Conquering Planet Weldra - Open To One

As she traveled through space at blistering speeds aboard her ship, Salvo began to grow bored. Namek hadn't exactly panned out as the best place to go and forcibly cause destruction - too many damned overpowered protectors there - so, her itch to cause destruction and wreak havoc hadn't exactly been scratched. And with how much of a leash Jinx had kept her on, that itch had long been overdue for some serious scratching. Sure, she could get away with the occasional violent mischief under the Novas, but nothing on the scale she was lusting after.

So, when 'Planet Weldra' popped up on the ship's radar en route to their destination, Salvo sat upright in her seat, an idea having sparked in her mind. "Hold th' ship," she commanded her crew, "Set a new course: we're dockin' on that thar Planet Weldra! Got some steam I need t' blow off."

"Yes, Captain," her Brenchian pilot Pare replied, "But do warn us if you end up carpet bombing the place so that we can pull the ship out in time. It takes a long time to conduct repairs on that scale."

"Yea, yea," Salvo waved dismissively at her pilot, prompting a sigh from Pare, though she did still do as her captain ordered. The ship began to pull down into the planet's atmosphere, but as it did so, it became clear that something strange was going on with this planet. Everything already seemed to have been blown up! Fires and explosions racked the city they had descended upon, and torrents of both flames and water washed away buildings and civilians alike.

"Wot the 'ell is this?" Salvo asked as she surveyed the damage. "New plan! This ship stays in th' atmosphere, and I go in alone!" Without waiting for confirmation, Salvo thrust open one of the ships exterior doors and leapt down into the fray below, as her crew hastily shut the door behind her. 

The Heran soared down into the city and reached out with her senses to find out what, or who was behind all this - and before long, she locked in on one power signature that stood far above the rest. The Heran swooped in towards the source of power, until she landed just a few meters away from it: an old man in ragged clothes with even more ragged hair. A Saiyan? Salvo let out a snort. "Didn't know ye folks were still the planet-conquering type!" she called out to him with a snarky grin. "Too bad for ye, though - I'll be taking over this 'ere planet instead, than ye very much. So, toodle loo, old man, unless ye want t' spend th' night sleepin' with th' fishes!"

Salvo watched with amusement as the Saiyan warrior took notice of her presence and sized her up. He seemed to have come to the correct conclusion that, as he was, he simply stood no chance against her! To be fair to him, he was quite the old geezer, and from the bits of Saiyan biology Salvo had picked up in her career, she knew that Saiyans deteriorated quite quickly once they reached old age - or, rather, if they reached old age. The mere fact that someone of his race existed as old as he seemed to be was impressive enough, especially considering he was still trying to conquer planets.

But planet conquering was a young person's game, and Salvo, while not exactly a spring chicken age-wise, was still very much in her prime. "Ha! Strikin' a deal wit' me when ye got nothin' t' use as leverage?" she replied with a wide grin spread between her crimson lips. "Ye got guts old man! 'Tis a shame it seems I'll have t' spill 'em on th' ground." 

As the old man dealt with some weakling who tried attacking him from behind, Salvo reached down at her belt and, from its sheathe, she drew her sword, a shining cutlass forged of some of the hardest steel in the universe. One would have to pay a pretty penny for a blade as fine as hers... But Salvo had just stolen this one for free. "I'll give ye one last warning, old man. Scatter like that wind yer so fond 'a blowin', or I'll gut ye like a fish. The choice is yers."

Instead of offering her any actual reply, the old Saiyan man stared blankly at Salvo, causing her brows to furrow and her lips to curl down into a slight frown. Had he heard her? Was he so old that he was just too hard of hearing? Salvo knew other races didn't quite have the long, pointy ears of Herans that allowed them quite decent hearing ability, but she was pretty sure he'd heard her just fine a moment ago...

Once he finally began to move, though, Salvo understood his answer: He was going to fight! A laughable prospect if she'd ever heard one, but she had to say, she did respect the gumption he was showing. As a show of that respect, Salvo wouldn't immediately blast him away into oblivion. Besides, she was kind of curious if this old man had a few tricks up his sleeve she could pick up herself. Clearly he'd done something right to have survived all this time.

The old man pointed his blade at Salvo, and she watched it with curiosity while the old men continued to breathe, slowly and intentionally. And then suddenly, a gust of powerful winds shot out from his blade, catching Salvo off guard! "Whoa!" she exclaimed as the wind battered against her, forcing her back across the ground a few feet until she dug her heels in. The winds had cut up her skin a bit and blown her hair into a rather disheveled state, though once they subsided, she was mostly alright. It had hurt a bit more than she'd been expecting, at least.

"Heh, neat li'l party trick!" she exclaimed, "Now 'ere's a real attack!" Salvo then rushed in with her blade, and the moment she closed the distance between the two of them, brought her sword down swiftly and furiously onto the Saiyan in a barrage of rapid slashes and stabs! It would be a true test of the old man's swordsmanship!

The old man was clearly struggling to keep up with Salvo's barrage of attacks, which she took quite a bit of glee in, as each strike of hers against his defenses grew closer and closer to breaking through and delivering a decisive strike against him. As she brought her blade down against his in a powerful overhead strike, though, a surge of wind burst from his blade, and their eyes locked: Salvo's burning, rageful crimson orbs staring straight down into the old man's gray, tired eyes.

