Commander Orenji Has Arrived!

Jujube hated returning to the Berri Forest.

Some of her more ambitious medicines needed the rare herbs and fruits found only in this region, and yet, coming back was a reminder of everything she had lost. She was a traitor, after all, and those who knew her tended to cast her dark looks if they passed her by.

Her presence in the Forest today was a stroke of luck, however: her scouter began to absolutely blare warnings as a colossal power level descended from out of a ship. Her mind raced to who it could be: one of the Super Saiyans on the planet, perhaps, or one of the Arcosians.

She crept through the forest, keeping close to the ground, as she tuned her upgraded blaster for combat. The improvements she was able to make on it courtesy of Yangcong would serve her well, but she was doubtful that it would manage to bridge the gulf between her and the threat before her -- a threat that absolutely towered over her.

It wasn't a Saiyan, and it wasn't a Tuffle. If it was a mercenary, they would have landed in a more familiar spot. That narrowed it down in her head to an idle traveler, or a genuine threat. She drew a deep breath, and stepped out from the brush, training her arm blaster towards the massive alien.

"That's far enough," she shouted. "State your business in the Lychee Sector!"

Jujube kept her blaster trained upon Orenji for several moments, but she did reluctantly lower it after the man explained himself. She didn't know enough about the political situation on Plant to say whether or not he was being truthful about that relationship, but she didn't see any reason to doubt him especially much.

"I'm pretty sure Yangcong is dead," she said, in an idle sort of voice.

She probably didn't need to explain to him that she had only recently encountered the man in Hell, nor was she even fully certain how she would go about explaining something like that. Instead, she just stood her ground: neither threatening the aliens any further, nor granting them assent yet.

"I'm a Tuffle," she replied, flatly. "I was born not far from here, just outside of the Forest. But, that amounts to the same thing these days. Other than the machinations of a few empty-headed souls with revenge on their mind, the Tuffles have been defeated: so, if you do have reason to be here by the Saiyan Kingdom's leave, that's enough for me."

She folded her arms over her chest, regarding the pair a little more carefully.

"So, I guess this is the part where I ask what your business here is again. Is it a diplomatic mission, or are you hunting, uh ... more war criminals?"

"Bounty hunting, huh."

Jujube had run into more than her fair share of those, but mostly in the neutral zone. The Mercenary Outpost had always been stocked full of them, and she had never been quite clear on the separation between so-called bounty hunters and any other gun-for-fire. It seemed to her they always competed over the same jobs in the end.

"It is Tuffle territory," she clarified. "It's administrated directly from Hatchi City, by what passes for a ruling body these days. On the most technical, legal terms, you're under the jurisdiction of Chancellor Cheri and her cabinet. But, that's more of a legal fiction than anything--"

She gestured to the forest around them.

"These days, there's no semblance of order to what the Tuffles are doing. The chancellorship is weaker than it's ever been, and being entrusted by the last King to maintain control of their own sector has allowed a certain degree of... people taking matters into their own hands, we'll say."

She folded her arms across her chest, and eyed that bounty paper. She hadn't seen one of those aliens before, but they seemed familiar enough: a humanoid, at the least.

"They'd stand out rather egregiously if they were in either Hatchi City or the Sadala Capital. Exchanging the prison jumpsuit for armour might help them blend in with a mercenary group from the Outpost, though -- you might see if there any operating in the region."

"Of course," she added. "If they've learned to suppress their energy, they might just be lurking in an old tunnel from the war, in which case you might never find them."

"It would have to be some great chance if he's in there, unless there was a bulletin of some kind," Jujube observed.

She eyed the tunnel he had spotted with some suspicion. It was true enough that there were plenty littered around, but she couldn't help but wonder if there was some larger scheme at play if they'd landed so close to what might have been their quarry.

Even so, they hadn't done anything to earn that suspicion. With a short sigh, she clicked the flashlight function on her arm blaster 'on', and gestured towards the tunnel.

"You two might have to duck if you want to get in here," she said, as she started down towards the tunnel, to begin her descent into whatever lurked below the earth.

