Raw, searing power roared in Charco’s hands. Energy of a sort unfamiliar to him writhed and sputtered, appearing like a twisting orb of red and orange in his hands. The heat alone was staggering, almost like………

Charco was holding a miniature sun in his hands.


The nuclear fire crackled and fought him, and to his surprise it took more of his strength to contain the orb than he would have thought. Quickly, Wheelo moves forward with a long black rod holding what looked like a bullet casing lined with small openings at its tip. Wheelo plunges the casing inside the sun, pulling it out and Charco can see energy being sucked into the casing. The bullet forms solid, and the Judge takes the casing and imbues it with a strange blue ki.

“It’s….stable!.”

Wilhelm’s call is excited as Wheelo proceeds to do the same process for the next ten minutes, gaining ten billets in total. Each time he drops into the miniature sun Charco has to double his strength to maintain his grip, the thing fighting to be let go. In the end, when the final bullet is taken out, Wilhelm calls to him.

“The sphere, put what’s……left back in and….seal it….up…, please.”

Just as he says this, the orb suddenly contracts into Charco’s hands and disappears into him. You feel a rushing sensation throughout your body.

[Yun Lao]

Raw, searing power roared in Charco’s hands. Energy of a sort unfamiliar to him writhed and sputtered, appearing like a twisting orb of red and orange in his hands. The heat alone was staggering, almost like………

Charco was holding a miniature sun in his hands.


The nuclear fire crackled and fought him, and to his surprise it took more of his strength to contain the orb than he would have thought. Quickly, Wheelo moves forward with a long black rod holding what looked like a bullet casing lined with small openings at its tip. Wheelo plunges the casing inside the sun, pulling it out and Charco can see energy being sucked into the casing. The bullet forms solid, and the Judge takes the casing and imbues it with a strange blue ki.

“It’s….stable!.”

Wilhelm’s call is excited as Wheelo proceeds to do the same process for the next ten minutes, gaining ten billets in total. Each time he drops into the miniature sun Charco has to double his strength to maintain his grip, the thing fighting to be let go. In the end, when the final bullet is taken out, Wilhelm calls to him.

“The sphere, put what’s……left back in and….seal it….up…, please.”

Just as he says this, the orb suddenly contracts into Charco’s hands and disappears into him. You feel a rushing sensation throughout your body.

For a brief moment, he could hear the sizzle and the distinct scent of cooking flesh from his palms but by the time the sensation had fully registered, his regeneration had kicked in. Clenching and opening both hands, it didn't take long before they were fully healed.

"Sorry..." He breathed out, "I must have absorbed it in response to being burned." Whatever that energy was, it was now a part of him.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

For a brief moment, he could hear the sizzle and the distinct scent of cooking flesh from his palms but by the time the sensation had fully registered, his regeneration had kicked in. Clenching and opening both hands, it didn't take long before they were fully healed.

"Sorry..." He breathed out, "I must have absorbed it in response to being burned." Whatever that energy was, it was now a part of him.

Wilhelm chuckles.

“It’s…fine. Miniaturized Sun. Old….Terra…tech, very powerful. One of….my world’s…..most potent weapons. Dubbed….Solar Shot, it’s essentially……an energy attack….as hot as a sun. Destroys…….pretty much anything.”

Wheelo nods and seems excited.

“How marvelous! We got the bullets AND you managed to absorb the energy! What glorious experiments we can run to see how it has effected you!”

The Judge meanwhile has set the ten bullets in a custom made rig attached to the long sniper rifle.

“An impressive display. My sensors recording your hands indicated your regeneration kicked in approximately 1,178 times to maintain the orb.”

“Actually it was 1,208. Your sensors are unrefined and subpar, ‘Judge’. You are….inadequate.”

Adam appears and he and the Judge start getting into a heated technical conversation.