Going Native: Feeling of the Fall (ch. 61) (Patreon)

"Gilguk, are you with me?" I asked, my eyes narrowing as every muscle went taut. My mind raced, shifting into high gear as it felt like I needed to do a thousand different things at once. But I couldn't, so the most important had to be dealt with first.

Gilguk nodded, "I will follow you, Warlord," she said in a tone that told me that the words were an oath. That was good. Great even. If the Khund's valued their word and honor any less then this would never work. I would have been forced to choose between letting the empire I just took splinter or a planet of Nth metal.

I tossed a chip at her, one filled with my plans for the Khundian Empire. "For now, enact those first steps. You're in charge," I told her as I started to walk away. The others following me.

"You do not wish for me to join you?" Gilguk questioned. I guess she thought she was getting left out. It was the opposite, really.

"The war is what matters, not the battle. I need the Khundian Empire to help me fight the war. Not this battle," I answered her, marching forward without looking back. She would understand the meaning. All the time, we did things we didn't want to do for the greater good -- to end the war. I most certainly have. Her role was to lead the Khunds in my place, to deal with the war… while I dealt with the battle.

"Understood. May fortune favor you," Gilguk said as we left the building. We headed to the ship and piled on, taking off in moments.

Shayera looked at me, "Do you trust her with an empire?" She asked, and I did recognize I was taking a massive risk. But Gilguk already proved that she was willing to keep her word by bringing us to this planet. Trusting her with power was a different kind of trust, but I thought it was well placed.

"If she betrays us, then the empire falls apart. She knows that she wouldn't be able to lead because betraying us would stain her honor. And since she knows that, I doubt it will happen," I answered, going through preflight checks. This… my FTL was a wink-drive. Slipstream needed a larger ship to make sure I didn't fall out of the universe. "Avery, is Thanagar already under attack?"

Avery shook his head. "Impossible to tell. I just got the message that the War World was spotted in the area. The message was delayed too." The timing was far too perfect. Because of Slipstream time dilation, it hadn't been more than a few hours since I left Thanagar. While it was always possible that the message had been incoming before I left, or that the planet had some kind of stealth feature that kept it hidden until it was too late…

The timing was just too perfect. Though, that did beg the question of why someone like Mongul was trying to dodge someone like me.

"It'll take us two hours to get back to Thanagar," I muttered as the wink-drive prepared it's first jump. The Thanagarian Empire and the Khund Empire were neighborhoods, but there was still a lot of space between them that had to be covered. To that, I heard Avery sigh.

"Too short notice for reinforcements. And if he's already there, then Thanagar could fall in that amount of time."

Mongul the Warlord. There were few that didn't know that name. Once you reached a certain height to broaden your perception of the galaxy rather than a small piece, some names stood out amongst the rest. Lord Frieza was one of those names. As were the Guardians. Mongul the Warlord was a lesser-known figure, but that could just be because his rise to power was relatively new and his reputation was made by the War World.

A hyper-advanced, planet-sized war machine. The name of whoever built it was lost a long time ago, but the war machine was a planet buster. It could be used to take entire systems alone between its main weapons and drone fleets and armies. The Warlord himself was rumored to be powerful, but it was impossible to tell how powerful since he never did any of the fighting himself. All I really knew was that he was someone who could flaunt the Green Lanterns' laws openly -- so… that put him in the same weight class as Lord Frieza.

"I look away from the planet for one minute," I muttered to myself, my foot bouncing as I sat(,) and I only realized that my tapping foot tore a hole through the metal floor when my foot sunk into the gap meant to house the cables and cords. Seriously, I looked away from the planet for one minute then someone like Mongul the Warlord shows up. And I had no doubt that he was there to claim the Nth metal.

"Vegeta might be coming. Broly… if anyone has a chance of delaying Mongul then it's him," I said. I sent a short message to Lord Frieza and the Supreme Commander. If anything could spur them into action then someone like Mongul would do the trick. I heard Shayera sputter at that, prompting me to look at her.

