Chapter Text
Ledgic stared at his opponent with a grim look in his eyes, panting heavily. That last attack he performed drained him of energy and numbed his entire body to the point where just putting up his arms felt like a momentous undertaking. The alien mercenary burrowed his boots into the ground gravel beneath his feet, preparing to employ his footing to help him force his arms up to defend himself if his opponent attacked.
Despite this horrendous to Ledgic development of Bardock transforming into a new, white-haired and red-eyed form, different from his Super Saiyan transformation both in terms of appearance and power, Ledgic did not relent. His body language suggested that he was willing to throw hands despite being forced on the back foot and competing against the approaching threat of immeasurable force.
"I guess you're just too stubborn to quit," Bardock grumbled with a husky voice, putting one step forward as a means of intimidation.
"Stubborn? No, too experienced," Ledgic shook his head. "I've been in enough battles to know that with the injuries you've sustained, you won't be able to call forth the full potential of this transformation. This fight has pushed our bodies to the opposite sides of the spectrum to the same degree of extremity. Whereas my body is in a critical state because of my exhaustion, yours is because of the sum of your injuries," Ledgic replied with intermittent breaks to breathe in and out.
Launching himself forward like a human javelin, Bardock thrust a straight aimed for Ledgic's liver. The ruthless mercenary bellowed in pain and put his arms up. A concussive shockwave burst forth from the point of collision, echoing through the vast nothingness of the wasteland, as it found nothing to stop its progression at all. Hyper Bardock's straight threw Ledgic off his feet, while the Saiyan pushed on.
Ledgic cried out, surrounding himself with the shards of his broken weapons and merging them into two spike pieces that then promptly adopted the appearance of twin shields. The blue-skinned mercenary blocked Bardock's wide overhead hook with one shield, and turned around, mirroring Bardock's movements to block the low leg sweep with the other.
With a clamorous voice, Bardock flickered forward with a blinking dash, pushing his foot forward with a devastating push kick. Ledgic had to cross both of his shields to absorb the unstoppable bout of aggression from his opponent. However, the two shields proved strong enough, when put together, to take the blow with only the resulting sonic boom rag dolling Ledgic away with a pained grunt. With his arms by his side, Hyper Bardock vanished from the place, rushing toward Ledgic with an all-out aggressive attack.
"You're overextending!" Ledgic barked out, spinning around with his two shields crossed in front, before releasing one of his shields with a toss. Bardock blanked out, failing to anticipate such a method of attack from what was usually a purely defensive tool. The Saiyan's grunt followed shortly after a thunderous thwack as the shield returned to Ledgic's hand and the mercenary pushed forward with a counterattack.
A vertical step-in slam with his right shield, a straight from the left while holding the left shield horizontally, smacking Bardock straight in the throat and stunning the hyper-aggressive berserker. Ledgic spun in place, using his twin shields as battering plates in both of his arms and tossing Bardock away while planting him and dragging the Saiyan across the ground.
"The Saiyan supremacy as the universe's ultimate warrior race is over!" Ledgic declared, slinging his right shield to slam its edge straight into Bardock's gut while the merciless mercenary stomped on the vertical edge of the shield, shoving Bardock into the ground and burrowing a crater while the white-haired Saiyan made a gargling, wet gasp and spat up blood. "You were every bit as tough as your reputation suggests, but I've got more than just the love for battle working for me. I am fighting for a future in which a fighter's skill isn't judged by the circ*mstances of their birth, their race, or their legacy, but purely by the level of their skill."
Ledgic returned his two metallic shields to their default spiky state, slamming the two knife-like spikes together by their tips. The metallic spikes softened and turned malleable, merging into a single weapon while Ledgic's Ki shaped it according to his needs. This time the weapon stretched out long and thin, similar to Ledgic's earlier use of quarterstaff, however, the weapon never truly lost its malleability. With a flick of his hand, the mercenary sent a grievous lash across Bardock's chest, whiting the Saiyan warrior out and forcing his pained yell to fill the empty wasteland.
With another lash, Ledgic wrapped his whip around Bardock's throat and spun him around over his head, slamming the Saiyan into the ground elsewhere, blowing off smoke and sending shrapnel of metal and rocky debris in all directions as the wreckage of Don City was unearthed. With a weaker fling of his whip, Ledgic tossed Bardock's limp body in the air before unleashing a lashing barrage that pummeled the airborne Saiyan and then finished with an overhead lash that flattened Bardock back into the ground.
Ledgic stumbled forward, nearly collapsing on all fours before pushing off his thighs for support. Just when the alien mercenary tilted his head to glance at where he had last left his opponent, he gasped, realizing that Bardock was right in front of him, covered in bloody lashes that trickled red all over his body but wound back with a punch. Ledgic dashed backward, recalling his whip to a two-handed grip suitable for usage in close range.
