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duhragonball · 5 years ago

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (117/?)

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.

[13 March, 233 Before Age. Hexill VI.]

The Hexillians had turned down multiple invitations to join the Federation. Lying just beyond the Federation border, their solar system was a valued trading partner. There was a strong pro-Federation movement in the planet's political arena, but it was hamstrung by conflicting opinions over the details. Even the most isolationist voices in the Hexillian government could not deny that their world was growing closer and closer to the Federation each day, and had prospered for it.

But the fact remained that Hexill VI was not a Federation member, and so when the Saiyan invader appeared on their world, and began to attack it, they had no mutual defense pact to invoke, nor any reason to expect aid. Instead, they relied upon their own military, and while much of their arsenal had been acquired from the Federation, they were unprepared for the power that the Saiyan possessed.

"Know that you serve an abomination!" she would say whenever she would attack one of their cities. "Know that Trismegistus is the true answer, the reagent that will change the universe! Rejoice, for I bring you a gift! He has sent his prophet into your wilderness, that you may turn away from the abomination, and be cleansed!"

Then the Hexillians would launch a counterattack, and she would always withdraw. The civilian leaders took this as a hopeful sign. If they could just corner the Saiyan "prophet", then they could surely defeat her. Those who opposed Federation membership used this talking point to argue that they didn't need an alliance for protection. Those who supported Federation membership claimed that victory would be much swifter with a starfleet backing them up. In either case, they painted a very rosy picture for their constituents. Lives had been lost and infrastructure had been destroyed, but the invasion would be repelled, and soon they could rebuild. That was what the politicians said.

The military leaders had a less optimistic appraisal. They believed the Saiyan woman was merely playing for time, and that she had the power to overwhelm their defenses if she chose to do so. Their weapons were supposed to be strong enough to repel a typical Saiyan intruder, but there was nothing normal about her. Sensor data indicated that she was much faster than she seemed to be letting on. Her battlefield sermons bore little resemblance to the usual low-brow banter used by most Saiyan pirates. And her burgundy costume made it difficult to tell that she was a Saiyan at all. If the woman had a tail, it was hidden beneath the chlamys gown handing from her shoulders. Her black hair was dyed with streaks of crimson, and bound with an elaborate series of red bands.

"The fated day approaches!" she cried as she attacked a hydroponics complex less than a hundred miles from a defense base. "Your bellies will go empty, that you might fill your spirits with the truth!"

Much of the complex was staffed by robotic workers, but the Hexillian technicians who maintained them were forced to flee. Most Saiyans were content to fire blasts of ki energy at their targets, but this one was different. She would light fires wherever she could, then destroy various installations that tied in with whatever "topic" she happened to be raving about. In this case, she burned the crops, blasted large food processing units to pieces, and then targeted the Hexillian workers who had remained behind to see that the others evacuated safely.

"Ah, so you volunteer for the culling!" she said as she plucked a Hexillian shift manager from the ground. "Your blood will write the history of the future!"

"Lemme go!" the man pleaded. "I gotta family!" Specifically, he had a wife and two sons, with an egg that was due to hatch any day now. He didn't honestly expect the Saiyan to care, but as he struggled in her grip, he didn't know what else to say, and in his panic, his loved ones were the first thing to come to mind.

"Excellent!" she replied. "Blood is always more valuable when taken from one who would be mourned!" With that, she flew to a spot on the facility that she had cleared of wreckage, and dumped him into a small group of other captives. Surrounding them was a circular pattern drawn in the ground, adorned with mystic inscriptions she had learned from worlds no Hexillian had ever known.

"The thrice-blessed is merciful," the Saiyan announced as she drew a short spear from behind her back. "The price of his transformative power is great, but he will ask only a small toll from your world. Know that your lives will be taken so that your people will be permitted to witness his glorious triumph!"

In her hand, the weapon extended, growing into a long lance which she then leveled at her captives like a rifle. The blade at the tip began to glow with a blue light, her eyes closed, and she spoke in tongues as she hovered over them, preparing to slaughter them all.

"Nice boots."

The prophetess had sensed a powerful ki nearby, but in the moment between sensing the power and opening her eyes to search for it, the source of the ki had already closed the distance between them.

"Who dares--?" she asked, but then she saw the interloper's black shirt and yellow pants, and she recognized her immediately. "Ah, the abomination herself. My master said you would come, though he did not expect you quite so early. I should have known that you would defy his holy timetable."

"Not big on the color," Luffa said. "Lot of people think red's a good look for Saiyans, since we get bloodied up so much, but they never think about how it'll look when it dries. Besides, there's other colors of blood out there. Green, purple. You name it."

The prophet pointed her spear at Luffa, who was floating directly above the captive Hexillians. "You speak in riddles, heretic!" she said. "Be warned that your idle chatter will avail you nothing here, for I have seen the truth, and the truth has enslaved me completely."

"What riddles?" Luffa said. "I said I like your boots. Not sure I could wear that style, though. I'm not big on heels myself. They make me look taller, but I feel kind of awkward when I wear them. But on other people, I think they look pretty cool. You look like you could stab someone with one of those. Are they comfortable? They don't look it, but you seem pretty used to wearing them."

"We are both heralds, you and I," the prophet said. "You, the abomination Luffa, and I, his humble servant, the prophetess Aonorry. Fate has ordained this meeting, to mark the advent of his temple upon this world--!"

"I'm not wild about the cut," Luffa said as she stared at Aonorry's legs and rubbed her chin. "Thigh-highs? I guess the material is flexible enough, but I'm more into below-the-knee. Just my preference though. Oh, wait, I just noticed they match your gloves. Okay, well that adds up then. Now I'm trying to picture shorter boots with shorter gloves."

"Enough!" Aonorry screamed. "This is my moment! The culmination of my sacred training, of my life! I will not stand at the gates of death and be mocked in this way!"

Suddenly a blast of energy fired from the point of the lance, bathing Luffa in its destructive radiance. Below, the Hexillians cried out in horror at the apparent destruction of their rescuer. When the light faded from Aonorry's attack, there was no trace of Luffa.

"I'll not be fooled by your trickery!" Aonorry said. She quickly spun around, scanning the immediate area with all of her senses to locate her enemy. "I lack the power to defeat you so easily. But you betray yourself by hiding from me. If your power were true, you would have nothing to fear from me, and no cause to... run?"

It was the sound that gave it away. Aonorry could sense flashes of ki all around her, but none of them lasted long enough for her to get a fix on Luffa's location. Then she realized that she was hearing buzzes in the air, the sound of her enemy zipping past her so quickly that her eyes couldn't follow the movements. Aonorry had expected power, for this was the core feature of Luffa's reputation. What she hadn't anticipated was the depth of skill that Luffa now displayed. Her ki control was so great that she was using it for only brief instants, flinging herself back and forth at amazing speeds, just to keep Aonorry off-balance.

And then, just when she realized that this was meant to throw her off-balance, she felt Luffa's fingers wrapping around her ankle, and in the next moment she found herself slamming into the ground. In spite of the pain, in spite of the blood Aonorry felt tricking from her nose and mouth, she tried to get up and recover. Before she could even roll over, she felt a tremendous weight pressing against her back. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Luffa standing over her, using one foot to pin Aonorry to the ground. At some point, Luffa had transformed into her Super Saiyan form. Aonorry couldn't see it, pinned to the ground face-down as she was, but she could certainly feel the increased power.

"On second thought," Luffa said, "your boots kind of suck. If they were black, or knee length, or if they came in flats, any one of those, then yeah, I could overlook the other two, but no. Three strikes."

As she spoke, Luffa raised Aonorry's lance in her hand, and began to twirl it around like a baton. "You came here alone, as far as I can tell," she said. The intel I received shows you're the only Saiyan involved in every battle, and I can't sense any others coming out of hiding to save you. But you must have picked this planet because you know I'd have to show up and deal with you personally. The Federation starfleet can't come out this far unless the Hexillian government asks, but I can come and go as I please. So you knew I'd be coming alone, and you knew you couldn't stop me by yourself. So this is a trap, and you're just the bait, right?"

She applied more pressure to Aonorry's back, and Aonorry's shriek surprised even herself. She hadn't expected anything quite like this. It was supposed to be majestic. The abomination was supposed to recoil in terror as Aonorry revealed the true nature of her lord. Instead, she lay face down a puddle of dirt mixed with her own blood.