This time, though, Salvo knew not to underestimate the old man's gusts of wind. She shoved him back from their locked stance, then, her sword tightly gripped by both hands, took a moment to reach out with her senses and feel which direction his invisible gust was coming from. It was blowing in from... Her right!

Salvo wasted no time in driving her sword right into the direction the winds soared at her from, her cutlass slashing through the winds right at their brunt and dividing them entirely, with the powerful gust split in twain as it blew harmless past Salvo to either side of her, missing her entirely. Heh - she felt pretty good about that one. With a grin, she leered back over towards the old man. "Face it, ye old coot," she insulted him, "Ye can't hold a candle to wot I've got under me hood!"

The Heran stepped towards the old man in a menacing, combat-ready stance as she continued, "Let me give ye a taste 'a wot a real planet-conqueror can do." Salvo primed her blade, and then, in a single, staggeringly powerful strike, thrusts it at the old man in a stance-breaking strike that was sure to hurt!

Salvo's attack dealt a devastating amount of damage to the old man, piercing through any meager defenses he attempted to put up against her. So, he really was as weak and frail as he looked. That figured. Not quite a Lottus type when it came to his strength, that much was for certain. As Salvo moved in to deliver another decisive strike, the man spoke up before she could attack, and explained that he was 'General Jicong,' a veteran of the Saiyan military. Also, he apparently had a son named Yangcong who was a war criminal. Salvo let out a snort at that.

"Good for you? Never heard 'a th' lad. Where's the little tyke at now? Maybe I'll pay 'im a visit once I've put ye in the ground!" As Salvo delivered her threats, however, the man suddenly began to shift and transform! Salvo took a step back in surprise, initially confused as to what exactly was going on here, although then she recalled: Saiyans had a famously monstrous transformation, the Oozaru! His power level had certainly spiked, she could attest to that much.

"Eugh, now ye smell as nasty as ye look," Salvo stated with a grimacing expression. She tightly gripped her blade as her own power level rose to match her opponent's, and then some - and then leapt out of the way of his energy beam at the last moment!

"Me? Self taught!" Salvo replied as Jicong questioned where she had picked up her skills. She'd been shown a thing or two by her parents when she was young, but that had been ages ago. Everything she knew now she attested only to herself. "Ye know, fer a Saiyan general, ye sure are interested in this 'samurai' shtick a whole lot. Me, I also like a good old-fashioned gun!" At this remark, Salvo quickly drew her pistol from her belt, firing it up at Jicong's face in a quick but powerful shot!

Jicong may have become much larger than Salvo, but she still dwarfed him in strength and skill. Her shot hit its mark quite wonderfully, knocking him to the side and sending him hurtling down to the ground, where he crashed atop a building, flattening it completely beneath his weight. Yeah, he was basically toast. Salvo really didn't see any way this geezer was going to find a way out of this one - and she wasn't even fighting at full strength, yet! In a way, she felt somewhat honored that she of all people was going to be the one who got to end the life of this utter dinosaur.

And yet, as she descended from the skies towards him, Jicong began to ask her questions. Questioning her motivations, in fact. At this, Salvo raised an eyebrow. "Wot do I 'desire' from this world?" she echoed. "Well, first 'n foremost, kicking yer ass t' kingdom come sounds awfully appealin'!" If he was trying to appeal to her sense of morality, he'd find she was sorely lacking in one.

His other questions were kinda funny, though. "Kids? Psh, who's got time fer that? I'm me own woman, don't need any stinkers runnin' around me ship screamin' fer milk and toys. And I run me clothes through the laundry and scrub meself down several times a week, thank ye very much!" That last remark of his had left her feeling particularly insulted. People could besmirch her character all they wanted to - she'd probably agree with their assesments, even - but implying she was someone who never bathed? That was an insult to her very core, as someone who put a not insignificant amount of effort into her looks on a daily basis.

At these slanderous claims, Salvo drew her blade once more, and dove down towards Jicong in an attempt to drive her sword straight into his oversized monkey heart!

Salvo had never considered herself an especially 'mature' person - she could always partake in some childlike name-calling and juvenile levels of humor without feeling awkward or ashamed about it. Furthermore, she'd never quite experienced empathy on a level where she genuinely had felt bad for another person in a way that wasn't slightly scorn, or looking directly down upon them.

However, as the old man, who seemed to be nearly three times her already not miniscule age, began to fling a barrage of the most infantile, unrefined, schoolboy-level insults at her after she'd continued to pound him into the dirt, she paused for a moment, her brow furrowing and lips flattening into a perturbed expression. What was this feeling, she was feeling? It was like... Embarrassment, but not for herself? Was there a term for this? Salvo had never felt like this before. Perhaps her capacity for empathy had grown a tad while working under Jinx...

Either way, she didn't much like the feeling. "Cut that shite out!" Salvo barked down at the old man. She wasn't actually offended at any of the insults with how surface level and frequent they had turned out, but she was slight offended at the notion that Jicong assumed she was stupid enough to feel legitimate offense from them. "Ye'd think ye'd have better insults t' fling with your mammoth age! I guess it's true wot they say 'bout Saiyans and stupidity: yer simply overflowin' wit' it!" Not exactly her best insult, but Jicong was so immature, he seemed to be dragging her own wit down to his level...