Brother
by Rick Spiff 
A S.E.F.U. Project

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                     Episode 3: Enter the Saiyajins

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Disclaimer: I don't own Toryama-sama's characters, just James, Ed, the
TCA, and the Skeemdians (well, there's more, but that would be spoiling
the later parts of this story).

Warning: Sharp language (somewhat sharper than DBZ), violence, gore
(more than DBZ), and maybe a little sexual innuendo. I would rate this
fic a heavy PG-13, but not R. Enjoy!

Quick note:  *Stuff in here is
people's thoughts, not said out loud.*

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"I can't believe this! Energy weapons left and right, and now
reinforcements!" He snarled. The voice of disbelief belonged to a fierce
warrior outfitted with a head of hair that preferred the vertical.
Though he was short, his wiry black mane made up for his lack of height
by sticking into the air a comical meter or so. He wore a set of
high-tech armor with extended shoulder and leg guards over a blue jump
suit. His black boots slapped over the thick undergrowth of Korindoth
with the wet crunch that can only come from oversized plants being
trampled to death. "I thought this place was supposed to be a rock."

A second man followed behind the first, keeping his bald head low.
Though he was clearly second in command, and merely watching his
superior's back, he was a mountain of muscle, a physical power-house
well over two meters tall. A thick handlebar mustache and heavy black
eyebrows made up pretty much all of the hair on his head. His armor and
clothing was very similar to the shorter warrior's, though he wore his
colors as if they were an official uniform.

"Vegeta-sama," he pleaded to the shorter man. "These beasts have very
powerful energy weapons. Wouldn't it be safer--and easier--to crush them
from a distance?"

"Nappa!" Vegeta snapped, stopping in their trail through the huge woods
and turning on his heel to face the large warrior. "Since when do
Saiyajins automatically choose the _easy_ route to victory?"

Nappa was clearly taken back by the statement. He met Vegeta's eyes
though, and did not back down. "My liege, these aliens by themselves are
no challenge, but they come in great numbers and carry a LOT of
firepower. Would you rather be dead or victorious?"

"I would always rather be victorious, Nappa--that's something we can't
do from a distance." Vegeta answered, returning to his random stomping
through the woods.

Nappa shook his head and started walking again. They were twenty klicks
from the landing site, which was being fortified every minute they spent
walking. Flying had proven too dangerous only minutes ago. With the
abundance of ground cover and literally hundreds of soldiers armed with
plasma arms, flying was NOT an option. Clearing out the area was
possible, but there was a damn lot of foliage around. To make matters
worse, the newly landed base had a strong force field around it, which
would be hard to break through after expending energy on landscaping. It
just didn't fit together well--a thorny situation where failure was not
an option.

Vegeta randomly changed direction again, keeping them on a bearing
towards the base, but in a zig-zag pattern to throw off any sentries. It
happened that he stumbled upon a very, _very_ large group of the
Skeemdians, which happened to be in the middle of setting up some kind
of sensor array.

For a half-second, there was dead silence as the two parties stared in
shock at one another. Then, Vegeta raised his hand. The Skeemdians went
for their weapons, but it was over before they draw a bead on the stout
Saiyajin.

"Was that _really_ necessary, Vegeta-sama." Nappa asked.

"Yes." Vegeta said, a measure of satisfaction in his voice.

----------

Ed and James had reached the front door of the next battle: the
Skeemdian's landing base.

They were currently fifteen hundred meters away, wishing they had time
to make a proper plan.

As it was, James would have settled for a face-to-face talk.

The two were fighting a group of Skeemdians between the trunks of
massively overgrown trees. It was like fighting through downtown New
York, only everything was brown and green. The immense tree trunks
offered no protection from the Skeemdian's weapons, however.

"COVER ME!" James shouted, jumping from behind his cover. Ed reacted
instantly, spraying their opposition with fire from his MB-666 machine
gun. The .50-caliber bullets tore through the trees like a hot poker
through a wet paper bag. The Skeemdian's kissed the mud and plant
waste, while James did a complicated double-flip to the side, grabbing
himself a nice sniping nest to work on the enemy troops.

As it happened, said nest was occupied.

