Going Native: Sense of Challenge (ch. 48) (Patreon)

This is the first time in a long time I haven't been happy with a Going Native chapter. It feels like it's pure exposition and set up. I think I was a bit too ambitious in doing this storyline in just 4 chapters, but it is what it is. 

One more chapter and a new arc begins. One that really starts to delve deep into the DC elements of the setting.

...

A video played on a tablet, showing me the POV of a Cooler-force soldier. They moved through a familiar setting of the ruins of a once-great city -- rubble and broken buildings covered the streets and they moved through the shattered remains of stores that once inhabited those buildings. The video was short, cutting right to the chase of why it was being shown to me. As the squad moved through a building, they stumbled across what appeared to be a large soap bubble floating in a doorway. 

The squad hesitated, the squad leader checking back for thoughts and opinions on what the bubble was. He received puzzled shrugs in response. Cautiously, he approached the bubble while the POV I watched was of his back. Like an untrained idiot, which the soldier was, he reached out to the bubble with a hand and tried to pop it. 

Instead, the moment the bubble made contact with his hand, it surged forward. The man screamed as everything that went inside of the bubble was liquified -- flesh, bone, metal, and plastic, and it expanded to contain the red slush that once was a person. The bubble quickly overtook his arm, then expanded down his torso -- it might have expanded more if the other soldiers hadn't started shooting. Plasma struck the bubble, making it pop. In turn, a red mist exploded out from the bubble, flooding the room. 

Coughing and gagging emerged from the speakers of the tablet as the squad screamed as they died, their gas masks and safety equipment proving ineffectual against the mist. 

"Another new weapon," I said, my lips pressed together into a thin line as I slid to an autopsy report. The corpses looked like they had been eaten with acid, stripping flesh down to the bone but not evenly. And not cleanly. Their armor was fused to the bodies, bonded to them as both body and armor had been broken down. Without the video, I could have guessed that they had died a bad death. 

"So it seems. Our current safety equipment won't be enough. We'll require a complete overhaul since the Reach has made extensive deployments of these bubbles," a general in the Cooler-force said. "They've covered strategic planets in them so full-scale invasions will have to be delayed." 

Delayed. I was growing to hate that word. 

"It'll be expensive-" the general warned, ready to make his case, but I cut him off. 

"Dig in, but don't advance any further. We can't afford to give up the ground we've lost," I ordered, flicking a hologram onto the projected that displayed the current progress of breaking the Shield Wall. It was more than just Shield Worlds -- they utilized planets and asteroids to cushion the Wall. A string of hundreds of Shield Worlds with thousands of planets. The current front I was dealing with was highlighted -- dozens of planets that I intended to turn into a staging ground.

"And the safety equipment?" The general questioned, accepting the order with too much ease. 

In response, I showed him a video on the projector of a battle with those same bubbles littering about. They were dangerous to be certain, but not dangerous enough I would have to spend billions of credits completely revamping the Cooler-force's armor. And who knew how much of that money would be lost in unworthy pockets. 

"The Reach soldiers are unaffected by the bubbles,' I said, showing a Reach soldier walking through the bubble with no hesitation. "The reason they can is because of a thin polymer that acts as a solution to the intense acid. Weapons and countermeasures are already being deployed," I informed him, watching his expression carefully. His eyes tightened and his lips twitched. 

Another general trying to profit from the war. 

Was I the only one trying to end the war? 

"You have your orders, general. Dig in and wait. When the time comes, you'll be informed." I told him, keeping my voice level. 

"As you say, Commander Tarble,” The general said with a small bow before the hologram of him winked out of view. Only then did I let myself release a small frustrated sigh as I left the small shuttle that served as my current quarters. There wasn’t much in it -- a tank for me to sleep in, a hologram projector, and a chair for me to hit on. It wasn’t much, but it was all that I needed. 

I stepped outside of my ship to see a vast crater that had once been a city. A crater that I created in my opening moment of being on this planet. A small bubble shield that was just large enough to cover my ship protected me from the elements that swirled outside. Of all the worlds I had fought on in the past decade, the one I was currently on was the worst. It looked like it was ripped straight out of hell. 

The sky was on fire. Heavy red flames surged and twisted at the sky above, raining down black ash onto the ground below. The planet was devoid of life -- the Reach poisons in the air did that, then a decade of pure death and slaughter on unimaginable scales turned it into a scene out of a human nightmare. Crashed ships littered the horizon, some older than others, and the only way to tell the difference was the state of the corpses around them. 

