Wild Wasteland (OPEN TO 2 ONLY)

The desert was a lot closer to the terrain that Sheri was used to, by contrast to the frustrated Frozen who was exploring entirely new land. There were still notable differences. The wildlife, for instance, was a lot more forgiving than the Saiba-based madness that Sheri had to deal with for the past decade.

But if he was hoping for solitude, he was going to be disappointed.

Sheri was just one figure, and she wasn't flying through the air or anything so obvious. In fact, the woman was talking it slow and steady. Wearing the orange and brown fatigues that she preferred, she kept her power locked down tight and trudged on foot through the sand dunes, her rifle - a boxy, impressively technologically advanced example by the standards of this planet - slung over her shoulder.

A pair of binoculars hung around her neck, and the woman had wrapped a shawl about her head and face to help protect against the sand kicked up by the odd gust of wind. She'd been walking for hours, and she didn't have any intention of stopping any time soon.

Interim Command didn't want her getting involved with the trials and tribulations of this planet. She could understand that. But they also didn't want her collecting gear, and she needed to do that. Whatever Interim Command wanted, they hadn't been in the field for years. They didn't understand the realities of it. There was only so much control she got to exert. They also  didn't see that if she just let her skills atrophy completely, she'd die the moment she walked back into the Saiba Wastes. And she did mean to go back there, as soon as she was allowed to do so.

The sun beat down and the ground's constant, shifting movement beneath her feet worked to make every step more difficult than the last, and though it was a pale imitation of the land she had patrolled for so long, she felt a kind of reassuring familiarity to it. Keeping her senses alert, keeping her movement economical, weighing up the amount of water and supply she still had in her pockets before she'd be forced to retreat back to the comparative safety of her hotel - these were all pleasing mental exercises that let her feel some measure of control again.

Then she spotted the figure on the rocky outcropping in the distance. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes, and the Tuffle raised an eyebrow. An Arcosian, out here? Interesting. Squaring her shoulders, she changed course so that she could get closer to him. She'd had a roughly equal spread of positive to negative interactions so far. Besides. Someone out there was selling advanced interstellar metals to some crime lord or similar. Who knows what she might stumble across?

(Powerlevel 6000, Suppressed to 5, Wordcount: 466)

Sheri's eyebrow raised sharply when Frozen spoke to her like that. She had been greeted in a number of ways on this planet. Most of them had been badly. The Arcosian wasn't talking to her like she was a child, that was good, but she wasn't enthused at the haughty attitude displayed, either.

She'd never actually met an Arcosian before. She knew their reputation; they were supposed to be incredibly powerful. Apparently the strongest being in the galaxy was one of their own. But she'd been dealing with people infinitely stronger than herself for years. If he thought that he could intimidate her just because she was weak, well. He was talking to the wrong person.

Sheri's boots clomped to a halt, deliberately one pace after he had told her to stop, and she craned her neck upwards. She pulled her shawl to the side, showing her face. Those bright red eyes of hers stared up at the Arcosian as she took him in more closely; well. Made a show of it anyway. The binoculars were in fact much better, but she wanted him to see that she saw who and what he was and she wasn't scared.

"Could ask you the same question." She said, "You own this desert or something? Am I trespassing?"

Her tone said that she knew already that wasn't the case. Sheri had spent years in a very rigid command structure. She was used to obeying orders and respecting authority. But that was just the thing.

Frozen wasn't her authority.

The chain of command was an important thing. You didn't order people who weren't in your structure, and you didn't try to impose authority outside of areas where you held it. Not only that, but she was technically not on duty at all! She was supposed to be enjoying the fruits of all the sacrifices she'd made and be enjoying her time off.

And it irked her deeply that he'd try to command her. Where she chose to walk was her own business. Not his. Who the hell did he think he was to stand there acting as though she owed him a damn thing? If she wanted to walk through the desert for days on end, that was her own business, not his!

She was also trying to work out if this was, in fact, the guy she was looking for. There couldn't be that many people on the surface of this planet who could get their hands on large qualities of rare minerals. But an Arcosian? That definitely seemed like the sort of thing that they might be involved in, at least by reputation. They owned whole swathes of planets, didn't they? And she doubted that a guy as arrogant as this would care that much about the local laws.

