Brother by Rick Spiff A S.E.F.U. Project ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode 9: Enter the Massive Offensive ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- James' blood was singing. The wind, sweet and thick with the smells of life and death, slid around him at he crested the rocky hill. Vegeta was a half-pace behind him, flying with his arms outstretched. Oddly, the pose reminded him of a kid playing airplane. Had he been oblivious to the several thousand alien warriors a dozen paces behind him, he might have said it was a beautiful day. No beautiful days were filled with this much violence. At the top of the hill, Ed and Nappa stood. Waiting. James let off his special technique, Vegeta stopping steady in air at the same time. They turned to face the Skeemdian horde, now only a few feet away. Blades wielded by the six-limbed monsters seemed to glint evilly as they closed the few remaining inches to their targets. The sound was bone-chilling. James could see some ten thousand troops charging the hill, filling the next two valleys, annihilating anything in their path as they chased the group to ground. The Skeemdians were practically on top of them now. A blade whizzed by James' face and time seemed to slow. Like the cresting of a wave so large and devastating that it is not seen until it is upon you, the ki that the Saiyajins and humans had been building up burst forth. If the Skeemdians' facial expressions had any meaning to James, he would say that the entire lot of them looked like a rat that had just bit into a lamp cord, realizing a split-second before it is flash-fried that the power was still on. A thousand points of light suddenly appeared around each of the fighters. "KISSES FROM HEAVEN, YOU BASTARDS!!!" Ed yelled. Committed to their charge, the Skeemdians couldn't stop, even as those at the front desperately tried to reverse their course. The one that had missed James on his last swing was cut to pieces before his blade could be brought around. The points of light around the four condensed and shimmered as if they were alive before shooting into the sky with an electric scream that beat on eardrums like a rain of rusty nails. The Skeemdians in the front rows were pushed back by white-hot lances of pure ki generated by Vegeta, stalling the front lines while their attack continued through the air. The points spread out as they reached the apex of their tight parabolic arcs, accelerating before they rained down upon thousands of Skeemdian troops like brimstone. Within half a second, their screams went from triumphant and exultant, to pained and panicked. Terror swept through the soldiers like a plague. "HIT 'EM!" James howled, already charging up his second attack. The first was a remarkable tool for distracting, but now it was time for the crushing blow. The second attack was a more generic ki 'blast' that could kill a Skeemdian if it struck them full on. It was their ace in the hole. The Skeemdians had put down their energy weapons, finding their opponents more or less unarmed. If the four started pulling off plasma weapon-like attacks, the Skeemdians would damn their efforts to conserve energy and swarm the fighters. So, the four would simply hit them so fast they wouldn't have a chance to respond. Vegeta was nearly exploding with power, his aura buzzing about him, a nimbus of pure energy. Further down, Nappa was emulating his partner with his own storm of energy. To the other side of James, Ed was also mimicking the power building exercise. They finished but a few seconds later, as the Skeemdians were finding that the flashy light-show that had just hit them had done little more than mildly injure. Confusion mixed with the bitter taste of fear, leaving the army still frozen in it's tracks even as more lethal attacks were prepared and leveled at them. Without ceremony, the four raised their arms towards the enemy, brief flashes of light illuminating their faces as small balls of energy were rapidly formed in their palms and sent rocketing towards the alien troops. Each globe of energy detonated like a pound of C4 on contact, decimating the Skeemdian army soldier by soldier. James and Ed fired dozens upon dozens of shots into the nearest waves of troops, letting off the energy blasts as fast as they could form them. The Saiyajins did the same, but in ten times the volume as they cleared out the back ranks. The four beaten and bruised warriors stoically stood their ground, faces taunt and determined. Blast after blast rocked the battlefield, the stacco string of explosions blending into one ferocious torrent of concussive noise that echoed off of the distant cliffs. The ground was being re-shaped by the second. A crater here, a pile of bodies their, all shifting and flying about; bone and dirt and blood and rocks mixing together in a whirlwind of destruction. No stone was left un-scorched as the sky darkened from the debris hurled into the air. The Plot fell to the 4,365th blast, never to rise again. The advancing horde was not being driven back. It was being annihilated. ---------- Explosion landed on top of explosion. Limbs were thrown around as easily as rocks. Many of the advancing Skeemdians, realizing the danger, broke ranks, only to run into more deadly attacks. Some tried to out-flank the blasts, but couldn't outrun them. One Skeemdian, reaching the edge of the far right echelon, had his legs blasted off. The severed limbs left so suddenly that he didn't feel any pain until he stopped and looked to see why he wasn't moving forward. Some of the attacking solders stoically stood their ground, watching the shining orbs of death descend upon them, knowing that after this moment, there would be nothing. Many of the brave ones crouched and charged for their