Hyper Bardock was no longer where Ledgic last saw him, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye. A stiff sensation made Ledgic's back go numb as the Saiyan punted Ledgic away from behind and launched a volley of Ki blasts at Ledgic while the latter was still airborne. Scrambling to correct his position in mid-air, Ledgic made a makeshift metallic tornado around him by twirling the whip vertically around. The rushing Ki blasts bounced off Ledgic's defensive swings and detonated somewhere off in the distance.
Immediately after finishing his defensive whip whirling, Ledgic transformed his weapon into a javelin and flung it where Bardock stood. The Hyper Saiyan vaulted skyward with a horizontal spin, accumulating incredible momentum as he jumped over the incoming weapon. The blitzing whirligig slammed into Ledgic's face, indenting it as Bardock's fist almost fully disappeared inside Ledgic's skull. The stunned and overwhelmed alien crashed into the ground and lay stretched out, panting as he stared at his hated enemy, too hurting to move a muscle.
"You're fighting for something more?" Bardock asked in a menacing and mocking tone. "Give me a break! Even if you win your future where everyone's treated equally, what's it matter if nobody's alive to enjoy it? Instead of killing yourself for the sake of your pride, you should strive to become a person worth being proud of."
Ledgic's purple eyes wandered off to the massive fleeing cruiser that lingered in the upper atmosphere. After everything, all the trouble he's put the denizens of Planet Imecka through, all the captured and indentured tourists, Don Kia was planning to just up and leave. Just mess everything up and run off somewhere else. Ledgic gnashed his bloody teeth, feeling bubbling froth spraying from his smashed mouth and blood pouring from his broken nose.
Even if he didn't know why, the fact that Don Kia wanted to just get away after everything infuriated Ledgic more than anything in this universe. Grumbling in pain, Ledgic scrambled on his knees and, still stumbling and uneasy, stood up and stared at the sky, somewhere past Bardock, who surveyed his opponent and tried to anticipate Ledgic's next move.
"Saiyan…" Ledgic muttered, letting the smashed shards of his metallic, malleable twin spike weapon sift through the loose fingers of his trembling hands and drop to the ground with a subtle clank.
"What's taking us so long?" Don Kia shrieked out, approaching Sheila from behind and leaning over her from the side with his arms pressed to his waist. "Take us as far away from Planet Imecka as possible, if one stray blast hits us, we'll go down! If you can't pilot this thing, then let Gale…"
"Don Kia-sama…" Sheila glanced back, hesitant to admit something. "It's… It's your blockade. It's preventing us from leaving the planet. Nobody is to come or leave from Planet Imecka, those are your orders."
When somebody approached close enough to Planet Imecka's atmosphere, a swarm of fighter spacecraft would've rushed at them and either blown them out of the sky or led them to a landing base somewhere on the planet's surface. At which point their spacecraft would have been confiscated, they'd be "judged" for their "crime" of attempting to land on Planet Imecka, and they'd be forced to work to repay their punishment in Gammets.
Even with everything stacked against them, with the grueling work hours and conditions, the pitiful pay that barely covered the barebones living expenses, and the rampant inflation that entirely depended on Don Kia's own greed rather than economic factors, there was one last safeguard in place to prevent any success stories of being able to escape from the "Imeckan Dream". The same blockade of fighters that prevented anyone from coming in would have attacked anyone trying to leave, seeing no difference between taking off and landing.
"What are you waiting for, you incompetent nitwit? Contact those fighters and tell them that this is their ruler, Lord Don Kia, demanding safe passage from Planet Imecka! Anyone who opens fire upon my ship is to be destroyed without a trace, with the full power of the fighter force of the Planet Imecka blockade!" Don Kia sneered at Sheila with vitriol purely because one of his commanders wasn't able to put such a simple thing together herself. If Don Kia was capable of it, he'd have executed Sheila on the spot for such a show of incompetence.
The spacecraft rumbled, and the rampant tremors sent Don Kia and his guard flying around the carrier ship's interior like wet laundry being thrown around the room from the basket it came from. Gale and Sheila grabbed the control panels and computers, tightened to the spacecraft floor for support, and managed to maintain their balance.
"Why are they still firing at us!?" Don Kia exclaimed with a high-pitched scream. The tyrannical dictator of Planet Imecka fell flat on his face, pressing his head to the floor with his arms while he reared his back end up in terror, looking more like a frightened ostrich shoving its head up in sand rather than the sole overseer of Planet Imecka.