Apparently he was more interested in trying to enforce his own.

(Wordcount: 478 / 944)

"If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't come at you head on. You even less than most."

The words were sullen, but truthful for that. She considered anything less than three on one odds against a Saiyan suicidal, and she preferred twice those numbers if she could get it. Against an Arcosian? By reputation each one of them was worth at least two Saiyans. The thought of the casualties that would inevitably rack up when trying to take on someone like that was enough to make her shudder. That might actually be one of the few times where destron felt like a necessary evil.

She folded her arms across her chest as she looked up at the much larger figure, uncowed. In some ways, even she was surprised at how calm she was in this moment. She'd had panic attacks just from casual interaction with Saiyans she had met on this place, or from the bizarre warzone she had strayed into. This guy was almost certainly the biggest direct threat she'd actually encountered here in fact - though she didn't have her scouter so she couldn't tell. But she wasn't scared at all.

Maybe she should be. Maybe it should frighten her that she wasn't.

"I am Captain Sheri Zveet, Squad 611, Tuffle Military." She said, "This isn't my home and I'm not here to kill anyone, Duke."

The way she said it, it was as though she considered Duke to be his name rather than his title. Truth be told, she considered all such 'noble' positions to be somewhat ridiculous; an uncivilised affectation from peoples across the galaxy who had yet to shed their backwards ways. Much like magic and superstition, the galaxy seemed full of people determined to hold on to outdated and outmoded concepts.

"This is training." She continued, "The gravity on this planet is much less than I am used to, and the terrain, even here, much more hospitable. I'm not intending to stay here forever, so if I want to keep my strength up, I need to put myself to the test every now and then. So far, this is about the best that I've found. I haven't had any luck locating a gravity chamber or similar that I could rent for a few hours, so I just have to make do with a few days out here."

She shrugged her shoulders, indicating that whilst this was an inconvenience, it was hardly an insurmountable one. She had, as she implied with her words, been through far worse.

"What're you visiting for? Business or pleasure?"

And that was the real question she cared about. She couldn't see any cargo containers or similar around, and it didn't seem like Frozen's outfit had any storage - not that she could see anyway - but that didn't mean he was innocent. It was still very possible he was her mysterious metal dealer. But if he was, she'd need help; Azuki at the very least, but probably even the two of them wouldn't be enough.

(Wordcount: 502 / 1446)

"Captain Zveet." Sheri corrected Frozen, sharply, after he called her 'Ms'. "If you want me to call you Lord, you can respect my title as well."

She didn't like this guy. Not one bit. And she was pretty bad at hiding her distaste. She'd not met many like him since she moved to the 611, but there were enough similar sorts in the military. Officers who had their place through birth and privilege. People who thought themselves superior to those under their command. As though happenstance or title meant anything when the chips were down.

She'd known Privates who were braver than Generals, and seen Captains go out with their hands clamped around the throat of the Saiyan who was killing them, to save the rest of their unit from having to deal with the rampaging monster themselves. She knew what command was about; it wasn't superiority. Command meant that you had the tactical wherewithal to keep your people alive and kill theirs. It didn't mean you were better than the rest of your unit.

But the further you got from the front lines, the more abstracted all that became, until you were flinging destron at battlefields you'd never set foot on and writing the casualty report up as 'acceptable losses' because your artillery position was off by a click and now you had to send a bunch of letters home to next of kin, trying to frame it as justified in any kind of way.

Her expression darkened considerably when he took up his stance, and she shook her head. "No."

And that was that. She had no intention of fighting him. Shooting the question at her like that had only hardened the growing knot of anger in the pit of her stomach about his attitude. But she wasn't some barbaric Saiyan about to fly off the handle and try to satisfy her anger in a pointless demonstration that would - no doubt - prove that she was right when she said she couldn't win in a straight up conflict.

"If you want to find people to fight, East City is good. There's plenty of locals who dedicate themselves to martial arts, and a few gangs who might be stupid enough to pick a fight with you out of bravado or boredom." She cast her eye around the area once more, just to check she hadn't missed anything, and then, satisfied, she started to move away.