"Or is it a diversion?" Luffa asked. "You lured me all the way out here to keep me away from something else? Normally, I'd read your mind to find out for myself, but I know you Jindan-users have psychic booby traps inside your heads."

She pointed the tip of Aonorry's weapon at the base of Aonorry's skull. "You sure got quiet all of a sudden," Luffa said. "You said you were a prophet, right? Had plenty to say a minute ago. Well, go on and preach. I'm listening."

"He... he's not coming," Aonorry said. "He said he would save me if I faced you alone. But you've already beaten me, and he... he isn't here."

"Who?" Luffa asked.

"T-Trismegistus," Aonorry said, choking back tears. "He anointed me as one of the Orichalcum Order. He told me that I would overcome any adversity and prepare this planet for his arrival. But you're killing me and he isn't here!"

"Well, I haven't actually started killing you yet," Luffa said. "Let's give him a few more minutes. Maybe he overslept."

"He... he used me," Aonorry gasped. "I did everything he said, and now he's abandoned me to die here! After all those things he said to me in his bedroom. Was that all it was to him?"

"Men, right?" Luffa asked, thought not as mockingly as before. "I guess this guy isn't as 'thrice-blessed' as you thought, huh?"

"That bastard," Aonorry shouted. "I literally worshiped him, cut off my own tail for him, and he won't even lift a finger for me! How could I have been so stupid?"

"Hey, it's not too late to turn things around," Luffa said. "Tell me what you know, and I'll see to it that he'll regret the day he ever met you."

Aonorry hesitated at this offer. "What will become of me?" she asked. "You won't simply let me go."

"Hell no," Luffa said. "You killed a lot of people here, and you'll have to answer for that. Legally, I'm not even supposed to be here, so helping you escape would just make a bad situation worse. But, if you help us put these Jindan clowns out of business... well, maybe we can work something out."

She pressed the tip of the spear against Aonorry's neck, but gently enough that it didn't break the skin. "Or you can die here and now," Luffa added. "Your call, but for what it's worth, I know what it's like to be betrayed. If I were you, I'd want to do anything I could to make the bastard pay."

Aonorry balled her fists and pounded them into the dirt. "You... you actually care, don't you?" she said. "You came here to save these people. He told me you were the devil, evil incarnate... and here you are, actually sympathizing with me."

"I get that a lot," Luffa said. "People tell me I'm not so scary once they get to know me. Like it's so hard to give a crap."

"All right, then. I'll tell you all that I know. Just give me your word that you'll destroy hi--... Destroy h--... hhurk!"

Luffa was about to ask her what was wrong, when suddenly Aonorry vomited blood onto the ground. She began to convulse wildly, and Luffa stepped away from her.

Aonorry rose to a kneeling position, then grabbed at her throat, as if trying to strangle herself. Her eyes, once proud and righteous, now looked to Luffa with a silent plea for help. The blood--or whatever it actually was--continued to stream from her mouth.

Unsure how to deal with Aonorry, Luffa aimed her hand in the opposite direction and fired a ki blast, which cleared a path through the flames that surrounded them. "All of you!" she called to the Hexillians. "Get out of here now! Your soldiers are heading this way. Find them and get them to take you as far away as you can. Go!"

Though confused, they did as she said, leaving Luffa alone to witness whatever was happening to Aonorry. By now, Luffa was convinced that the red fluid flowing from the other Saiyan's mouth wasn't mere blood. The sheer volume of it defied Saiyan anatomy. Within minutes, the former "prophetess" was kneeling in a shallow pool nearly ten feet in diameter. Luffa's first instinct was to kill her now and put an end to this, but she doubted that killing Aonorry would actually solve anything. Still, with no other obvious course of action, she pointed her finger at Aonorry's head, and charged her ki just in case.

Then the ground began to shake, and Luffa knew that the problem was bigger than Aonorry. The "blood"-soaked soil began to expand and grow all around Aonorry, and Luffa could sense a presence within it. In seconds, a large hill had formed before Luffa's eyes. Soon after that, it grew into a mesa, and then it began to reshape itself, like wet clay being sculpted by giant, invisible hands. At last, the two-hundred-foot-tall formation stood revealed as a humanoid figure. Gleaming purple eyes opened on its head, and it stared down at Luffa as it continued to refine its shape. Gradually, the face of the creature sharpened and resolved, until at last she could see the features of someone she recognized.