James landed right on the back of a very large and battle-worn
Skeemdian. A veteran of physical combat, the massive alien threw the
man off with two of its huge arms. James crashed into the first thing
that caught him, counterattack planned before his boots hit the ground.
The Skeemdian wasted no time in closing on James, one hand aiming right
for the human's throat.

James kicked the hand, connecting, and using the force to leap into the
air. The Skeemdian stumbled back a step, but quickly recovered. James
had jumped off of the tree behind him to gain speed, and was rocketing
towards the Skeemdian soldier like a meteor of doom. The soldier
blocked, barely, and James flipped over the alien, landing just behind
him.

The Skeemdian immediately launched into a flurry of kicks, spinning to
face James, and continued his assault with a full combination of
different blows. Foolishly, James stood his ground. It was a matter of
inevitability for the tired human warrior; he missed blocking a powerful
punch aimed at his gut. He took the blow with remarkable aplomb,
managing to stay on his feet, but his defense was suddenly worthless.

The Skeemdian went right through James' defenses, battering the assassin
around like cat might bat about a ball of yarn. He finished off the
string of body-shaking blows with a monster uppercut, rending the
assassin airborne.

Then a scream began. A sudden metal shriek promising instant, flaming,
violent death to any who did not immediately bow to its power. A
slashing blade of pure energy cut off half of the Skeemdian's body with
a single swipe.

James slammed into a tree.

The beam went sideways, the shriek only growing in intensity. Ed had his
feet braced, holding the terrible machine of war that was cutting
through the Skeemdian troops like lava engulfing a mobile home. He kept
the trigger mashed against its stop for a full five seconds, the huge
weapon vibrating in his hands.

James slammed into another tree.

His finger finally fell loose of the trigger and the beam cut out. Trees
were just beginning to fall in the distance. The Skeemdians that were
still standing were doing only that--not one of them were ready to
attack Ed at the moment.

James slammed into another tree.

The barrel of Ed's plasma cannon finally stopped spinning, waves of heat
rippling in the air. Trees started crashing to the ground in waves of
deafening noise.

James slammed into the ground. And finally stopped moving.

Then, he groaned.

The stalemate dragged on....

*Man found dead from staring dumbly.* Thought Ed. *Not the way I want to
go.* He stared down the collected Skeemdian troops, all of seven
soldiers ready to tear him limb from limb. His finger hovered over the
trigger of his custom-built 'Hair Raiser' plasma cannon, daring them to
attack.

James managed to get on his hands and knees, coughing and swearing.

Ed decided that a hasty retreat was in order. "James! Let's move while
we still have legs!" More coughing from James' position. "James, on your
feet!"

"I'm... I'm okay. Just got the... the... wind knocked out of me." The
former assassin said as he got to his feet.

"We're in bad shape, James." Ed yelled back to his companion.

"So I..." James heard a not-so-distant explosion. The Skeemdians even
seemed to pull back somewhat. Inside his coat, James pulled a small
lever that allowed easier access to his prized sword... well, one of his
prized swords--those things _could_ break, after all.

Ed had heard the sound too, and cocked his head to the side to listen
better, his eyes still tightly focused on the now confused Skeemdian
troops.

They could tell it was coming too.

"Ed, I think we're in trouble."

"I hear it."

Another explosion sounded, close. The smell of ozone drifted over the
abandoned children of earth. James' hands clenched at his sides. "That
isn't a Skeemdian weapon." He said, his face taunt.

The Skeemdian troops seemed to agree, readying their short, sharply
curved hand blades. Ed considered the crowbar in his coat, then the gun
in his hands. While attacking things at random with a stream of hot
death was effective, killing James with it by accident would rank very
high on his 'not cool' scale.

Still, his grip hardened on the weapon in his hands. It was down to
either them or the Skeemdians; as it had always been, as it was _meant_
to be. Fear was no excuse for a lack of vigilance.

"James," he said. "Get ready."

James locked eyes with Ed for a moment, nodding. If things came to it,
James would save the last proverbial bullet for himself. Ed would do the
same, and all would be right with the world.

At least, that was the theory.

The rumbling drew nearer, a cloud of yet-unseen chaos descending upon
the amassed warriors.

----------

At the center of the chaos, two Saiyajins were fighting tooth and nail,
praying for every advantage they didn't have. The Skeemdians were brutal
fighters, individual soldiers heedless of personal injury as they
brought their full fighting power to bear against the twin threats of
Nappa and Vegeta.

