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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (114/?)

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.

[6 March, 233 Before Age. Gorrfeg I.]

Luffa had been hunting Saiyans for months now, ever since King Rehval had taken his entire kingdom into hiding. The Saiyan King had once claimed to be the supreme authority over the Saiyan race, but in practice he had only ruled a single planet, Saiya, and his subjects were limited to those Saiyans who willingly pledged their allegiance to him. A great number of Saiyans had rejected Rehval's authority since his disappearance, and many of these expatriates had rallied around a mysterious cult, which promised amazing power in exchange for unwavering obedience. Others had joined forces with Rehval's heir apparent, the teenage Princess Seltiss, who had established a Saiyan free company.

Now, these three Saiyan powers--Luffa, Seltiss, an the cult-- were at war. The Jindan cult had attacked Luffa's Federation, and Seltiss had brought her forces to come to Luffa's aid. Seltiss considered the alliance with Luffa to be a matter of self-preservation. The Jindan cult, as she saw it, threatened to reduce the Saiyan species to eternal servitude. Her followers had no great love for Luffa, but they needed one another. Luffa was stronger than any two or three Jindan Saiyans, but their enhanced power and greater numbers made them too much for a single warrior to deal with, especially across the vast frontier of Federation space. Seltiss's free company had the numbers, but not the power. Her soldiers were weaker than the cultists, but they could still hold out against them, at least for a time.

So the prevailing strategy had become a matter of using Luffa as a force multiplier. While the alliance held the line against the invaders, Luffa would target an enemy position and obliterate it. The resulting chaos would hopefully allow the allies to make some modest tactical gains of their own while the cultists struggled to regroup.

In principle, there was one other warrior who could contribute to this idea, and make the work go twice as fast. Xibuyas, Luffa's estranged son, was not her equal in power, but he was still immensely strong, and could probably have tackled a number of cultists on his own, or with support from Seltiss' followers. In theory, Luffa and Xibuyas could be split up to defend twice as many worlds. In practice, Luffa had other ideas, at least in the short term.

On the only inhabited world in the Gorrfeg System, Luffa and Xibuyas now fought against Jindan cultists by themselves. The Gorrfeggae military was with them, but they had already taken heavy losses when the cultists first made landfall on the planet.

"It's very simple," Luffa explained to him as she ducked a cultist's punch and replied with a headbutt. "They tried to concentrate their forces here. Reports said there were at least a dozen of these goons on Gorrfeg. Maybe even twenty! They thought I'd be reluctant to tackle that many at once-- thought I would keep my distance, at least long enough for them to dig in and make this planet into a base."

She grabbed her foe by the collar of his burgundy uniform, and was about to finish him off, when she suddenly dropped him, and swung her arm backward. For a moment it seemed as if she were attacking wildly, until the point of her elbow connected with the nose of a cultist who was trying to come up from behind her. Blood sprayed from his face and splashed onto Luffa, who smiled with a twisted glee.

"It would have worked too," Luffa continued. "Except they didn't take you into account, Katem. Now we're the ones concentrating our forces, and they're the ones who have to spread out and hope they can split us up somehow!"

Xibuyas--or "Katem" as Luffa called him-- was having more trouble. He believed himself to be the pinnacle of King Rehval's research: a Saiyan bred and alchemically enhanced to be the strongest ever. In fact, Rehval had stolen him as a fetus from Luffa's body, shortly before she became the Legendary Super Saiyan. Whatever the reason, he was incredibly strong. At his maximum power, he experienced a transformation of his own, and this was powerful enough to surpass one or two Jindan cultists, but no more. And so Luffa had spent most of the battle on Gorrfeg arranging it so that he would have to fight at least three enemies at a time.

"They have split us up, you fool!" Xibuyas shouted. "While you stand there... gibbering, they're... dammit!... they're picking me apart!"

Luffa chuckled and raised her arms... to cross them over her chest while she watched her son fight. Even this subtle motion had an effect on the battle, as one of Xibuyas' assailants noticed her out of the corner of his eye, and he broke off his attack to prepare himself for whatever Luffa might do.

This small opening was enough for Xibuyas to turn the tide. The cultists relied on strict coordination to defeat stronger enemies, and once their chain of attacks was interrupted, the youth managed to grab the second enemy by the arm and swing her into the third. This didn't hurt the third one much, but it did dislocate the second's arm, which disrupted their teamwork even further.

Xibuyas then concentrated his power against the first of his three opponents, and by the time the others managed to pull themselves together, he had all but defeated their partner. A few seconds' worth of Xibuyas' attacks had left the man bloodied, battered, and barely able to stay aloft in the air.

"Well then," Luffa said, mostly to herself. "You've evened the odds pretty well, boy. No! You've actually tipped the balance in your favor, haven't you?"