"Don Kia-sama… Ledgic's rampage down on Planet Imecka must have leveled our communications towers. Our communications are down, we're unable to relay your orders to the blockade to stop firing!" Gale reported with a grumbly, low-pitched tone.
"Blast our way through!" Don Kia frothed from the mouth with a panicked scream.
"With what? This is a carrier vessel, its purpose is to carry armed soldiers into battle, not to fight fighter spacecraft. Our weapons are meant for covering fire, and ground support, not space warfare!" Gale lashed back at his ruler, getting more than just a bit frustrated with the verbal and psychological abuse that his commanders received from someone who's every bit as incompetent at his job as he accused everyone around him of being.
"Gale and Sheila… When you applied to become my military force commanders, you claimed to be worth an entire army of troops each!" Don Kia scolded his troops. "Was that all just a lie? Shall I have you two executed right now for lying to your sovereign!?"
"Truth be told," Sheila spoke up, halting the lined-up soldiers who were awaiting orders to open fire at their own commanders from starting a fight they couldn't finish. "We could blast our way through by standing on top of the carrier vessel and blowing the blockade up with our own strength, but… Those are your men, Don Kia-sama. Your loyal soldiers, just doing their job and following your orders to protect the skyline of Planet Imecka. How can we just…"
"Kill them all! Blow them all up! They're all traitors for opening fire at their ruler! This is high treason!" Don Kia began thrashing around the carrier ship, stamping his feet like a rampant toddler who wasn't being given what he asked for as he shrieked to the point of beginning to lose his voice. The ruler's make-up had been smeared across his face from the tumbles he took as the spacecraft fire shook and hit the carrier, threatening to blow it out of the sky and force it to crash right back where it came from.
"…" Gale and Sheila both took a minute to look at the sad and pathetic image of the man whose orders they followed, sharing questioning looks with each other as if asking if they were truly going to resort to something like this.
"Alright…" Gale submitted, closing his eyes and heading to the carrier shutter. Sheila followed, not too far behind. The submission of their commanders made the worked-up and horrified soldiers breathe easier and lower their guns. All of them knew they would have stood no chance if Don Kia ordered them to execute Gale and Sheila, but neither of them wanted to be the next to face the firing line, so they complied for the moment.
The two commanders flew out through the rare upper atmosphere and positioned themselves on top of the ship, extending their hands in sync and channeling a pink energy blast, preparing to obliterate an immense network of fighter jets hosting devoted soldiers just doing their jobs and, in their minds, just protecting their planet from invaders.
More deafening rumbling shook the ship, making Don Kia squeal and stumble back into a comfortable and expensive armchair as he looked around at the ceiling, where he thought Gale and Sheila to be standing. He wondered if it was all over already and if they were good to go. As much as Don Kia wanted to order someone to blast off and get as far away from Planet Imecka as possible, the dictator hesitated, for he still needed Gale and Sheila to serve as his muscle. Whether or not they were idiots was beside the point. Both of them just blew up the mightiest planetary blockade in the galaxy in a blink of an eye.
"Well… What's taking them so long? Is it already over? Can we leave?" Don Kia stood up and straightened out his silken robe, inspecting his immaculate fingernails before scanning the room of baffled soldiers, just feeling lucky to be a part of the carrier ship that was getting away from what seemed to be the end of Planet Imecka.
Much to the clapping delight of Don Kia, the carrier ship's side shutters opened up and then promptly closed. However, when the dictator turned to welcome Gale and Sheila back and congratulate them on a job well done, he gasped and staggered back, fumbling over and flipping over his overpriced leather armchair as he shivered and whined in terror.
"L-Ledgic!?" Don Kia exclaimed in reaction to the appearance of the battle-worn, teal-skinned alien holding both Gale and Sheila tucked under his armpits. Upon entering the ship, Ledgic dropped them on the floor. "Wh-What happened? D-Did you… Did you kill the Saiyan like you wanted to?"
"Bardock and I postponed settling our fight. Both of us suddenly had other, more important matters to attend to," Ledgic said in a grim tone, taking a few steps toward Don Kia. The shivering and sniveling tyrant turned to his soldiers, who seemed no less terrified of Ledgic than he was and absolutely refused to intervene. Abuse, elitism, and incompetence inspired little loyalty, it seemed.
"B-But what about… What about your pride, remember your pride, Ledgic? R-Remember how unfairly you were treated, how underappreciated and underpaid you were because you weren't a Saiyan?" Don Kia began twisting his tongue to try to get himself out of this sticky situation, but if Don Kia was spitting poison, it simply ran down Ledgic's façade of fortitude without as much as soiling it with its filth. "I didn't much care about killing a warrior who's more worried about the life of someone else rather than our battle. On the other hand, I've come to realize that I care a great deal about you not getting to leave anywhere but the Galactic Prison cell."