They did notice that they were heading in the direction of the Skeemdian
backup, and had weighed the possibility of being overpowered against the
possibility of taking out the whole Skeemdian army in a single death-
blow. The odds were not really in their favor, but Saiyajins took
risks.

It was a simple fact of life.

Vegeta took point, trees flying past him at incredible speeds as the
Saiyajin pair tore across the forest floor, occasionally taking a detour
into the air, or off of several sturdy tree trunks. They had charged an
entire legion of Skeemdian soldiers, and planned to rush the landing
site, finishing off the enemy with that single crushing blow. Vegeta
acted as a path-carving whirlwind of violence. He took the brunt of the
Skeemdians' counter attacks, but swept past them before any could get in
a second shot. It was Nappa, following closely behind his leader, who
finally killed those distracted by Vegeta's rapid-fire tactics.
Catching the Skeemdians in a high speed chase proved devastating to the
lesser trained fighters.

Everything was going well until they breached the clearing where the
party was really getting started.

James' brain just registered a blue and black blur at the edge of his
vision, and then the entire front line of Skeemdian soldiers behind him
vanished a puff of smoke. The explosion was just rocking him on his feet
when a huge bald man came out of the ground cover, locking in combat
with an abnormally large Skeemdian. James figured that he must be some
unfortunate human, and decided that helping the man took first priority.
He was doing well, whoever he was, for fighting a Skeemdian unarmed.

James leapt from the ground and attack the Skeemdian from the side,
easing into the flow of combat with casual grace. The warrior allowed
him to intervene without a glance, subconsciously avoiding James and
allowing him room to fight the Skeemdian. Working in tandem, it was less
than a second before they pummeled the alien into unconsciousness. The
large man then grabbed the beast by a leg and tossed him into an incoming
group of Skeemdians. He followed that action up by raising him arm and
pointing an open palm at the group. James was ready to go for his gun,
but what happened next made him pause and seriously consider having his
sanity checked.

A ball of light suddenly appeared before the man's hand, waiting for an
instant, as if cradled there, then shooting into the crowd of
Skeemdians, where it exploded. Body parts flew in every which
direction. The giant of a man turned to face James with a grin of
disbelief.  He said.

James blinked. The words were _very_ similar to an old, _old_ common
language that was in the TCA archives. He racked his brain trying to
remember how to ask the man to repeat what he just said. When the proper
words for "Who are you?" came up instead, that was good enough, and he
asked.



Great. Wonderful. More words he didn't understand.  Okay, close enough, James figured. There
were no more time for talk if he did have something important to say.

The small blur turned out to be another man, dressed similarly to the
first, but with a huge mane of black hair that stood up straight from
his head, as if he were being perpetually electrocuted.  He
yelled.  A
Skeemdian came at him from the side, barely in the man's peripheral
vision. He batted it away calmly.

James could hear Ed's jaw bounce off the dead plants he was standing on
before the shriek of the plasma cannon started up again. James pulled
his sword out, thoughts of coherent language drained his mind. The
Skeemdians were massing their counter attack and their precious few
seconds of peace were at an end. Before he raised his bloody sword to
salute the combat they were about to engage in, James took a mental snap
shot of the two new arrivals. He realized that they were more exhausted
than they were letting on, and were getting quite worried. The fuzzy
belts on the armor didn't fit in the picture right either. He set a
mental red flag on the belts and sliced off the hands of another
attacking Skeemdian.

Ed's spent plasma cannon hit the forest floor with a hiss, boiling the
lifeblood of the plants trampled during their ordeal. The two new
fighters roared a battle cry and tore into the Skeemdian ranks. The
whole group began to move, rapidly, towards their common goal.

The fight was on.

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Preview of the next episode: It's an all-out brawl for the control of
Korindoth! The Saiyajins and humans, forming a temporary truce, are set
to take this world from the attacking Skeemdians, but even the strongest
fighters are worn down. Heck, they can barely communicate! Can they do
it? Can the fearsome foursome stop the Skeemdians?

Find out in the next exciting episode of Brother!

NEXT EPISODE: Enter the Miscalculation


First draft: 01/22/02

    Source: geocities.com/tokyo/subway/1888/txt/Brother

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