A fourth warrior flew in from the west, and Luffa fired a ki blast at him before he could get close enough to join in. It irritated her to pick them off this way, since the cultists were only a challenge in groups. She would have preferred to let that one gather with others, but she couldn't risk throwing too many against Xibuyas before he was ready. She thought back to her own mother, and began to appreciate how boring it must have been for an adult Saiyan to teach a child as weak as Luffa had been.

It didn't feel quite right. From a young age, Luffa had always dreamed of raising her own children, and craved the satisfaction she expected to feel in watching them grow into proud Saiyans. Long ago, she had fantasized about being killed in battle against her own children, and decided that this would be a decent way to die. Since then, she had killed her own father, and found the experience very hollow. She had become the Super Saiyan, and against the terrible golden glow of that power, the joy of raising offspring didn't seem to have the same appeal.

Perhaps, she wondered, it was the fact that Rehval had cheated her out of her son's childhood. Luffa had become pregnant just five years ago, but Xibuyas was now sixteen years old, thanks to some magical dimension Rehval had used to make him age faster. She could teach the boy, and love him, and accept him in spite of his flaws, but part of him would always belong to her hated enemy. Then again, she wondered if every parent went through this. Sometimes the cooking was more enjoyable than the meal. The genuine experience just couldn't live up to the anticipation.

Nevertheless, she watched with great fascination and pride as Xibuyas pressed his advantage and eventually killed his enemies. His style had glaring flaws, but it was more polished than than a lot of older Saiyans Luffa had fought. He glancing back at her with a rueful look in his eye, and he didn't seem to realize that how dangerous this was. Even on the verge of defeat, the enemy could still find a way to turn the battle back to their favor. But these were minor complaints to be addressed later. When the last of the three cultists was slain, she floated down to meet her son and pointed her thumb over her shoulder.

"Took you long enough," she said with a smirk. "Let's not keep the rest of them waiting."

Still gasping for breath, he muttered some obscenity and followed her to their next target.

*******

Like many of the Saiyans in the Jindan cult, Tabeg had been a weakling. The Jindan power had increased his strength, and this was enough for most of the cultists, but Tabeg had found inspiration as well. In his zeal, he had studied alchemy, hoping to become more like his master, and Trismegistus had rewarded his efforts by revealing some of his secrets. When the war began, Tabeg was given a command position, and orders to occupy and fortify the Gorrfeg system.

He had carried out these orders, but only so far as delegating most of his responsibilities to his subordinates. Once the planet was secure, he commandeered a suitable laboratory and secluded himself within. Though nowhere near as skilled in alchemy, Tabeg believed he had enough skill to find the answers to his questions. He only needed time, and a quiet place to work. Also, several hundred gallons of urine, for his experiments. He also needed his lieutenant to be quiet.

"Didn't you hear me?" she cried, shifting nervously from one foot to the other as she spoke. "Luffa is on the planet right now! She has another Saiyan with her, and they're picking us apart!"

"Do you know what the highest achievement of alchemy is?" he asked without looking up from his desk. It was covered with ancient parchments and modern scratch paper alike. A round stone, about the size of his hand, sat on some of the pages like a paperweight.

"Sir!" she protested, and then he did look up at her, though only to glare at her.

"The philosopher's stone," he said, answering his own question. "The rabble who know about it think it's a means of obtaining immortality. The truth is a bit more indirect. The philosopher's stone is a catalyst, capable of transforming ordinary substances into noble ones, such as gold or elixirs. The most noble elixir is that which cures all ailments, up to and including death, so it's true that the stone can make a person immortal, but that's like saying a star is bright. It overlooks so many other attributes."

She was accustomed to these lectures of his, but he knew that she only tolerated them out of deference to his rank. Now that a real crisis was brewing, she no longer pretended to respect what he was saying. "Sir, if Luffa finds us here--" she tried to say before he cut her off.

"She won't," Tabeg said. "Because unlike the others, I wasn't stupid enough to attack her recklessly and announce my presence. She came here to liberate this planet, and she won't be able to finish until she finds us all. The best thing we can do is lay low and keep the initiative. Every minute she's here is a minute that our comrades elsewhere won't have to deal with her. Now. The philosopher's stone is a reagent supreme, beyond my ability to prepare. But there are other, lesser reagents, capable of producing smaller miracles. Let me show you."

The lieutenant sighed as he took the stone from his desk and tapped it against the surface. "Using the lieutenant as a reference," he asked, "how many of her would I need to complete the formula?"

The lieutenant thought he was addressing her, though she had no idea how to respond. Before she could voice her confusion, she heard someone singing. She thought it was a music player at first, and then she realized it was coming from the rock in Tabeg's hand.

"Thirty-three, thirty three, thirty-three," the voice crooned. "And therein lies the tragedy..."

"How many did Luffa kill?" Tabeg asked, now looking at the lieutenant. "Wait, you already told me. Eight, yes? Which leaves fewer than twenty. That does complicate things, doesn't it. I'll have to face her before I'm ready."