"Rehval..." Luffa muttered.

"Welcome, Luffa," said the rock-creature who wore Rehval's likeness. "I understand you've been looking for me. Was there something you wanted to say?"

*******

"Vengeance Cannon," Luffa replied, and she fired a thin beam of red light through the forehead of the creature.

However, the Rehval-thing suffered no ill effects from this, aside from the four-inch-wide hole she had bored through it.

"As passionate as ever, I see. You truly are a magnificent woman. It's a shame we couldn't come to terms--"

Luffa fired a much wider blast of energy, this time blasting the rock-creatures entire head and neck into pebbles. It stumbled forward, and just as she flew to avoid it, the creature managed to stop itself from falling over. Instead, it stepped back, straightened its posture, then slowly regrew its head.

"I trust that you're beginning to understand why I arranged to speak to you this way," he said after his mouth had been restored. "I would have preferred a face-to-face meeting, but you're much too volatile, and I'm too important to jeopardize my safety that way."

"You're late, aren't you?" Luffa scoffed. "Your lapdog Aonorry had given up on you. She was all set to betray you to me, and then suddenly you showed yourself. It's enough to make a girl think you were afraid."

"Don't flatter yourself, Luffa," Rehval said. "The fact is that I was counting on young Aonorry to have a crisis of faith. As part of my flock, she devoted herself to me completely, allowing me to learn her every strength and weakness. Hers was a brittle sort of belief. I knew that if I disappointed her, even slightly, that she would turn against me in anger. So I had her drink a potion that would use her disillusionment as a catalyst. Once activated, she would infuse it into the soil, and bring about the form you see before you."

He reached for his shoulder, and gently picked up the prone form of Aonorry, who had been laying motionless upon him.

"So that's it," Luffa said. "You've decided that being a self-righteous king wasn't good enough, so now you've become some sort of sorcerer with his own cult. Trismegistus, that's what they all call you now."

"The thrice-blessed one," he explained. "It was the title of a great alchemist from many thousands of years ago. So great, in fact, that he was eventually defied by his people. I chose to usurp his title, since I consider myself to be just as blessed as he was. First: King of the Saiyans. Second: Master of the Jindan Cult. Third: Savior of the Galaxy."

"Now it all makes sense," Luffa said. "You went into hiding after our last encounter, then you packed up your kingdom and left before I could find you. You knew you'd lose support among your idiot subjects, so you whipped up this scam of yours and promised to make Saiyans stronger in exchange for their loyalty. I had heard 'Trismegistus' sent his cult to invade 'Rehval's' kingdom, but I guess that was all just a ruse to cover your tracks."

"You don't sound very impressed with that," Rehval said.

Luffa turned her head and spat on the ground. "You really do have no pride at all do you? A true Saiyan wouldn't resort to potions and magic to make themselves stronger! It wasn't enough for you to pollute your own body with that sort of filth. Now you've tricked others into making the same mistake!"

"Tricked them?" Rehval asked with a laugh. "They all came to me. Many of them despised my rule, but they sought me out anyway, all because they craved greater power. " He held up Aonorry in his palm. "This one, for example. She was like you, once. She hated the monarchy that my grandfather started. She wanted nothing to do with King Rehval. Ah, but once she heard about the miracle of Jindan, and how its creator, Trismegistus, led an attack on King Rehval's stronghold, she became fascinated. She did everything she could to find it. I didn't make the trail easy to find, Luffa. It was a test of determination. But my beloved Aonorry passed."

"And what does she think now?" Luffa asked. "Now that she knows she's bound herself to the same king she opposed?"

"Let's find out," Rehval suggested. Without warning, he dropped his prophet, allowing her to fall hundreds of feet to the ground.

"Bastard!" Luffa snarled as she flew up to catch her. As she did, Rehval pointed his enormous earthen hand down at them and fired a beam of energy.

"You're so predictable, Luffa," he said. "For all your talk of warrior pride, you can be so soft that it's pitiful. Was it really worth dying just now so that you could save an enemy?"

When the light from his attack faded, he saw no trace of the Saiyan women. Then he noticed something on his mountainous shoulder, and he looked over to find Luffa standing there, holding Aonorry's unconscious form in her arms. Before he could react, Luffa opened her mouth and a stream of golden ki energy blasted him in the face.