Her lips were pressed into a thin line, looking like she wished she could take back the sound of disbelief. But she couldn’t, so she spoke what was on her mind. “Broly is just a boy -- he’s strong, sure, but Mongul…” She trailed off when my eyes narrowed. That sounded like it ran deeper than an idle observation. But I could see her question in the eyes of the others, even if they didn’t want to ask.

I considered not answering, but if Broly was about to fight Mongul, then there was no point keeping them in the dark. “Broly is stronger than me,” I answered, and this time it was Vas who sputtered. That was a closely guarded secret -- on paper, I was the strongest saiyan alive… but that wasn’t the truth. “He’s been hiding his power level for years -- those jumps in power he’s been having? He’s just been holding back less.”

“Broly? The kid that used to hold onto your cape and just followed you around everywhere? He’s stronger than you?” Vass questioned, sounding like she didn’t believe it.

“Broly has a mutation that allows him to grow stronger over time. In fights, he constantly improves. The only problem that he has is that he can’t use the Wrath State to its fullest extent because there’s no one strong enough to stop him when he loses control,” I answered. I didn’t like this. I preferred going straight into the battle, but the trip there was leaving me time to think of the what-ifs.

“Everything hinges on Broly. If he survives long enough to fight Mongul… then he could beat him,” I said, forcing myself to take a breath. My brother had said it best -- our race, the Saiyan Race, was born without limits. That was especially true with Broly. It was entirely possible for him to grow strong enough to defeat Mongul over the course of a single battle. But… that brought its own set of complications.

Shayera looked down at the ground, taking a seat while her wings fanned out to prevent anyone from sitting with her. I looked over the group, finding the rest looking at me expectantly. For me to have the plan to deal with the enemy if worse comes to worse. But we wouldn’t know the situation until our feet touched down. We could find that Broly had defeated Mongul on his own, or find him dead. Thanagar could be razed to the ground or we could arrive before Mongul.

So, I threw on a confident look as I considered what we were about to get into.

…

Two hours passed by with painful slowness, but they did pass. My ship winked into existence in the system, not far from the planet of Thanagar. At least, I thought it was Thanagar. In a handful of hours, it looked unrecognizable and I saw that Mongul had certainly beaten us here.

The surface of Thanagar was covered in twinkling lights that I knew meant explosions that could be seen from orbit. Countless lights flaring up, dying, only to be replaced by ten more. The sight would have been mesmerizing if I wasn't stuck on the implications. Floating in orbit was scrap that had once been fleets -- my defense fleet, and the invading fleets of half of the galaxy, all reduced to nothing.

It was impossible to not notice the cause of the destruction. A sizable planet hovered in high orbit as if it were another moon to the planet. Its surface was completely made of metal, almost seamless not counting the places were hundreds of thousands of red triangle-like drones poured from. It was a daunting sight, I had to admit. In all my years of war, I hadn't seen a planet-sized ship orbit bombard another planet before.

"Avery, coordinate with whatever is left of our forces. Mongul doesn't seem to be discriminating," I ordered as I marched towards the back of my ship, hitting the opening sequence. A forcefield appeared to act as an airlock. "After we beat him, we're going to have a very small chance of getting back to strength before the rest of the galaxy tries to take Thanagar." I reached out with my ki sense, but I found nothing. I was too far out. That would change soon enough.

I didn't wait to hear his response, knowing I could trust Avery to get the job done. As the doors opened, I let myself get sucked into the vacuum of space. I didn't bother with a mask. I didn't need to. But I did take out a visor to stay in touch and get any emergency calls. With my destination, I took off as I slipped into Stage Ten of the Wrath State.

Stretching out my awareness as far as I could, I raced towards the Warworld, wondering what I would find there. The name proved that it wasn’t just for show, because the moment I felt a powerful presence within the world, the world seemed to take notice of me. I saw a port open in the distance, and thousands of red drones poured out from it. In response, ki gathered in my hands.