He stood up from the desk and walked briskly to one of the lab benches, where he began to thumb through the pages of a dusty old book. There, he tapped the stone on the benchtop and asked another question. "What about the calcination of the spirit? Is there no way to--?"

"You'll never win that way, boy," the stone sang, almost flirtatiously. "If you wanna know, you gotta go with the flow."

He looked back at the lieutenant, who was thoroughly confused now. "Contact the others," he ordered her. "No one makes a move against Luffa until I command it. We'll take her together, but only when the time and place are exactly right. Luckily, I won't have to make any threats about what'll happen if one of you disobeys. Luffa will see to that."

"Um, right," the lieutenant said. "Anything else?"

"Not unless you have several hundred gallons of urine," Tabeg muttered. "Wait... could I substitute urea instead?"

"Fat chance, sailor, it just won't swing," the stone sang back.

"Dammit!" Tabeg grumbled. "Well, off with you then!" he said to the lieutenant. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

She made a half-hearted salute, then rushed out of the laboratory to carry out her orders.

*******

After the first round of fighting on Gorrfeg, Luffa had hoped for more action, but no one else came to attack them, and after an hour of searching, they found no sign of the enemy. As much as they both wanted to move on to the next planet, Luffa insisted on making certain that no cultists remained alive. As they flew across the planet's surface, covering as much ground as possible, Luffa eventually grew bored enough to make conversation.

"You've gotten stronger, Katem," she said. "Not strong enough to beat me, but it's still very impressive."

Xibuyas winced at the sound of the name "Katem". Luffa had insisted that this was his "true" name, the one she had chosen for him before he was born. The thought of it disgusted him.

"Don't take it so personally, boy," she said. "Everyone else in the universe can call you 'Xibuyas'. I don't know why you'd want that name, though. Not after that snake Rehval left you to die on Pflaume, but that's your business."

"I prefer my name because it's my name," Xibuyas snarled. He was tall and well-muscled for a teenager, but he still looked far too young to look as threatening as he would have liked. "Princess Seltiss calls me 'Xibuyas'. I consider that a greater honor than anything you could choose."

Luffa made a devious smile and pointed at herself. "Oh? You're not honored to be my son?" she asked. "We Legendary Super Saiyans don't come around too often. I'm a lot more uncommon than any princess, you know."

"You're nothing but a freak of nature," Xibuyas said.

"Is that so? And what does that make you?" Luffa asked.

He didn't have an answer for that one, so Luffa pressed him further. "You ever worry about turning out like me?" she asked. "Your transformation sort of looks like mine already. It's like your body wants to do the same thing I do, and you can't quite pull it off. Your hair kind of floats, but it stays black. Maybe you'll get it to change color when you're older."

"I'm nothing like you." Xibuyas growled.

"Maybe not, but you could be," Luffa chuckled. "One day you'll be in some big battle, fighting for your life, and then you'll turn into whatever I am."

"Never," Xibuyas insisted.

"Maybe you're right," Luffa said. "For all I know, it skips a generation. Your children'll flare up one day, when you least expect it."

"They... will... not," Xibuyas said.

"What'd you think of my wife?" Luffa asked, suddenly changing the subject.

"She's an alien," Xibuyas said, barely concealing his revulsion. "What more needs to be said?"

"She told me you put your hands on her," Luffa said. "How'd that work out for you?" There was no anger or accusation in Luffa's voice. She had been away from her ship, leaving Xibuyas alone with Zatte, and he had threatened to hurt her, but Luffa spoke of this like a trip to the grocery. Somehow, this frustrated Xibuyas all the more.

"Leave me alone!" Xibuyas muttered.

"Is that what's got you so worried?" Luffa asked. "You think I'm going to punish you for threatening your stepmother? Why should I bother? She can handle herself pretty well, and you're not nearly strong enough to be worth my time."

"You're a freak and a disgrace to the Saiyan race," Xibuyas shouted. "Cavorting around with alien women. It's revolting."

"What should I be doing instead, son?" Luffa asked. "If I wasn't a freak, I mean?"

She didn't know why she kept prodding him this way. In the short term, arguing with the boy was the only way to get to know him. He was angry at everyone and everything, it seemed. Everyone except that girl Seltiss he spent all his time with, and Luffa knew enough about teenage boys to understand that. But more than this, Luffa couldn’t help but see his intense hatred toward her as a challenge. Maybe this was why so many Saiyans killed their parents. At any rate, she really did want to know what Xibuyas wanted her to be instead of what she was.

"You should be settled down a Saiyan mate," Xibuyas said firmly. "Having children--"

"I tried that," Luffa said. "Your father and grandfather wouldn't let me. I already told you that story, remember?"