"Predict this!" she shouted when she was finished. Then she stamped her foot down onto Rehval's rocky shoulder. The force was so great that a crack formed, and slowly expanded. As Luffa jumped away, Rehval's right arm began to break loose from his body, and then it fell off completely.

*******

Luffa flew until she reached a lake, then hovered just inches above it. Satisfied that Rehval wasn't chasing her, she dunked Aonorry's head into the water.

"Wake up, idiot!" Luffa shouted. "Your precious master finally showed up. Any ideas on what his plan is?"

"Whuh-what?" Aonorry sputtered as the cold water brought her around. "Trismegistus is here?"

"Yeah, well most people know him as 'King Rehval', though I've heard that's not his real name either," Luffa said. She tossed Aonorry onto the lakeshore and waited for her to get her bearings. "He's been playing you for a fool this whole time. You and everyone else in the Jindan cult."

"He really did come for me," Aonorry said, now holding her hands over her cheeks. "And... after I was ready to betray him. Oh... oh my..."

"He was counting on you to betray him," Luffa said. "The bastard's been toying with you, and he lied to you the whole time! Loyalty means nothing to him!"

Luffa had more unkind words to say about King Rehval, but before she could speak them, the ground began to shake beneath them, and then another column of earth and rock began to rise up and shape itself into a humanoid form.

"Luffa, Luffa, Luffa," Rehval's voice boomed. "When will you ever learn?"

Luffa left Aonorry where she was and charged her ki before leaping headlong into Rehval's stone belly. She made a crater on the surface, and knocked him off balance. Without pausing, she flew around him, peppering his body with golden energy blasts as she went. To an outside observer, it might have looked like a man being pestered by some glowing yellow hummingbird.

She blasted his face again, and when he tried to reshape it from the remaining rock, she kept blasting it. At the same time, she focused on his legs, damaging them enough that he had trouble staying upright.

"You can't defeat him!" Aonorry cried out. The unfettered joy in her voice made Luffa sick, but she pressed on in spite of it. He's become one with the very earth itself! You would have to destroy the entire planet, and you still wouldn't win!"

"She's right, you know," Rehval boasted. "I'm not actually here, as I said before. You need the atmosphere to breathe, but I don't. And as long as the planet is in tact--"

Luffa finally put enough cracks in his body that it crumbled into pieces. A short distance away, she could already hear another rock-body assembling itself.

"He rises!" Aonorry wailed. "His glory rises, now and forever!"

"As I was saying," Rehval said as his third body sprouted its new mouth. "As long as the planet is in tact, I can fight you like this indefinitely."

"Gosh, I'd better surrender then," Luffa grumbled. "Is that what you want me to say?"

"Actually, no," Rehval said. He clenched his fists, and suddenly a ball of violet light appeared in front of his rocky chest. Before Luffa could dodge, he unleashed its power in her direction, and she had to catch the front of the energy wave in her hands.

"Our confrontation on Pflaume was an experiment, Luffa," Rehval explained while she struggled to hold back the blast. "I thought that if I stranded you on an ice giant, you would be neutralized completely. No air to breathe, no surface to stand upon, no ships to rescue you. That last one was the flaw in my plan. I was sure your wife would abandon you, but not so."

Luffa was pushed back by the energy beam until she felt her boots press into the ground. This gave her something to brace against for support, but it also reminded her that she had very little margin for error. She set her jaw and screwed her eyes shut as she summoned up more power to halt the beam's advance.

"I had to evacuate Planet Saiya," Rehval went on. "I knew that if you escaped Pflaume, the planet would never survive your counterattack. Fortunately, I had a redoubt prepared on a planet in a secret location, just in case of emergency. And while I was there, it occurred to me how dependent I am on planets and atmospheres. So are you, but you can just fly from place to place in your ship, like a mercenary. Very romantic, but a king needs a kingdom, and a kingdom needs earth to stand upon."

Luffa finally mustered the strength to deflect the attack, and with a mighty yell, she flung it up into the sky, where it exploded harmlessly in the upper atmosphere. But this left her wide open to a punch from the rock creature that spoke with Rehval's voice. The impact cratered the ground, and the Rehval-monster ground his fist into the center, like a child killing a beetle.