As the drones fired their yellow energy blasts, which raced towards me like a solid wall, I formed a Fletcher blast in my hand and sent hundreds of smaller ki blasts towards the drones while with my other I formed a cone to protect myself. The yellow blasts slammed into my shield with physical force, and I worried for my soldiers that fought down below because a hit from them would have torn through their shields and armor like it was nothing.

My ki shield held strong, allowing me to blast forward, while the ki blasts I sent slipped through the wall of fire to slam into the drones. They didn’t move in a static pattern, so there was some intelligence behind their movement. An AI, perhaps. Either way, it didn’t matter. The ki blasts sped forward, and even as the drones tried to dodge, there were just too many for them to all have room.

As the first few layers were sacrificed, more drones flooded out from the Warwolrd while the remaining ones moved in to envelop me. I paid it no mind and continued forward, aiming for the entrance. The drones closed in, sealing off all hope of escape, and they seemed to be willing to destroy themselves to destroy me. They fired as one, leaving me no room to maneuver or escape, but I didn’t bother to. A ki bubble formed around me that I expanded rapidly.

It hit the drones with physical force, batting away their energy shots, making them disperse into the vacuum of space. The drones suffered more -- the drones were powerful, they seemed to be made with the idea of mass production in mind. Most of them exploded when the wall of blue ki slammed into them, setting off a chain reaction.

Regardless, it offered up a perfect opportunity as I continued forward. More drones poured from the ship from the opening, some of them taking potshots, but I dodged those with ease until I crossed the threshold and entered the Warworld. And inside, I saw countless drones. Millions of them. Each waiting to be deployed with racks sliding into place to replace those that I had destroyed.

As soon as my feet landed on a walkway, ignoring the drones, I felt the planet shake a bit. I stretched out with my awareness, the entire planet was now in my range, but I tried to look beneath to the powerful presence that had to be Mongul. His presence… There were precious few that I could compare it to. The closest was probably Captain Ginyu, which was a daunting prospect.

But he had to be defeated. One way or the other, Mongul had to fall this day. We could not lose Thanagar.

Beneath his presence, I found another that I recognized. Even if it was a thousand times stronger than I had ever felt before. Pressing my lips into a thin line, I gathered ki in my hands as I flew forward, blasting through a bulkhead door. The interior was a bit of a let down -- it looked like a normal ship with wide-open hallways. No different from my flagship. Minus the drones that seemed to come out of the walls -- smaller kinds, but in a narrow space, probably just as deadly.

I didn’t have time to waste on junk. I locked in on the powerful presence and guessed how much I would have to destroy to get to him. The ship was still planet-sized, meaning it could take minutes, but-

All of a sudden, I felt the presence rush down towards me. Bracing myself for a fight, I expected Mongul to greet me with grace, but instead, he crashed through the ceiling, tearing through the floor and flying right by me like a speeding bullet. A fraction of a second later, I saw a green blur race by as well, giving chase to Mongul. Broly.

I jumped down the hole as well, taking off at my top speed. I felt wind brush against my face as I heard a clap of thunder as I reached the other end of the tunnel that Mongul had made. He had crash-landed in a docking bay of sorts -- a wide-open room. Mongul was a sizable alien, I found. Tall, covered in a dark purple suit with some sort of mechanical aspect centered around his chest. His skin was yellow, and his eyes seem to be glowing red.

Despite getting knocked down here, he didn’t look injured-

“RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I heard Broly scream at the top of his lungs as he dove in, rushing to attack the alien. They clashed with explosive force -- any trace of form in Broly's attacks was long gone. He fought like a wild animal, just lashing out to make the enemy bleed. Mongul met Broly, on the defensive, but his posture was all wrong. He wasn't forced on the defensive. He was seeing what Broly could do.

Pain flooded my body as I slipped into Stage Fifteen. I couldn't afford to go anything less than all-out right out the gate. Destructo Disks formed in my hands as I flew into the fray. Throwing them both, they went wide while I went low, intending to fight around Broly. The action didn't go unnoticed by Mongul, who spared me a glance as he reacted.