"Then you should have laid down and died! You're a mockery of everything I've built for myself!" Xibuyas howled. "My place is at the head of the Saiyan nation, beside the Lady Seltiss, but you cast doubt on my purity as a Saiyan! You threaten the legitimacy of my heirs!"

"Oh, boo-hoo," Luffa scoffed. "A real Saiyan doesn't need a pedigree or a public opinion poll to decide how worthy they are. A real Saiyan goes out and proves their worth! So why don’t you? Unless you're using me as an excuse. 'Oh, I'm allowed to wallow in self-pity because my mother wasn't a Saiyan so neither am I.' Is that it?"

And then he suddenly fired a ki blast at her. Before Luffa could react, he was following up with a flurry of punches and kicks. She was more surprised than anything else, and when he grabbed her by the hand and swung her down into the plains below, she did nothing to resist, mostly out of curiosity.

Then he transformed. As Luffa had observed, his powered-up self wasn't the same as her Super Saiyan form. He had a bright yellow aura, and his hair floated atop his scalp, but it remained as black as always. His eyes were solid white, where Luffa's irises changed color from brown to green. It occurred to her that maybe he wasn't on the cusp of becoming like her at all. Maybe he was something completely different. If so, was there anything she could do to help him? Could anyone help him?

"Prove my worth?!" he screamed as he unleashed a storm of ki blasts down upon her. "How can any Saiyan prove anything with you around?!"

Luffa was unhurt by his blows, but the savagery and intensity of his attack was impressive to her nonetheless. In her transformed state, she could have easily stood her ground and weathered his onslaught without flinching. Instead, she decided to remain in her normal form, and dodge his blasts as needed. It gave her something to do while she listened to his cries.

"You're a hypocrite, Luffa! You talk and talk about the good of the Saiyan race, how we should all strive to be better, but you don't give a damn about any of us! You talk down to us, mock us for our weakness, and punish anyone who dares to oppose you!"

This was what she wanted to purge from him. Being raised by King Rehval--or more likely Rehval's servants, since the king would have been too busy philandering to do it himself-- her own son had been brought up believing a litany of lazy excuses. What did they all think the Super Saiyan would say to them?

"And you hold up that hideous golden power of yours, like it proves your superiority! Well it doesn't, woman! It doesn't prove anything! You didn't earn that power! It just manifested out of nowhere! It could have happened to anyone!"

She had planned to let him pummel her for a while longer, to give him a chance to get more of this out into the open. But something about the words "didn't earn" struck a nerve. And so when he dove down into the maelstrom of ki to to throw a punch, she transformed, caught his fist in her hand, and squeezed it.

"Are you trying to say I was just lucky?" Luffa asked, her green eyes staring holes into her son.

"Lucky?" she asked again. He didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too stunned by how easily she had turned the tables on him.

"Lucky?" she screamed, and her power exploded all around her.

"Yes!" Xibuyas shouted. "There's... there's nothing worthy about you! You're just a random accident--!"

She released his hand and punched him before he could react. Xibuyas suddenly found himself lying in a pile of what had once been a hill. Luffa was standing over him, scowling.

"You have no idea what I've suffered through. How hard I've worked to master this form. And you dare to tell me-- me?!-- that I don't deserve it?"

She grabbed him by the hair and hauled him to his feet. "And just how do you think I should 'earn' my power? I'm just dying to hear your expert opinion. Well?"

"I... I...!"

"Well, speak up, boy!" Luffa growled. "You had plenty to say to me before. You don't like how I got where I am, and you don't like what I do now that I'm here. So what would you like? Or is this a boy-girl thing? Would you like it better if your father was the Legendary Super Saiyan? Is that it?!"

She tosses him to the ground. "Your father's a corpse, and before that he was a coward and a fool! I was an idiot to think he was worth my time! My love! He ripped you out of my body and sold you to Rehval like some black market sleaze dealing in stolen organs. Do you wish he would salve your puny ego? Hah! He wouldn't lift a finger to help either of us! You were nothing but medical waste to him! But you'll pine for him anyway, won't you? Gotta cling to the idea that there's some man who'll justify all your crappy ideas."

Xibuyas cried out and fired a desperate ki blast at Luffa, which spilled over her harmlessly. She smiled, pulled him to his feet again, and slapped him across the face.

"You didn't answer me before, Katem," she said, still holding him by the collar of his blue uniform. "If I'm such a fraud-- a freak-- then what does that make you?"

He set his jaw and matched her furious gaze with one of his own, but then his lip began to quiver, and it was clear that he had run out of defiant comebacks. At last he mumbled softly: "Absolutely nothing. N-nothing at all."

She saw a tear roll down his eye, and she finally realized that she was pushing him too hard. Unsure how to proceed, she released him, and he collapsed to the ground.