"Good luck with your reckoning, my lord. I hope you get everything you deserve."

(Wordcount: 419 / 1865)

Ah, Earth. An underdeveloped planet filled to the brim with weak lazy humans that happened to also have the gall to look EXACTLY like the Terrans. It was a direct insult to his entire species but Maxis was above such things. It wasn't the fault of these aliens that they were born so fragile. He had only come here on behalf of his father, Gefhar, in search of his surrogate sister. Blume had wandered into trouble, AGAIN, on a solo mission and had apparently fled to Earth in an attempt to shake her pursuers off her trail. She had always been the brasher of the pair. Insisting on pulling jobs herself, targeting massive establishments, and always managing to trip the alarm bells on the Galactic Patrol's radar.

His goal here was rather simple. Find Blume, try and find some strong opponents to pass the time when NOT finding Blume, and leave. Earth had nothing to offer him or his father's crew beyond that. At least that's was the semi-arrogant Alien had assumed going into it. Some distant powers in a nearby desert had congregated together with one far surpassing the other. Six thousand was by no means impressive but it was at LEAST a rung above the general population. By the time he had arrived one was already on their way out the door - but the other? A feral grin cracked across his face as he saw them. An Arcosian.

"Hail, Arcosian. Trying to look for something worthwhile on this planet are you?" The lower power now made sense. Surely the blue-hued lizard was simply in his first form for the sake of these petty Earthlings. "My name is Maxis. And yours?"

"You flatter me, Duke." Pomp and circumstance, things that these Arcosians were full of. Passing off politeness was just another way for them to establish supposed superiority in everything they did. Maxis was raised as an uncommon criminal and thus had little care for true formalities, yet he played along anyway. He'd only vague notions of the system Frozen spoke of. Gefhar's crew traveled far and wide but visiting every last sector of space was something that just wasn't feasible. That along with the fact that it was considered Arcosian territory had deterred any incursions into it entirely. Now though, they stood apart and Maxis was confident that he could easily defeat this blue-blooded lizard as easily as he could a Saiyan.

"A contest you say? Why I had much the same idea. Your kind is quite powerful from what I've seen and heard in my time as a warrior." The Arcosian's immediate transformation did little to impress the Terran whatsoever, Maxis even hiding a small scoff as Frozen only entered his second form. Still weak. That could mean a few things: he wished to start small, he was arrogant, or he couldn't sense Maxis' power and assumed that the Terran would be Earthling levels of power. How insulting. "I'd like nothing more than to trade blows with you, Duke."

As soon as Frozen had finished shifting himself into his much larger and bulkier form, Maxis would blip forward with blinding speed. His hand thrust out, a small amount of Ki EXPLODING into a conical jagged blast of yellow energy that would envelop the entirety of the Arcosian! Able to sense him or not, it'd become rapidly clear that Maxis was much more powerful than he first appeared.

Considering the Arcosian's reactions, Maxis assumed that his last assumption had been correct. This particular specimen had no way of sensing his energy. The mistake of underestimating his power cost Frozen dearly as he was enveloped in the blinding yellow blast of Ki, the force sending him skidding back along the ground with some visible marks of damage peppering his bio-armor. "I hope I won't disappoint, Duke Frozen. As you have seen from that attack..." He clenched his fist, a challenging fire dancing behind his eyes as the Terran awaited the Arcosian's next move. "This battle will be no easy task for you."

Countering with a thin finger beam as typical to his species, Frozen's attack packed a respectable punch to it and Maxis was ALMOST tempted to just bear it and focus on dealing more damage to his opponent. Yet last moment a small amount of green fiery Ki enveloped his legs, Maxis delivering a twirling kick which deflected the attack off-course entirely! The Terran carried the momentum of his kick into a cartwheel motion, pushing off the ground and into the air before LAUNCHING himself in a straight dive kick at Frozen. Abusing his superior power would be a quick path to victory but Maxis had no desire to do so yet. He wanted a FIGHT not a curbstomp.