He reached out with a hand and caught a Destructo Disk before effortlessly crushing it in his grip as if it were made of glass. As the ki faded, he seemed to give his attention to me as he accepted Broly's blows to his forearm. In return, I gave him my full attention. The action proved that he was undoubtedly the strongest foe I've ever fought before.

Closing in, I went to punch him in the face, only for a hand to appear to catch the blow. His hand engulfed mine, and beyond the hand, Mongul's red eyes met mine. "Prince Tarble."

Broly's barrage hesitated for the briefest of seconds, his gaze snapping up to me, but I didn't look away. "Mongul," I returned before ki gathered in my other hand. A Tyrant Lancer formed, but before I could unleash the attack into his chest, his hand gripped down on mine and slammed me into Broly with bone-shattering force.

We rode through the floor, and it felt like we were sent through another two before we stopped. Broly let out a small groan underneath me, having absorbed the worst of the impact. But both of us scrambled to our feet, knowing a blow was coming. Broly went left while I went right when Mongul came down. His hands were clasped behind his back, his shoulders squared -- he looked at me directly, choosing to ignore Broly.

"I was disappointed that you were not here when I arrived," Mongul spoke in a gravely tone.

I stood my ground, planning as I spoke. "I was wrapping up some odds and ends with the Khundian Empire," I answered. My scouter was useless at the moment -- both him and Broly were registered as ten million. My ki sense said that both were far beyond that. Broly wasn't attacking blindly, though his face was twisted into a snarl with his eyes blazing yellow. Either Broly had managed to retain control in higher stages of the Wrath State, or his power level had simply skyrocketed.

To that, Mongul smiled lightly. "They have been subjugated?" He asked, focusing on me. I… this wasn't a fight I could win. Not me. Right now, the gap was just too big. No… no matter how I looked at it, Broly was the key to winning the fight. I would act as support and buy Broly time to ramp up to a point that he could fight Mongul on equal footing.

"They have. The Khundian Empire is now a part of my empire," I answered. I looked at Broly, my eyes were hidden behind my visor. He was glaring bloody murder at Mongul, but he wasn't wearing his scouter. It probably was broken off. I just had to trust that Broly would follow my lead.

Mongul smiled, "My empire," He corrected. To that, my eyes narrowed dangerously. "I suppose I should thank you. It was your actions that allowed this golden opportunity to happen -- the defeat of the Green Lanterns was masterfully done. Now the checks and balances of the galaxy are no more. For this favor you have done me, I will allow you to submit to my rule."

The answer to that is obvious. "My submission isn't something so freely given," I refused the offer without a thought before I grabbed my visor and crushed it in my fist. "And you are without a doubt the most powerful enemy I've ever faced. Why would I rob myself of this fight?" The words were mostly for show, but there was a core of truth.

He was an enemy that was completely beyond me, but my Saiyan heritage sang for me to overcome him.

"A pity," Mongul responded before energy began to gather at his chest and that was the cue for the battle to resume. Broly threw himself at Mongul, making him shift to face him. A red beam fired from Mongul's chest and it slammed into Broly. His presence didn't vanish, but I did feel him get blasted through a wall as I rushed in.

While he was dealing with Broly, I went to punch him in the face -- noting whatever could be considered a weakness. The harness of the chest beam and he wore a silver headset. His connection to the Warworld. That, I knew came from whatever was left of my human memories.

My fist slammed into his face, and I felt my knuckles bust because it felt like I had hit a solid wall. Mongul's head bent back ever so slightly, a fraction of a fraction of an inch, but that was it. There was no damage. I felt his face shift under my knuckles, and I knew he would be smiling. I didn't say anything in favor of forming a ki lance with my other hand and went to plunge the tip of it into his eyes.

An old lesson I hadn't forgotten from the Saibamen. If you were fighting a stronger opponent, then hit them where they were weak. And the eyes were always a weakness.

Only the top of the lance never made it to his glowing red eyes before I felt something hit me in the side so hard and fast that I felt it nearly tear me in half. Instead, I folded around the blow before I was sent flying off, tearing through walls so quickly I couldn't tell how many I sailed through. I only came to a stop when I sank into a metal wall like it was made of taffy.