"Sorry," she said. "I... This isn't how I meant for it to go. It's just... you're so much like your father, only you're an even bigger jackass, and... dammit, you're only supposed to be four years old. I don't know what I'm supposed to do here."

"Hmmph!" Xibuyas grunted. "Now who's wallowing in self-pity?"

"You got me there," Luffa said. She reached down to offer a hand to him. "Come on, let's get back to it. I'll try not to embarrass you anymore."

He slapped her hand away and stood up by himself. "I don't want your help," he said.

"Is that so?" Luffa said. "Sounds to me like you're ready to take these creeps on four at a time now."

"That is not what I'm saying!" Xibuyas growled.

Luffa was about to make a humorous reply to that, when suddenly her expression darkened, and she placed a hand on her temple and looked toward the west.

"Do you feel that?" she asked.

"I do now," Xibuyas snorted after taking a moment to concentrate. "Feels like more than a dozen cultists all in one place, but there's something... off... about it."

"They must be up to something," Luffa said. "That, or they're making their last stand. Either way, we need to play this carefully." She pointed to the silken bandages sticking out from beneath her sleeveless shirt. "I'm still not fully recovered from the last three battles, and you took some heavy blows yourself. Remember, it's not enough to just beat these guys. We have to stay fresh for the next campaign."

"I hardly need you to tell me that!" Xibuyas snapped.

She smirked and flew off toward the afternoon sun, and Xibuyas followed close behind.

*******

When they arrived, they found more than they could easily handle. There were Jindan Saiyans, as Luffa had expected, but also a group of creatures, which looked like different animals combined together in some unnatural way. They also stank of rotten carcasses, which made their hideous appearance even more unsettling.

"Chimera," said Tabeg, who stood as their leader. "You killed several of my warriors, earlier, and I needed them back. I lack the skill to revive the dead, but my Singing Stone told me that it would be far easier to reanimate their bodies without their souls, and well, their bodies were all that I needed for this. And this left me enough power to transmute their flesh for greater power. The head of a Gorrfeggian shark, the claws of a cave-raptor. Oh, and there's something nasty at the tips of their tails, so watch out for those."

In spite of this twist, Luffa's greatest difficulty was not in the numerical disadvantage. If the cultists had bothered to use this against her, it might have mattered, but instead, they constantly scattered and pulled back, even when they had a clear opening to attack her. She and Xibuyas weren't prepared for this sort of strategy, and it took a toll on what little teamwork they had cobbled together.

"Stop shooting the leader!" Luffa shouted at Xibuyas. "He's got some kind of force field!"

"That is exactly why I'm attacking him!" Xibuyas shouted back. "He's the only one standing in the open, and he's obviously in charge!"

"He's standing there because he has a force field!" Luffa shouted. She managed to grab a creature and rip off its tail, but she couldn't destroy it before three other enemies forced her to back off.

"Once I overload his defenses, he'll fall, and the others will collapse without him to give orders!" Xibuyas protested.

"Idiot!" Luffa snarled. "Rehval must have cut out your brain while he was lopping off your tail!"

Undeterred, Xibuyas fired again. Below, Tabeg watched the battle unfolding in the sky, and when the boy's energy beam connected, it diffused harmlessly around him. He smiled, stroked the edge of his pushbroom mustache, then withdrew his stone from the breast pocket of his burgundy cloak. Tapping it against the breastplate of his armor, he asked: "New calculation: Is there enough available power for the formula now?"

"Almost ther-r-r-e!" came the disembodied voice.

"Excellent. What about her?" he asked, referring to Luffa. "Surely this is some sort of phosphorus conjunction at work. Now that I can see her in action, it seems fairly obvious."

He held the stone up and pointed his arm in Luffa's general direction, as if offering it a better look.

"Too bad, so sad, you never could have known what you never had," replied the stone.

"Fine, but there must be some elemental transference at work here," he muttered. "The color can't be a coincidence. If not phosphorus, then sulfur. Cesium? Sodium? Helium has a yellow emission spectrum, doesn't it?"

"You're playin', playin' playin' guess-guess-guess-guess-guessing games," sang the stone.

"Because you never answer me directly, that's why!" Tabeg said. He stuffed the stone back in his pocket. "Fine, I'll handle this on my own. If I wait around any longer, she'll kill more of my forces, and that won't do."

With that, he crossed his arms over his chest and released an powerful explosive wave of energy from his body. He had chosen an abandoned section of the city nearest to his lab as a battleground, but now everything in a two mile radius was disintegration, or left charred and burning. Only the Saiyans, both dead and alive, friend and foe, remained unharmed. All of them looked to him for some sort of explanation.

"Now that I have your attention, Luffa," Tabeg said, "I'd like to put an end to this conflict."

"Fine," Luffa said. She dove towards him, but then suddenly veered away, and moved to one of his followers instead. Before the man could react, she ran him through with the severed tail she had taken from one of the reanimated chimeras. Whether he died from the chest wound, or some poison in the tail itself, was unclear.