"A foundation, Luffa," he continued. "Without a solid rock to build upon, the builder is helpless. That was when I realized the error in my thinking. On Pflaume, I left you to fall into sinking sand, when what I needed to be doing was securing myself upon a solid rock. That realization led me to realize how much we owe the ground beneath us, and how powerful it truly is. I knew that if I made that power my own, I could defeat anyone, even the Legendary Super Saiyan."

Nearby, Aonorry was chanting some a prayer in support of Trismegistus. The earthen creature smiled as it sensed a victory, and then a tremendous explosion went off at his fist. The giant figure toppled backwards, and when Rehval looked at his arm, it was simply... gone.

Luffa emerged from the smoke of the blast, already preparing her next move. "Rehval," she said. "You talk too much."

What followed was a rapid-fire barrage. Dozens of golden blobs of energy launched out of Luffa's fingertips, and embedded themselves onto Rehval's avatar. He expected them to explode on contact, but instead, she swung her left hand upward, and he found himself being dragged upwards. The ki she had affixed to his body was pulling him into the air.

"I don't know how you pulled this off, Rehval," Luffa said, "but I'm curious to see what your limits are with this monster body you've got. "Can you attack me with two of them at once? Because so far I've only seen you make a new body after the old one gets wrecked."

"Your... nnf! Your overconfidence is your weakness," Rehval said as he struggled against the force pulling him towards the sky.

"Look who's talking," Luffa replied. "You sprang this trap and gloated about it the whole time you were fighting, and where's it gotten you? You probably never even considered that I was studying your power the entire time, did you?"

He managed to spin around and point his remaining arm at Luffa, but she squeezed her hand into a fist, and the energy blobs on that arm suddenly exploded, blasting it into dust.

"What now?" she asked. "You've got to make a new body now, since you can't do much with that one."

"You underestimate me... Luffa!" Rehval said. His body began to shift and reshape itself, until it finally sprouted a new pair of arms. But unlike before, this caused the main body to become smaller than it had been before.

Luffa responded by squeezing her fist again, and blasting off his legs. The remainder of his body began to fall, but she caught it by enveloping the bulk of his form in a sheath of golden light.

"I think I'm getting the idea," Luffa said. "You can't absorb more mass unless you're in direct contact with the planet. And cutting off an arm or a leg doesn't help you, because those pieces aren't 'alive' on their own, so much as they're controlled by the main body. Or maybe just the head. "

"Well done, Luffa," Rehval said. "You're as magnificent as ever, and just as dangerous. I can still use you in my plans, but I can't afford to trust you, not after you spurned my offer before."

"Trust? Trust?!" Luffa shouted. "You honorless jackal! You don't even know the meaning of the word! Using that idiot Aonorry as your pawn! Sending this... this proxy to fight me in your place! When I find you--the real you-- I'll--"

Her threat was suddenly cut off by Aonorry herself, who had managed to sneak up on Luffa while she was busy restraining Rehval in midair. The point of her short spear nearly connected with Luffa's neck, but she sensed her approach just in the nick of time, and caught her in a choke hold.

"Your 'master' is more desperate than I thought," Luffa snarled. Without hesitation, she broke Aonorry's neck to prevent any further distractions. But in the moment it took her to do this, Rehval built up his power again, and this time turned it in on himself. Before Luffa could react, before Aonorry's corpse could even fall to the surface, his rock-body exploded in midair, and only moments later, a new rock-Rehval was rising up from the ground.

"You killed my prophetess," Rehval said, sounding only mildly annoyed. "I'll miss her."

"This game is getting tiresome, Rehval," Luffa said. "I've already figured out how to defeat you, so unless this next body can do something new, there's really no point in going on."

"You may be powerful, Luffa," Rehval said, "but you still think like a low-level mercenary. Do you think one battlefield means anything to me? I'm not even here. I could destroy this entire planet right now, and lose nothing. But I won't do that, because I have loftier goals in mind. I mean to change the universe, and that won't be achieved through mere destruction. Hexill VI has a place in my kingdom, like all worlds."

Luffa dove down and attacked one of Rehval's legs. As he swung his arms to catch her, she dodged and attacked those as well. But since he was touching the ground, he was able to repair this damage easily.