There was pain, but after so many years of ignoring it, I just focused on how the injuries would impact my fighting. My ribs were broken, so was my left arm, but my spine seemed okay because I had only a little trouble tearing through the wall of metal that I was buried in. My organs felt like they had been thoroughly tenderized, but they didn't feel ruptured. With my muscles tensed the right way, I could still fight with no issue.

"How curious," Mongul said, helping me out of the wall by wrapping his hand around my neck and pulling. "I had heard you were the strongest of your race, but that does not seem to be the case?" And that's why I destroyed my scouter.

As he pulled me out of the wall, a Tyrant Lancer formed in a hand that I slammed against his chest. Directly into the chest piece that he wore --, it sparked and I heard Mongul snarl at me before I felt myself fly through the air. Only this time, his hand was still on my neck. The answer clicked into place as I tore at his hand while I tried to fly away -- that device wasn't just a weapon, but the source of his flight.

Without his own method of flight, Mongul was at the mercy of gravity and momentum. As I pulled my head back, I felt his hand squeeze down to break my neck. Or to squeeze my head off. I reacted by pulling back with all of my strength, uncaring that his finger tore deep grooves in my neck and the blood that came spurting out.

It poured down my neck and my chest like a broken faucet, soaking my black undersuit and covering my necklace. Ki gathered in my hands before I sent a nameless attack at him, and this time I sent him through the wall. The moment I felt his ki fly away from me, a hand went to my throat.

Blood seeped between my fingers -- an artery had been torn, but I still had the pieces. Purple light shone from my hands, undoing the worst of the damage. I felt Mongul and Broly clash in the distance, so I was forced to keep moving. Where my hands had touched, purple light remained -- a Medicine Patch, made out of the same kind of light waves that the Medicine Ball was.

Flying through the hole I had blasted Mongul down, I saw him and Broly clash. Without his ability to fly, Mongul wasn't just on the defensive. A fist slammed into Broly, and I saw his head snap to the side while his arm had clear indents where it was broken, but unlike me he wasn't blasted away. He accepted the blow with a scream of rage before driving back in to return the blow a hundredfold. But, despite his strength, Broly didn't seem capable of harming Mongul. Not yet.

Mongul avoided getting blasted through a wall by digging his feet into the ground. The metal pinched where his feet made contact, warping as a furrow formed in the ground. He had ways to stay in the fight.

I flew into the fight, two ki spears materializing in my hands. Broly was knocked back with a blow, and I flew in to catch him. He slammed into me hard enough I thought he would go right through me, but he didn't and I had enough wind left in my lungs to get a message to him. "I'll aim for his headset. Distract him and we can space him."

Broly glanced at me, telling me that he wasn't all gone, and offered a curt nod. He flew forward with renewed strength, the two clashing as I took aim with my spears. His headset was a headband marked with three silver bands. I destroy that, he loses control of the Warworld, then we could just throw him out the airlock.

It wasn't the ending I wanted, but victory mattered more than a good fight. I threw one spear, aiming for his knees as I went wide, acting the part of normal support. Much like my Destructo Disk, the ki spear shattered on impact, his leg not even bending and he wasn't off the ground enough to affect his balance. Broly let out a roar, his fists flying in blurs against Mongul.

Then Broly paused his assault to form a ball of green ki above his head as he screamed in rage, and I took my shot while Mongul was distracted. My ki spear flew from my hand as Broly's unnamed ki blast launched itself at Mongul, the tip of my spear aimed at one of the silver disks. My aim was perfect, right on the mark…

Only it flew straight down when an oppressive force suddenly overwhelmed us. Much like my spear, I hit the ground hard enough to warp it, a low groan escaping me as I tried to push myself up. Broly's ki blast was also affected by the sudden force bearing down on us, but they were less so than I was. I saw Mongul bat the slowed green ki blast to the side before he backhanded Broly.