To show Don Kia how serious he was, Ledgic took the controls of the carrier vessel and typed in the coordinates to the nearest Galactic Patrol station sixteen star systems away.
"G-Galactic Prison?" Don Kia whined out. "Don't be ridiculous, Ledgic!? You're just as guilty as I am! You were my right-hand man! My fabled invincible enforcer!"
"Both of us know I took no orders from you, you scum," Ledgic smirked. "Besides, now that I think about it, Galactic Patrol probably pays their members equal salary, no matter what planet they're from or what race they belong to."
"Come on, Ledgic… A man of your exquisite tastes and your sky-high price… Settling down for a Galactic Patrolman salary?" Don Kia laughed out, figuring that Ledgic was kidding. The tyrant laughed until he saw a stone-faced look on Ledgic's face and realized that the carrier ship wasn't turning back. "N-No way, for you to turn into an honest salaryman on me at such a crucial moment, Ledgic!"
"Sorry, it was never about the payment itself for me. It was about being acknowledged for my skill and paid equally to someone on the same level as me. Besides, I've taken more than enough payments in Blue Aurum from you over the years to care very little about what I'm being paid by the Galactic Patrol. All of your precious Gammets, on the other hand, will be worthless in Galactic Prison, so I'd workshop your negotiation skills if I were you," Ledgic replied as the carrier vessel shot off far beyond the range of being visible at hyper-speed.
Bardock dragged his feet across the ground, panting heavily as he clutched his bleeding wounds and headed toward where he thought he last saw Launch. Even though chances of her survival, if Don Plaza indeed collapsed, were slim, Bardock would only believe it when he saw her body. No matter what, Bardock wouldn't abandon her. Not after coming to terms with the fact that he wanted more than anything to be happy with her. That despite everything he did and all the things he ruined for himself, Gine, and the rest of his family, he still deserved happiness, just like everyone else did.
Spaceships began taking off by the hundreds, cluttering the sky with a thousand tiny, shimmering comets shooting off to the sky. All around Bardock, clamorous sounds of revolution banged and thundered, making the battered old veteran smirk to himself, despite the trickling blood and busted bones. That Ledgic guy was incredible. If he didn't realize that he couldn't live with himself letting Don Kia scram off wherever he wanted after all the stuff he's pulled on Planet Imecka, Bardock wasn't sure he could have beaten Ledgic, despite pulling out all stops and fighting with his full-power.
It was because he fought full-powered that Bardock felt so numb and burnt out at the moment, making his feet drag across the wasteland through the sticking skyscraper tops and wreckage of Don Kia's Imeckan empire an excruciating affair. Bardock gnashed his teeth and hissed when he heard mechanical rumbling on the horizon and a dozen of armed alien goons surrounded him from all sides, riding makeshift motorcycles and hovering vehicles built of scrap and various improvised machines of war.
A rumbling burst made Bardock turn toward the source of the noise. A powerhouse marauder burst forth from underground after swimming through the gravel and ash with his fin sticking out like some kind of sand shark. This raider promptly dispatched of a handful of marauders and took over a war machine with two spiky metal wheels, spouting raging wildfires from its exhaust pipes, the shark-bat-like alien put his war machine on its massive hind wheels before turning to the rest of the raiders.
"It's you…" Bardock glared more intensely at the marauder he spared and stuffed inside his Attack Ball healing pod. "You could have taken off with that pod, you know."
"Not until we're even!" the marauder snarled, showing its lined-up rows of razor-sharp teeth and swollen muscles wrapped in moist, fishy skin. The marauder flapped its two wings, as if he was about to pull this entire colossal war machine he stole off the ground and hurl it at the other raiders looking to dispatch of Bardock. "Besides, every wastelander knows the blockade won't let anyone out, just like it won't let anyone in."
Even though Bardock still didn't like his odds very much, given how it was two against an entire rampant horde of mercenaries with nothing better to do in a society that's fallen apart much more than usual, he figured that he had to fight despite his failing body. That was the only way he could make sure that Launch was okay.
Before the fight could even start, however, a swirling quartet of missiles slammed against the side of another large scrapyard war machine, tossing its parts aside and its scrambling its driver and passengers like stricken bowling pins. This time, the sudden outburst of random violence surprised not only Bardock but his unexpected interloping ally too, prompting the trio to turn the dunes where the rocket volley came from.
"Serves ya right, picking on the wounded!" blond Launch barked out, still perched on one knee with a smoldering quad-barrel rocket launcher over her shoulder and bespectacled with dusty old goggles to help keep the sand and ash out of her eyes while she aimed.