"Now I'll have to reanimate that one as well," Tabeg groaned. "You're making this very inconvenient."

"I'll be making you dead very soon," Luffa said. "I don't know if you're bluffing, or just some kind of idiot, but it doesn't really matter. Did you know your master sent you here to die?"

"I know the truth, Luffa!" he shouted. "Trismegistus has shown me the way. That is why he sent me here. My eyes have been opened! Your Super Saiyan form is nothing more than an alchemical transmutation! You have transmuted powerful energies into a more tolerable form, and harnessed them to your will. A formidable technique, but not so 'legendary' as you would have us all believe! Behold!"

Tabeg threw out his hands and revealed black markings on the insides of his palms. They resembled pentagrams, but with many smaller characters written around and inside the larger shapes. He clapped his hands together, and in the next moment, he was engulfed in a brilliant yellow light.

"You see? I haven't replicated your formula completely, but I've come very close. And once I've beaten you, I'll have the chance to study your corpse, and learn enough to perfect my method!"

"You're a fool, Tabeg," Luffa said. "If you had trained your body instead of learning all those magic tricks, you might have become a real threat." You've increased your power a lot, but it's nothing I can't handle. And as for that energy field you've got to protect you, it only works on ki attacks, I'm thinking."

With that, she rushed towards him until she was only a few inches away from his face, where she drove the butt of her palm directly into his nose. As she turned away from him, she heard his body fall to the ground, and she smiled in grim satisfaction.

"Now then," Luffa called out to his followers, "Who wants to go next?"

"He's not dead, you idiot!" Xibuyas cried out. "Look!"

Luffa turned, and saw Tabeg rising up from the ground as if being lifted by invisible hands grasping his shoulders. His arms were crossed over his chest, and a peculiar smile was on his face. His golden aura remained, but it had grown more intense.

"I see you don't believe me," Tabeg said. "I shall have to demonstrate my power more thoroughly. Attack!"

Luffa braced herself, expecting the cultists to gang up on her. Instead, they all turned and fired upon their leader, who stood and absorbed their energy. Each blast seemed to cause him some pain, but somehow he managed to recover and grow stronger. Once they finally stopped, they all lowered themselves to the ground, looking somewhat tired. All except for Tabeg, whose golden aura shone brighter than ever. The triumphant smile on his face, however, was nearly brighter.

"What have you done?" Luffa asked.

"Don't be coy, Luffa. I imagine you've done something very similar yourself once."

He leaped toward her with an incredible speed, and slashed at her with the nails on his left hand. Luffa was amazed that he managed to make contact. She felt blood on her face, and knew it was her own.

"Now!" he shouted, and before Luffa could react, he raised his left hand and swung it down with great force, pointing at her feet. Suddenly, she found herself pinned to the ground, as a shaft of golden energy now appeared, and her left foot was impaled on it.

Luffa cried out in pain, but never took her eyes off Tabeg.

"What's this?" Tabeg asked. "No idle threats? No savage curses? Maybe, just maybe, you've realized how desperate your situation really is, hm?"

Luffa grabbed the energy spear sticking out of her foot, but it caused her too much pain to touch it.

"The energy conversion field absorbs kinetic energy as well as the ki you put behind your punches," he went on. "That's why your last attack didn't work. It only made me stronger. The conversion isn't ideal, but the stone knows the formula, and it knows how much energy I'd need to match your power. My forces weren't quite enough on their own, but with the two of you attacking me, I managed to tip the scales very nicely."

If looks could kill, Tabeg would have died just by staring into Luffa's enraged eyes. Instead, he remained quite alive, and without a trace of fear, he approached Luffa closely enough to pat the side of her face. Some of her blood smeared onto his fingers, which he wiped onto his breastplate. Suddenly, her expression shifted from rage to intrigue, though Tabeg was too busy gloating to notice.

"Remarkable," he said. "I didn't think you'd resemble a real Saiyan to this degree. Even your skin feels authentic. Well, now that I've beaten you, I can study that at my leisure. After all, defeating the Super Saiyan herself is a hollow victory compared to unraveling the mystery behind the Super Saiyan." He withdrew his stone and asked: "Could this flesh be a simulacrum forged through the Rommel Process? No! Wait, the Rowsdower Parchment. Could this be an essence triangulation?"

"Ain't nothing like the real thing baby..." the stone sang in reply.

"You mean this is actually a live Saiyan?" Tabeg asked. "Using the same rune-sequence I am?"

"When you're barking up the wrong tree-eee..."

"No!" Tabeg insisted. "You said she was a Saiyan like me! If she has this kind of ability, then you ought to know what it is, and you should have told me the same steps to recreate it. Then what's the reagent? Unless you mean to tell me this backwater fool discovered the philosopher's stone!"