“Bardock, come in,” I said, securing my mask to my visor and connecting it to a tank filled with oxygen. I took out a capsule and sealed away my ship, and then I sealed away the energy projector. The elements hit me at one -- the air was boiling hot, enough so that I decided that it would be best to take this planet by myself with the aid of one other. Tens of thousands of lives would be wasted if they fought here. 

“This place is a time-waster,” Bardock remarked, sounding like he was in the middle of a battle. I reached out with my ki sense, my range has grown considerably in recent times. It wasn’t enough to encompass a planet yet, but I was nearing the halfway point on small planets like this. Which was still thousands of miles in every direction. 

I felt Barock’s presence, a great big flame that stood out that much more considering how devoid of life the planet was. 

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. I thought as much when I read the reports about the drastic changes to the atmosphere in the past year as we approached the planet. There were significant forces placed on the planet but the atmosphere was so inhospitable that it would need expensive specialty equipment to fight here, or a high enough power level. Meaning, it was practically tailor-made for me to decide that I would handle this planet myself. “The Reach knows about the budget.” 

It was a secret that I had been trying to keep under wraps -- a condition that Lord Cooler gave us was that we weren’t allowed to go over a budget that he had established. To ensure his profit margins. And the budget was… considerably less than what we needed to break the Shield Wall. 

War was expensive. I had never cared about money, or really understood the point of it, for the longest time. It was just a thing that other aliens cared about. Now it was something that I was forced to care about. Everything seemed to cost money -- rations, equipment, repairs, and so on. Individually, it didn’t cost that much, but multiplied by billions? Trillions upon trillions of credits. 

The budget I was allocated was in the trillions. More money than most people saw in a thousand lifetimes, and it was barely more than a fraction of what I needed to wage war the way I wanted. The way I was used to. 

“He’s predicting my movements,” I said, flying towards Bardock, only to pause when PL readings began to appear on my scouter. Mechanical soldiers judging by the lack of ki signatures. And they numbered in the tens of thousands. Looking up, I saw their drop pods race down from the sky, and whatever progress we made in taking the planet diminish. 

Another thing I wasn’t used to. Reinforcements. The Reach fought tooth and nail for every inch of ground we took and they did whatever they could to take it back. Before, the garrisons and fleets were isolated. When we pushed a front, they retreated to gather their strength elsewhere. 

“You are pretty predictable,” Bardock remarked, but the tone he said it with told me it wasn’t a criticism. He didn’t know my plan yet, but he knew that I had one. “I’m guessing as soon as we take this planet, another one is going to be terraformed just for you. Might even wrap a bow around it.”

I launched myself towards the reinforcements, black ash marking my trail. Ki glowed in my hands as I eyeballed their reentry trajectories. The ki blasts launched from my hands, hundreds of them firing every second. Explosions rang out as I carved a path through their decent, destroying hundreds, then thousands. But I knew that it was just a drop in the bucket. 

The Reach was trying to tie me down here. All across the planet, there would be drop pods. Millions upon millions. If we let them stay, content to simply park a fleet in orbit and advance, those robots would build and salvage the planet until they built an army and fleet and made that known when it was least convenient. They had to be destroyed, utterly, and quickly. 

With just two people. 

I was fast. And strong. Faster and stronger than I ever have been before, but until it was just me or with one other facing an entire planet alone… they had never seemed so large before. 

"Hopefully," I said, flying forward as I wreaked havoc on the enemy. The robots broke like glass underneath my attacks, so very fragile but just rough enough that ordinary soldiers would struggle with them. Worse, I couldn't just blast them all away because each busted robot was salvage money. "We have more incoming." 

"Joy," Bardock muttered, sounding like he thought it was anything but. "I have to admit, when I first heard we were going to break the Shield Wall, I was expecting something more than spending a year and a half destroying useless trash." He grumbled without any real heat. Mostly because he knew he was preaching to the choir. 

"The Reach has limitless money, so I figure we should let them throw it at us," I offered. It wasn't going to excuse the lack of powerful opponents, but it was a gesture to show our suffering wasn't without meaning. We dig in, let the Reach throw themselves at us, then we sell the scraps. 

It was because of that method that we hadn't gone over budget yet. That, and liberal use of the Ginyu-force. My personal funds were funneled into the war, and some of my planets had been terraformed so they were making money as well. With all of that, we had about half of what we needed. 