"Think about it, Luffa," he continued. "If I can send my avatar here, across hundreds of light years, then I can do the same on any number of planets. Without warning, a graven image of me rises up from the ground, powerful enough to defeat almost anything, powerful enough to impose my will, or destroy the planet entirely. And by the time you arrive in your ship to stop me, I'm already gone."

Luffa formed a razor-thin disc of ki and launched it at the neck of Rehval. It only carved a small section away, but when she followed up with a Gallick Gun, this was enough to blast the head off of the body. She then snared it in an energy sheath and pulled it up into the sky. Below, the headless body didn't move. Luffa fired another ki blast to destroy it, but never stopped her flight.

"You think you can sever my connection to the planet with distance, is that it?" Rehval asked. "Well, so what if you can? I only chose Hexill VI to make a point, Luffa. I wanted you to see exactly what I can do. What I've become."

"Tell me where you're hiding, Rehval," Luffa said. "I'll only ask you once."

"And why should I tell you that?" Rehval asked.

"Because I'm going to kill you either way," she said. "Painfully, if I can. You're going to die, but if you tell me where to find you, I can get it over with. Save you some sleepless nights."

"That's very kind of you," Rehval said. "But no. Come and find me, if you can. I'll be waiting. And if you can't find me, don't worry. You'll be hearing from me sooner than you think."

Luffa suddenly raised her arms, and with a loud grunt, she swung the net of energy around the head, flinging it up into space. She watched it shrink into the distance, then flew back down to the ground to make certain Rehval had not rebuilt his avatar. She only found the broken remains of the last body that she had decapitated. She incinerated it with a ki blast. Satisfied that her business here was concluded, she flew back to inform the planet's leaders about what had happened.

*******

An hour later, Luffa was sitting in the cockpit of the light cruiser she had borrowed from the Federation Starfleet to get here. She had orbited the planet a few times, just in case there was any chance of Rehval somehow returning, but at last she decided it was safe to depart. She would have to contact the Federation and alert them of the situation, but first she removed her boot and examined the injury on her left foot. Dr. Topsas had treated the wound days ago, but it would take some time to heal properly, and she was doing it no favors by constantly heading out into battle. Somewhat painfully, she applied an ointment he had given her. It was supposed to help promote healing and prevent infection, but at times she thought it hurt worse than the attack that had made the wound in the first place.

She was weary, not so much from her wounds or physical exhaustion, but from the lack of a decisive victory. Up to now, this had been a war of attrition, and Luffa's hope was that if she steadily chipped away at the lackeys, it would force the leaders out of hiding. But if Rehval could strike remotely, with no risk to his own person, then... what?

Luffa leaned back the pilot's chair as far as it would go and began rubbing her temples. There was a solution to this puzzle--there always was-- but she was too frustrated to find it. For now, the best she could do was to report in with her allies, set the ship to autopilot, and take a nap during the flight home. With any luck, the next cultist attack would be on the opposite side of the Federation, giving her more time to rest--

Then she saw the red light blinking on the comm system, and she realized that someone was trying to contact her. Some small part of her wanted to ignore the light, to pretend she hadn't seen it, but she cursed that part of herself and opened the channel just to spite her own weakness.

There was no audio or video, just a text message that had been encrypted with a code used by the Saiyan Free Company, led by Princess Seltiss. The girl had formed the company to fill the power vacuum left behind when her father had disappeared, and she had allied herself with the Federation because she saw Trismegistus and his cult as a threat to Saiyan-kind. As Luffa entered her password to decrypt the code, she wondered how the princess would react to the news that Rehval and Trismegistus were the same man.

Those thoughts vanished as Luffa read the message: "ALL AVAILABLE FORCES TO FEDENDER SYSTEM. URGENT. SURPRISE ATTACK. ENEMY STRENGTH UNKNOWN. UNIDENTIFIED ALIEN COMBATANTS LED BY A LARGE CREATURE MADE OF ROCK. EOM."

The terse statement was like a punch to Luffa's gut. She had just rescued the Fedender System before rushing off to help Hexill, and Fedender was already under attack again? And Rehval... he had told Luffa that she would hear from him sooner than she expected.

"Well, that's a first, you miserable bastard," Luffa seethed as she set course for Fedender. "You actually told the truth for once."

NEXT: Doublethink

#dragon ball #fanfiction #lssjluffafic #super saiyan #luffa #aonorry #trismegistus #rehval #hexill vi

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