The stone sang again, but Tabeg was too distracted by the death scream of one of his soldiers. He turned, and saw Xibuyas strangling another using one of the poisoned tails from his chimera.

"I'd worry about my own situation if I were you, Tabeg!" Xibuyas shouted. "Luffa isn't your only foe!" he shouted. "And while she may be an impostor, know that you face at least one pureblooded Saiyan!"

Despite Tabeg's magnified power, he lacked the experience to use it, and so Xibuyas managed to outmaneuver him, appearing and disappearing with such speed that he was able to confuse Tabeg until he was right next to him. Then he thrust the tail at the side of Tabeg's neck, aiming its stinger straight for his jugular vein.

His aim was true, but he couldn't connect. For a moment, Xibuyas thought Tabeg had somehow blocked him, and was holding the tail just inches away from his neck. Instead, Tabeg hadn't even moved. It was as though some force had caught Xibuyas before he could push the stinger in, like a thumbtack in a piece of corkboard.

"Impressive, boy," Tabeg said. "You must have realized that a more subtle weapon like poison could hurt me. But my field absorbs the force you would need to stick me with it."

"Get out of here, Katem!" Luffa shouted. "You're no match for him!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" Xibuyas shouted back.

"Oh, do be quiet," Tabeg said. He tossed his stone from his right hand to his left, then swung out his right hand to catch Xibuyas in the jaw. He went down in an instant, and while the boy remained conscious, he could only manage to plant his hands on the ground and grit his teeth. He might have eventually found a way to push himself back up again, but Tabeg stomped on his back to put a stop to that.

"Get away from him!" Luffa snarled.

"A disciple of yours, perhaps?" Tabeg asked. "He's not bad at all, which only confirms my suspicion that there's nothing magical about your power. It's just an alchemical change, to be picked apart and studied. If he can learn your power, then so can I, and if you and the stone won't tell me the secret, then I'll just have to extract it from your body."

"We're so close now, baby..." the stone sang, and Tabeg nodded, pleased with its seeming approval of his plan.

He stepped away from Xibuyas, and as he approached Luffa, he waved his free hand to signal the others to surround the boy. Then he gestured for four of his monsters to grab Luffa's arms.

"I'll take my time studying you Luffa," Tabeg said. "Take you apart piece by piece if I have to. And as for the boy, well, I don't suppose I need him at all, now do I? Kill him!"

Tabeg's followers moved in for the kill, while Luffa strained against the creatures that held her. And then, the furious noises she made began to sound more desperate. And then her aura exploded.

"What?" Tabeg asked.

"You've done it, you've done it!" sang the stone in his hand. "You've discovered the secret formula!"

"What are you babbling about?" Tabeg shouted. "I haven't even done anything yet!"

The ground beneath them was blasted away by her outburst, leaving them all standing in mid-air over a crater. Xibuyas fell to the bottom of it, safely clear of the cultists, who were now too confused to go after him.

Luffa made a horrific screeching noise as she shook the creatures away from her body. Some of them hung on more stubbornly than others, and Luffa rewarded their tenacity by ripping their limbs from their bodies. One chimera tried to attack her, and she swung her injured foot into his body. The energy spear was still sticking out of it, but it was no longer pinning her to the ground. As much as it hurt Luffa, it simply destroyed the chimera as soon as it touched him. Luffa screamed again, and then the column of ki dissipated, leaving only a hole in her boot.

"You get away from him, now," she said, her voice raw and ugly. She didn't care that they were no longer near Xibuyas, nor did she wait for them to comply. She simply charged towards the cultists and tore through them with a newfound ferocity.

"A marvelous success, Tabeg! Trismegistus will be pleased indeed!" the stone cheered.

"You're not making any sense!" he protested. "I haven't found the secret of her Super Saiyan power! I have no idea how she's doing this! I--!"

Before he could go on, Luffa was on top of him, raining down blows that would have surely killed him if not for his energy-conversion field. As it was, Tabeg still felt the impact of her blows, though it was only enough to hurt him without causing serious injury. He had assumed that he was safe from her before, since her previous blow hadn't hurt him. Now, he realized that she just hadn't hit him as hard as she could.

"You want to turn me into an experiment?!" she screamed. "I'll tear you into shreds, you slimy--"

The rest of her words degenerated into howls of rage as she drove her fists relentlessly into his field. Soon, he toppled over, and she mounted him. All Tabeg could do was cover his face and hold the stone close so he could hear anything useful it might have said.

"Brilliant, Tabeg, brilliant!" the stone cried.

"Shut up!" Tabeg shouted. "Just tell me what I did! Hurry!"

"It's really quite elegant," the stone began. "You see, all that was needed was to--"

And then the stone was gone, crushed into powder in Luffa's clenched fist. She had penetrated his field, and she had taken his most valuable resource in the process.