"Hm. A Saiyan credit-pincher. Guess it had to happen eventually," Bardock remarked, a grin in his voice. I found myself smiling as well. "I just finished up on my end. I'm headed your way," he informed. I nodded, knowing it was because he wanted to ask something that couldn't be spoken about over coms. I redoubled my efforts in destroying the countless robots that rained down from the sky. 

The Reach were real pains about it too. Instead of sending them by ship, they launched them from a nearby station or planet and let them travel the distance on thrusters. So there wasn't a convenient way to take them all out at once. 

It took Bardock over half an hour to reach me. The planet was large, and we were fast, but there was so much ground to cover. I never knew how useful ground troops were at locking down the enemy until I didn't have any. Or a unit specifically picked by me for their diversity in strength that allowed them to punch out of their weight class. Or a team of powerful individuals used to working together. 

I flew above a world of destruction that had seen countless battles to the point that the devastation I rained upon the Reach soldiers blended in so seamlessly it was like it had been there all along. Bardock joined me as we flew underneath a sky of fire. I sealed away my scouter into a capsule -- a risk to go radio silent. I was temporarily a High Commander of the Cooler-force, and every time I looked away for a split second the entire invasion plan got kicked in the teeth. 

"It's been a year and a half, Tarble. How long are we going to wait?" Bardock questioned as we flew. And despite being a year and a half, it never got less weird having him ask me what we were doing. It felt completely backward. "I know you don't want to throw lives away, but-" 

"The mission, the team, then pride. I remember," I cut him off. "And it's not just because I don't want to throw away lives. We can't afford to." 

Bardock let out a huff. "You're not getting annoyed because you at least get a challenge out of it. Or are you telling me you aren't enjoying the restrictions placed on you?" 

I couldn't.

"It's different than when I'm leading my own troops. The tactics I used don't really work the same way, so I have to find new ones. And with the budget and the trash equipment…," I trailed off with a shrug. "A Koter seems like he's not completely incompetent like all the other Reach aliens I've encountered." 

Admittedly, it was only two directly -- the alien I had captured on Rench and the alien in the Prototype Scarab. But neither of those two had really impressed me. So far, Koter seemed good at slowing me down but not stopping me. 

"Point still stands. You're the only one having any fun," Bardock remarked. "But from what I hear, there's nothing but delays. Do you have a time frame for how long we're going to be stuck here?" 

"Got somewhere to be?" I questioned, sending Bardock a look. I guess I couldn't blame him for being a little impatient. It wasn't like I hadn't asked him to be patient for over a year now. If anything, it did him credit that he was only now starting to pester me. 

"My place as the fourth-strongest Saiyan is being threatened," Bardock informed. "You're sitting all comfortable at number two, but Tora is riding my ass. I'm not ready for all the crap he's going to give me if he becomes stronger than me." 

Oh. Well, that explained it. Tora was currently the seventh strongest Saiyan, just behind King Vegeta, but just weaker than Mom. Another few years of fighting weak opponents and Bardock could find himself sliding back down that list. Even if it was fake -- only a handful of people knew that Broly was number one rather than me. 

"Fair enough," I allowed. "But I'm playing Koter as much as he's playing me. He's focused on tying me up and slowing our advance.  And as far as he’s aware, it’s working,” I explained. Unsurprisingly, Bardock was quick on the uptake. 

“So you’re using his focus on you against the guy. I’m guessing that the delays in the invasion are accounted for then?” Bardock questioned, earning a nod from me. It might not be that he was focused on me specifically, but he understood that my squad and the Ginyu squad were unquestionably the most powerful active members fighting on the front line. 

However, we could only be in one place at once. Even if I assigned each member to a planet, it wouldn’t be enough. The only one that could destroy the Reach faster than they could reinforce themselves alone was Burter. If they were gathered in one place, it would be easy. But the Reach knew that, so they were scattered across a planet. 

A ghost of a smile tugged at my lips that Bardock couldn't see. "Maybe not as much as some people think,” I admitted to him. War -- beyond the immediate battle and front line you fought on -- all came down to clashing lines. The Reach and the Cooler-force. The Shield Wall was a line that hadn’t been pushed in a considerable amount of time. The line was reinforced and established. 

To push the line, first, you had to put yourself in a position to push. 

Bardock let out a chuckle as we flew, heading towards our next destination. “You really have changed, Tarble,” he said after a lengthy silence. “The others said that you had after I left, but whenever I thought of you, I always pictured you as the kid that would sit alone in the hanger waiting for a mission to start.”

A pang of pride filled my chest at the words. Perhaps it was arrogant to say, but… I had changed a lot over the years. My human memories were laid to rest, I became a commander, then a general, and now I was a temporary High Commander. I was the second strongest saiyan alive, only behind Broly and the margin had closed considerably. 

Comparing to where I started… 

"Thanks," I said, pretending that the words didn't mean the world to me. I was who I was thanks to Bardock -- he was something that I had to aspire to be. It was his shoes that I had to fill. I swallowed thickly before clearing my throat, "We should check on Broly to see how he's holding up." I decided to change the subject. Bardock grunted in response and I reached out with my ki sense. 

I found Broly's presence easily. I adjusted my flight path and long before I saw him, I saw evidence of his fight. Larger craters in the ground, demolished terrain, and countless robots littered the spaces in between. Flashes of light marked his ki attacks as he utterly annihilated the reinforcements. Too thoroughly, meaning that we wouldn't be able to sell the leftovers for scrap, but I had anticipated that. 

Broly darted around, a strained smile on his face as he laid waste to everything around him. Broly fought like an unstoppable force of nature. Ki formed in his hands and was unleashed in devastating explosions that whipped up the dust, sand, and ash that covered the dead planet. He didn't use a single technique, but as powerful as he was against his opponents, he didn't need to. 

"He's doing better," Bardock observed as we both watched Broly's rampage. 

Against nonliving opponents, he was. I didn't correct Bardock, but I couldn't help but to notice it. I had kept a very close eye on Broly's progress. His growth rate was utterly insane. I had made massive jumps in power, but they paled in comparison to the strength Broly seemed to gain by training and sparring. 

On paper, I was the strongest Saiyan alive with a power level of a hundred thousand. My largest jump in power came after I survived the wound that Lord Cooler gave me. Even my training was more effective. I didn't know how strong Vegeta was exactly, but the last I had heard was that he was pushing sixty thousand about a year ago. 

But that title rang hollow when Broly's presence washed over me in waves. 

"And he's stuck at stage four," Bardock muttered in disbelief, with a shake of his head. The others had reached stage five or six, with a few others reaching stage seven or eight, but Broly was stuck at stage four. 

Part of it was the secrecy around him. He couldn't practice as often and I was currently the only one that could stop him. 

Because Broly was the undisputed champion of the Sayian race. Before his growth spurt, Broly had been around a hundred and seventy-five thousand. After? He was nearing three hundred thousand already. 

"It's unavoidable," I agreed. "But he's stronger than me already in stage four. The only way I could overpower him would be to push myself to stage fifteen. And I'm hoping to keep that a secret for as long as I can. And you never know who might be listening," I added, a hand drifting up to my necklace.

"Pretty sure the Reach already know about pushing it beyond stage ten," Bardock remarked before he sent me a sideways glance. "But, I suppose that you have a lot more enemies than just the Reach." 

"You could say that," I agreed with a slight smile. 

"Lucky." 

I laughed at that. It felt good.

…

“You’re having fun with this,” Sousk noted from behind him, making Koter glance over his shoulder to see his wife standing there. Unannounced. Someone had been abusing their newfound authority with her Ve’sk last name. 

Koter looked down at the reports detailing Prince Tarble’s progress. He had never expected to confront the saiyan in such a manner, but it truly was a stroke of luck that he was. The Prince was placed in High Command of the front that covered the Shield Wall and he was given direct control of all the Cooler-force personal and equipment assigned to that front. 

And so began a game that perhaps he had been enjoying too much. 

“I am,” Koter admitted honestly, a rare luxury for a member of his species. “Prince Tarble is determined to make progress. It’s more engaging than waiting for Lord Cooler to grow bored and demolish the Shield Wall himself.” His wife strode into the room, standing next to him as she took in the information. Thousands of planets, more systems, and forces that numbered in the tens of billions. 

“I meant you’re enjoying your little duel of tactics with the Prince,” Sousk clarified, proving that she could see right through him. It was a disconcerting feeling, but not an unwelcome one. Just different. “If you were taking this seriously, then you would have killed him already.”

Koter smiled, “You’re making the same mistake that I did. Underestimating the prince of the saiyans.” Sousk gave him a flat look with a teasing quirk of her lips. 