Mongul took a breath before he looked down at me, "Is this the extent of your strength? This is merely four hundred times normal gravity," he said, taking a step forward towards me, seemingly unencumbered by the intense gravity. I wish I could claim the same. Everything was so heavy, far beyond the limits I had pushed myself in my own gravity training. I couldn't even breathe. It was like my lungs didn’t have the strength to inflate and it felt like I was going to be crushed.

Even still, I managed to put my hands underneath me in an attempt to push myself up. My arms shook from the exertion, but I couldn't manage to push myself up a single millimeter. And when I felt Mongul's boot land on my back, it felt like a planet had fallen on me. A strangled gasp escaped me as I grit my teeth to find Broly back on his feet. He was struggling with the gravity as well, but with each step he took, he seemed to get used to it.

Broly's presence swelled with power faster than I could possibly believe. Veins bulged in his neck and forehead, his eyes blazing yellow and his expression was a savage snarl that looked so very out of place on him. "I've had enough!" Broly shouted at Mongul, who spared him a glance as he reached down to pick me up by the back of my neck. The action… I was lucky my spine was okay, or I would have been ripped in half because of the gravity.

I was still channeling Stage Fifteen. Anything less and I would die.

"I've had enough of people like you that think war is something good! That killing millions of people with no mercy is okay just because they’re an enemy!” Broly screamed, trembling with rage. “I've had enough. I’m going to destroy you!” Broly snarled the vow. I couldn't even raise my head to look at Broly, the gravity was too much for me.

Damn it all. I forced ki to flow to my hand, but even such a small amount of it felt impossibly heavy. One way or the other, I had to get out of the situation, so I forced myself to channel more ki for when the time came.

Mongul chuckled, “Of the two, you are by far the more interesting one. Very well. You wish to destroy me? Then allow me to respond in kind,” Mongul said, his grip shifting a bit before Broly launched himself at us. It was impossible for me to tell what Mongul had planned, but I didn't care to find out either. The ki I gathered slammed into the ground, tearing it out from underneath Mongul and me. With the increased gravity, we shot down like a speeding bullet, and that was enough for me to try to escape. As we fell through the floor, the gravity lessened a noticeable amount -- it had been localized to that room.

I flipped, tearing myself from Mongul’s grip to throw myself back into the fight, but Mongul seemed to have other plans. “I’ve lost interest in you, Prince Tarble. Such a disappointment,” he informed before he grabbed me by the chest faster than I could hope to react. I knew what was coming next, my ribs screaming from the pressure, but I grit my teeth and pushed through. I had to do something to better Broly’s chances of victory.

As he threw me to the ground, likely to stomp on me to death, I sent a ki blast towards his face. Aimed at the circlet on his head. Ki washed over it, but it was impossible to tell if I had managed to destroy it because the next moment I was gone. He threw me against the ground, and I tore right through it.

I managed to keep my eyes open, wanting to see my end. I shot through the ground like wet tissue paper, but we had been incredibly close to the edge of the planet when the fight began. In a split second, I tore free of the outer shell of the planet, feeling every wall between the start to the end. Mongul… was stronger than I could have possibly imagined, my attempts at flight to stop myself couldn’t do a thing to change my momentum -- The planet Thanagar was at my back since I didn’t see it, so I would at least be hitting something.

The vacuum of space was quickly left behind, replaced by an incredible heat. My undersuit was being burnt away, flames licking at me as I re-entered the planet's atmosphere. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs were screaming for air, but I lacked the strength to so much as take in a breath. Even still, my mind was clear. I knew the situation I was in -- I was one wrong move from certain death. Or, rather, if I didn’t make the right move then I was dead.

It was impossible to tell how fast he threw me. Only that I had only a split second until impact, so I did the only thing I could do. I channeled to my back, forming a shield to absorb some of the blow. I pushed everything that I had into it, thickening it as much as I possibly could and then I dug deep. I pulled at the well of power of the Oozaru transformation, trying to strengthen my body as much as possible.

Pain racked my body for just a moment, but only for a moment because I slammed into Thanagar’s surface and everything went black.