She paused for a moment, savoring the puff of dust--formerly the Singing Stone-- that now billowed from her hand. This gave Tabeg a moment to realize what had happened to his field. It could absorb energy from fast, powerful collisions, but it did almost nothing to resist slow, gentle movements. This was by design, as Tabeg would have been unable to breathe or interact with the outside world while using it. It was then that he realized his mistake was in taking the time to touch Luffa's face. If she hadn't deduced his weakness on her own, then surely that moment of indiscretion had given her a clue.

Her attack, as intense and vicious as it had been, was actually a diversion to cover her real master stroke, which was to straddle his body once she was close enough to him. While she had pummeled the field with her fists, her lower body was gently lowering onto his abdomen, and the field offered no resistance at all. And now that she had ceased her attack, the field had expanded to envelop her within it.

She was a genius, Tabeg thought to himself, but this alone wasn't the answer. She was fighting harder as well, with a recklessness disregard for her own safety. Before, she was worried about conserving her strength, but now...

"Fight back, you coward!" Luffa snarled. "You said that power of yours lets you absorb ki, right? So use it! Show me what you can do before I send you to hell!"

He did. There was no other choice, and so he ordered his troops to fire as much energy at him as they could. The blasts didn't hurt Luffa at all, as she was inside the field with him, but he was able to absorb the power and grow stronger.

But it wasn't enough. "More, more!" he cried, but he already knew there was no more for them to give. Around him, his creatures lay destroyed, already breaking down into their base ingredients. His followers lay dead or gravely wounded. Nearby, the young Saiyan Xibuyas looked on, his normally proud face now completely baffled.

"Please!" he begged, though he had no idea to whom. Not the stone, which was long gone, or his master Trismegistus, who had no use for failures, and certainly not the Super Saiyan, who had already made her bloody intentions clear.

"You threatened my son," Luffa shouted. "And you think you can just walk away with your life?"

Tabeg's attempts to fight back were useless. Against anyone else, he might have been able to push back, get the enemy out of his force field, and take the advantage. But Luffa was too strong, too determined. She wanted his life, and the wild look in her eye told him that she would have it.

"You tell Trismegistus!" she screamed. "Tell every Jindan-using bastard you know! Tell them I won't stop fighting until you're all dead! You hear me!?"

The word "son" rang in Tabeg's mind as Luffa proceeded to beat him to death. In the moments of consciousness he had left, Tabeg wondered if the stone was referring to this as his great breakthrough. Was the key an emotional state? Through the haze of red, he pictured his own son, whom he had betrayed and murdered to attain his standing in the Jindan Cult. He thought of the boy, not with fondness or regret, but as lost opportunity, a path not taken, now forever lost to him.

*******

Luffa continued to assault Tabeg well after killing him. She only stopped when she felt a ki blast hit her in the back, and she realized that Tabeg's energy conversion field was no longer working. She turned and found Xibuyas holding his open palm out towards her, ready to fire again if necessary.

"Thanks," Luffa said as she rose up from her enemy's remains. "I needed that."

"I was trying to kill you," Xibuyas said. He was back on his feet, but holding himself up with one hand on his knee.

"He must have hit you harder than I thought," Luffa said. She limped towards him, still favoring her injured foot, and reached out to him. "Come on. I'll carry you back to the capital and find you a medic."

"Don't touch me!" he snapped.

Luffa powered down to her normal state, then dropped to a sitting position in front of him. "I ran out of patience about five minutes ago, so let me explain what's going to happen. Calmly. I'm going to carry you to the capital for medical attention, and then I'm going to contact your girlfriend with the pink dyejob and Marshall Booth and give them a sitrep. Close your mouth, because I am not done talking. You only get two choices here, Katem. You can either come along quietly, with some dignity, or I will put you in a keylock and drag you the whole way. Understand that you'll be awake either way, because I don't really need to knock you out to make this happen. Decide. Now."

Xibuyas looked away from her. "I'll... cooperate," he pouted.

"Smart," Luffa said. "Nothing wrong with a little pride, but sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two shames. You fought well, son. Except for that part where you shot your partner in the back. Nice try, but tactically unsound. Care to explain that to me?"

"All you have to offer me is disgrace," he muttered. "A life in your shadow, a family of aliens and cowards... I thought that I could surpass you eventually. The soothsayer on your ship told me I would. But just now, you became even stronger than I imagined. The gap between us is too far... I see now that all I can do is wait for you to die."

She rose to her feet and lifted him up into her arms.

"If that's how you feel about it, Katem," she said, "if that's what you truly believe, then, it doesn't matter how strong you may become. You'll never grow, not in any way that counts."

He said nothing, and continued to avert his gaze from her, and Luffa found she couldn't complain. There was nothing else she could say, and arguing with him would only push him further away. At least he was letting her hold him. At least he was alive. For now, that would have to do.

NEXT: Zatte and Dotz

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