“Ah, you’re referring to your Great Blunder,” she realized, making Koter let out a small huff. The loss of one production planet hardly deserved the title of Great Blunder, capital letters. But he supposed he was hardly in a position to argue that point. 

“Yes, my Great Blunder,” Koter decided, accepting the name. “I thought the saiyans were beneath my notice, and for it, they got away with a member of our species and countless production secrets.” With a hand, Koter rolled back the battleplans to the start of Prince Tarble’s campaign. 

A dark purple layer emerged, highlighting the rather considerable progress he had made considering his limitations and the fact before his arrival, at most a handful of planets would be traded back and forth. There was a reason why Prince Tarble had been placed in charge, and he had proved it thoroughly. 

“He’s made progress,” Sousk allowed, not seeing the pattern. Koter didn’t blame her like that. For years, Koter had studied Bardock using his slaves in the Board of Directors. Every mission that Bardock had ever gone on was studied and dissected. It even inspired some of his own strategies. And, like birds of a feather, Koter saw the same inspiration in all of Tarble’s strategies. 

Which was why he could see the pattern. 

“He’s created staging grounds,” Koter explained, highlighting the pattern he found. A zigzag pattern across dozens of planets. “Three of them are behind our lines. Isolated and under threat of constant elimination if it weren’t for Captain Ginyu, Jerice and Guldo, Shugesh, and Roccome.”

Sousk gave him a cautious look, “That’s because you isolated them,” she ventured. And he had. He identified the pattern, what missions Prince Tarble would send them on, and set a trap to ensnare his most useful pieces on the board. For months, six extremely powerful individuals worth dozens of armies were stuck on planets. And Koter made sure that they stayed there.  

“I did. I had assumed it was my own doing, but now I suspect that Prince Tarble is laying a trap. Six incredibly powerful people stuck behind enemy lines. When times with a convenient push from these points,” Koter continued, excitement in his tone as he highlighted a dozen planets. Some, the Cooler-force had simply stopped. Koter had assumed that Prince Tarble ordered them to stop to avoid being cut off and budget restraints… now Koter wasn’t so certain. 

“He builds up his strength and does a concentrated push here, here, and here. The six that are ‘contained’ on those planets push. The initial push would stall -- our technology is too advanced for what they can through at us. Which is why those three planets act as breaks -- the push could gather itself and follow the line those six would carve through our defensive lines.” Koter could see it. They would hit the Shield Worlds, and with those six leading the way, the Cooler-force would be able to break the Shield Wall. 

Which left Prince Tarble, Bardock, Matillo, and Burter unaccounted for. Four very dangerous variables to leave unaccounted for. 

Sousk looked at him, then the hologram, trying to see what he did. Sousk was by no means a poor admiral. Quite the opposite. But she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see how the battle lines would develop over time as Prince Tarble put his pieces into place. He could. Because he had relentlessly studied his enemy and learned from them. 

Prince Tarble was surprisingly patient and letting his strategy develop slowly and organically. Loose enough to account for variables but tight enough that there was a clear path to follow. All Koter had to do was follow that path and he could predict his enemy’s next move. 

“Then we circumvent it. We sacrifice the planets, take those few out, and his strategy amounts to nothing.” It was telling that she jumped straight to sacrificing planets to eliminate those threats. Countless projects were in development, but the Reach hadn’t found the answer they were looking for to deal with Frieza. It was grating because they absolutely did have the answer. 

But as high as he had climbed, Koter was not yet at the top. And those at the top had decided Frieza’s death. And Lord Cooler. And King Cold. And every single Board of Director and all their most powerful fighters. 

A singular Scarab of untold power that would restore the glory of the Reach empire. A symbol of their strength. A symbol that would then turn on the galaxy that dared mock them. 

The ones that controlled the Reach… they wanted to conquer the galaxy. They made him waste his incredibly valuable time drawing up plans to accomplish that goal when they were on the cusp of annihilation. The words had burned when he was forced to thank them. 

“We could,” Koter agreed. “But I doubt it would work. Prince Tarble wouldn’t put them in such a precarious position unless they had a way out. There’s a very real possibility that we’ll just destroy the planet, they’ll survive and we lose what advantage we have with his plan.” 

Then he turned to his wife, “Are things progressing well on your end?” To that, she smirked. 

“The ghost fleet remains anonymous. There have been no notable difficulties on my end,” Sousk confirmed. That was good. 

Koter turned his attention back to the hologram, seeing how the front line would develop. 

“Then it’s a race to see who’s plan finishes first.”