"Chances are, if he's hiding -- he probably won't try to hurt anyone. But, I guess it depends on what he was in for. There are a lot of ship thieves, debtors, and mercenaries-on-the-losing-side hiding out in areas near the Mercenary Outpost, but they don't really cause much harm, so they don't really cause much alarm."

Her flashlight illuminated the path, and she kept her blaster charged and ready to fire, just in-case.

"Any idea how strong this guy is supposed to be?"

Jujube almost froze in place when the alien gave her the details on that fugitiive.

100,000.

If that was true, then he was easily enough to overwhelm Jujube without her Caduceus Armor. She didn't have time to turn back and recover it now, so she'd simply have to make do and hope that Orenji and his companion could handle the worst of the fighting while she played support.

She stuck close to the side of the iron grate when they arrived at it, peeking through. The various guards didn't frighten her all that much, and without scouters she wouldn't have to worry about her inability to conceal her energy. She drew a breath, and aimed her blaster downward, ready to open fire.

Yet, she didn't take the shot. The bio-hazard suits gave her too much pause to fire so recklessly, and Orenji's suggestion of stealth made more sense. She lowered her voice and looked up to the larger alien, nodding.

"Stealth," she agreed.

She aimed her own blaster to one edge of the grate, honing the beam and lowering the frequency to instead apply a heat-based cutting beam. It was quiet enough, and would help speed up the process for the alien.

"I'm not much of an assassin, but if we can get down there, I can try to take out as many as I can from the shadows. The escaped prisoner is going to be ... up to you. My abilities will only be so useful against a behemoth like that."

She paused, and rummaged through her hip satchel to procure a pair of strange, blueish serums. She offered them over to the aliens, with an urgent little nod.

"These are a -- medicine I came up with. If those bio-hazard suits are any indication and there winds up being a Destron leak during the fighting, you're going to want to take them after the fight's over. Before, if you breathe in too much. They're unpleasant and can seriously weaken you in the short-term, but they'll prevent long-term damage ... so, for emergencies only."

Jujube followed after the alien, dropping from platform to platform as she made her way down. After he hit the ground, Jujube remained perched atop high enough to watch the two aliens conduct that rapid rush, and in the end, she hardly needed to perform overwatch.

The two were good, and she couldn't really deny that.

She hopped down now that it was clear, and stepped up to inspect the elevator. She had used facilities like this enough in the past to know it wouldn't bring them anywhere quietly, but there could be another option.

She honed that blaster back to its cutting beam, and began to shear her way through the floor of the elevator. She started on one side, burning enough away to get ahold of the remaining metal so nothing fell away, and then began to burn the rest of that pattern until she could pry the piece out of the elevator floor.

She took a glance at the two aliens, winced, and went back to work to make that hole a little bigger.

"We can drop down -- fly, if you can -- and make our landing more quietly. The elevator makes noise, but a shaft without an elevator is just another tunnel for people who have means to travel. That way, we can go quiet ... it might still be a fight at the bottom, I don't know, but even a few seconds surprise is better than being shot at."

Jujube's ability to fly was still undeveloped at best, so instead she used what energy she could muster to slow her descent rather than hover properly. It meant that when she hit the bottom, it was more or less silent. She peeked around the edge of the elevator door to spot all of those patrols, and quietly re-tuned her blaster.

This time, she moved to hone the beam into a small, puncturing focus: silent and piercing, at the cost of losing some of the explosive power she relied upon to deal with heavier threats. She gave Orenji a little nod.

"Tell you what," she said, as she began to creep out from past the elevator.

"I'll open fire, get them into a better spot for your friend to shoot from -- they'll come after me, and in the confusion you can find your man."

She drew a sharp breath. She couldn't say that it was a smart plan, but it was the plan she had: she clicked her heels and launched herself with the rocket boost installed in her boots to land atop a series of crates, and took up a firing position.

Blast after blast followed from her weapon, the energy tuned a whitish-gold. The first couple patrols that fell to the blasts went quietly, but soon enough the glow itself attracted attention to Jujube. She tried to make the most of it in distraction, and opened up a barrage of blasts downward, intending more to force them to respond to her than to actually finish them off.

In doing so, she retreated a few steps, hoping that sniper's aim would be just a little easier...