enemy, believing that could wear down and eventually overwhelm these living monsters, the Gods of Destruction given flesh. Had they the energy to speak, they would have been chanting "nothing is impossible." But there was nowhere they could run, nothing that could hide them, and no mercy to save them. The Saiyajins held nothing but contempt for the Skeemdians, which they killed as mercilessly as one slaughters insects. The humans offered them only callus hatred. James and Ed were the architects of humankind's vengeance. *We have lost too much,* James mused. "and come to far to stop." It may have been a small battle on a small planet with small strategic importance. It could have been a tiny meaningless rock in the middle of a vast, unimportant nowhere. But James and Ed choose to stand now, with the power that they wielded, and cut down their enemies. It wasn't a war for them any longer. They had no lands to win back. It was extermination. It was calculated vengeance. It was a slaughter, a rampage. James didn't know if it had a point. He didn't care anymore. There was, quite simply, nothing for him to return to. There's no reason to stop, no reason to hold back, no reason to think that he could lie down and let it be, because there was no place to lie down. And standing there amongst comrades, fighting for the basic right to live, he felt alone and aimless as he never had before. Back on earth he'd fought with purpose. Purpose had given him need. Need had driven everything. Need moved purpose forward, purpose led to goal, and that was it. But what about the Skeemdians? What was the goal? They vowed to never stop fighting. To bring peace of any kind to race he didn't know and wasn't brother to meant genocide. After that, there wasn't an earth to go back to. *Need: Survive this battle, fight others.* *Purpose: Defeat Skeemdians and reach their home planet.* *Goal: Kill all Skeemdians.* *Hmph.* He let knives and guns and body parts bounce off of him, uncaring what debris was spread where. *Kill all Skeemdians.* Lacking another outlet for the feeling inside, he poured his heart into creating the blasts, and with it, felt something _give_ inside. His heart went from racing to screaming. The energy in his hands doubled, the glowing orbs coming out faster and cackling with deadly energy, as if his thoughts and emotions had been given physical form to step forth and fight his battles for him. Perhaps they would now fight on his side. ---------- If they had any future in this battle, it was one moving forward. Abruptly their reign over the field of battle ended, and the four moved down the destroyed slope, wandering into the leveled waste. Skeemdian bodies were piled ten and twenty deep. Some of the remains were scorched black. A severed arm here, a digit there. Some body parts were black from their own blood mixed with the volcanic soil. It was impossible to tell where the Skeemdians ended and where Korindoth began. Even the craters were lined with bodies. A squad of Marines could spend a month here and not come close to figuring out the body count. Their best, and Ed's only answer, would have been "lots." The stench was beyond horrible. It crawled up the nose, crept down the throat, and sank into the skin, invading their bodies with the tenacity of a living thing. Ed knew, the very instant they stepped off their perch at the top of the volcano, that they would never be completely free of that smell. The Saiyajins marched forward with no visible change. Perhaps the didn't care. Perhaps they had seen enough death. Ed had met soldiers of Tera Cor who were like that. You could hack of a limb and they wouldn't care. To them the world had lost definition. There was no tomorrow, no yesterday, and above all else, no today. Only war remained in their minds, clouding out all other thoughts. Where Nappa and Vegeta like them? Were their entire lives dedicated to one unending war? Ed felt that was where he was headed. He wasn't there yet. As he marched over the charred earth and countless dead bodies, he knew he was headed there fast. Wits still about him, standing on the edge, looking over, inches from falling in. He'd leap in headlong if it would bring back his friends, his family, his planet earth... and here he was prepared to erase and entire _race_ for doing the same to his. Tit for tat. Eye for eye. Regardless of his feelings on the matter, he kept marching forward. For now there was Korindoth. Tomorrow they could work on the next battle, and after that the next, and so on. But he knew, in this field of death so plain and obvious and extreme that it was almost tangible... he knew that they had to remember the big picture. They had to remember this to know when to hold back, when to stop. A lone Skeemdian came charging at James from behind one of the many indistinct piles of rubble/bodies. It was moving too fast to track with his human vision, but James stopped it with a well-placed knee. A quick flip landed James behind the Skeemdian and left the beast wide open for Vegeta's quick ki blasts that blew a nice hole right in the center of it's chest. *I will remember everything.* Ed silently vowed. *Everything.* And the Skeemdians' backup began their attack. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preview of the next episode: The plan is a proven success, but will it be enough? Are the Skeemdians going to fall to this final assault, or is the final chapter of James and Ed's stories about to be written?! Find out in the next exciting Episode of Brother! NEXT EPISODE: Enter the Reinforcements Author's note: Yes, it's been two years since I got an episode together, but a lot has happened in the meantime. Obviously I ain't stopping until this thing is done! See ya next time! Started: 5/20/03 First Draft: 5/19/05 Revised: