The Powers of Plant

Cheri stood waiting near the primary entrance— the intended entrance for people sized at the scale of normal tuffles and saiyans, anyway— within the torus, at the internal low-point. Being roughly a torus, or at least the rough inversion of a torus (via negative space), the room’s local minima in terms of verticality formed a ring, a mathematically perfect circle around the bottom of the torus. I really hope you know what a torus is, because otherwise you’re going to get quite, quite lost reading this thread. Simply imagine the insides of a donut— doughnut— and try not to drool in hunger.

”Warmaster Vocado, greetings. It’s a pleasure to see you, too.” A formal introduction from a formal individual. ”Before we begin— before I demonstrate the powers of this technology long in the making— I should introduce our arena, for the interests of competitive fairness. Observe:” She summoned a ki blaster out from behind her back and aimed it behind her, in a completely different direction from Vocado. It shot out a pink ball of ki that quickly moved, eventually hitting the curved ‘metal’ surface… and bouncing. And then bouncing again, and again, and again, within the inner surface of this torus, until, precisely as aimed, it would shoot through and finally dissipate behind Vocado’s legs. ”Reflective toroidal surface. It encourages, let us say, three-dimensional thinking. Any questions, or shall I demonstrate the fruits of my labour?”

”My summons came more than three weeks earlier than anticipated. Cultivate patience, my friend.”

Ah, and here it was: the power of the legendary Super Saiyan. It glowed with the golden power that, even all these many months after their first appearance, Cheri was struggling to grow accustomed to. Power on this level, it seemed, threatened to live a life all its own! What could be done in a world such as this? What could be done to survive in a realm where such terrifying power could warp the world to its whims? Perhaps Cheri had the answer… an answer. ”Very well. In time, the… transformation sequence will get faster and faster, as each step in the process becomes muscle memory and my neural pathways align with, and become one with, the greater whole. For now, though, you may benefit from not being rushed in your appreciation of the sights-to-be. Observe:”

Cheri jumped up and to the back, gaining multiple dozen metres of air before… pausing in the air, levitating? But Cheri, somewhat famously by this point, was not capable of flight! Yes, indeed, there was something more going on here as, mere moments after, Cheri disappeared from sight as the twenty metre-tall Ape-Buster Suit was summoned out from its quasidimensional space around her! It was a tall mech, a pillar of ceramic dull grey, powerful blue gems, and pink patterning. Impressive, objectively, sure!.. But, to Vocado, it was less than a third of how strong it would need to be to suit what he was, no doubt, anticipating.





Something was happening. There was a strange noise: not crunching, no, but something roughly along those lines. And glowing, too: a strange light, and then strange movements of electricity, moved out from seams and gaps in the Ape-Buster Suit that its newly altered state placed in it. Was this even the same Ape-Buster Suit the world was familiar with? Now how it was moving, it almost seemed more like it had been reappropriate precisely for whatever was happening now. But, no: this was always part of its function. Cheri was quite the forward-thinker, after all.

Was this dimensional engineering— dimensional transcendence? Was this a quirk of programmable matter? Was it both— or was it something beyond?

Cheri’s power level began to rise rapidly! Beams of light escaping out of the Suit’s gaps intensified, becoming more like pink laser beams which shot out and were reflected wildly across the inner surface of the torus. Like ripples in a pond’s surface, blue-tinted jolts of electricity ran across the pale surface of the Suit and even moved beyond it, at times seeming to trick the adjacent spaces of air into acting as if they were highly conductive of electricity. The air smells like ozone and tastes like battery. Keeping its general shape, still, the Ape-Buster Suit got smaller…! And smaller…! And even smaller still…! It was glowing at this point, like some manner of star compressed to the point of collapse and imminent supernova. It was so very bright that even the likes of a Super Saiyan would have trouble keeping their eyes on it without risking eye damage! Reality distorted: inwards, then outwards, then to a side parallel to any direction within by mortal ken. Was the Suit getting smaller, or was everything getting smaller? The world seemed to begin to think that it operated on hyperbolic geometry, with Cheri at its very centre. Then…!


And it was done.

The smoke cleared. There was smoke? No, steam, from all the chamber’s water moisture brought together by a force approximating but superior to gravity, and suddenly dispersed with a burst of power. Seeming to levitate in the air with a distorted bubble of spacetime negating any force of gravity, there she was…




Cheri was one metre tall, with two arms, two legs, and pink hair. Only, her battle uniform was gone, and seemingly replaced with a version of the Ape-Buster Suit that was condensed down to act as armour for her. Her hairband could not handle the power that now moved through her hair, and so dissolved over the sequence, freeing her hair which now flowed freely, without the tampering of gravity, and could almost reach as far down as her knees at places; responding to this novel power, the ends of her hair lit up to a lighter shade of pink than the rest. But instead of the firm cut-off between undersuit and skin that preceded it, Cheri’s neck now demonstrated a gradient between her skin tone (which itself now seemed a few tones lighter, one or two shades nearer to the Ape-Buster’s ceramic white appearance) and the black rubber of her suit. Over that gradient between the natural and technological, numerous pink wirelines like those of a circuit board rose up from her neck and some even breached over her jawline. Her eyes, once a greenish hue, were now pink, and the ‘whites’ of her eyes were now tinted with a hint of the blue of her scouter; the surface of her eyes visibly presented rapidly-changing graphs and numbers and labels, precisely like what you’d have seen on the surface of a scouter— now, the scouter and her eyes were one and the same.

Brimming with power and lightning, Cheri’s face was calm, even serene.

”Where the Super Saiyan transformation is reached through short-term energy, this power is accomplished through long-term effort. Where the Super Saiyan rewards momentary emotion, this requires a continual act of self-creation. I think I shall call it the Ultra Tuffle— for branding purposes, you understand. As an opaline power in deliberate contrast to your golden power. As you can see, I am very much so still myself.”

That said, her eyes kept ‘locking in on’ Vocado’s power signature, making it a tad difficult to look away from him at all— but these were just some slight kinks that could be worked through.

”While we’re here, behold:”

”I’m afraid you might be disappointed. This technology is still new, barely tested— it does not come as naturally to me simply because it is not natural.” No part of this transformation was built into Cheri’s genetics, or in any other way intrinsic to her. This power was a very deliberate, personal project, and a project in the fullest sense. ”When I win,” she taunted, ”it will not be because I am stronger— merely because I am smarter.”

Vocado leapt up, avoiding Cheri’s leg-targeted assault in the solace of the air. He brought two hands up, pointed in almost-opposite directions, and shot two powerful ki beams to two very different places. The one meant to prevent Cheri’s escape ended up being redundant: Cheri’s was all in on her advance. The other one, though, was caught in the side surface of Cheri’s missile, which immediately exploded! While the missile itself was dealt with, its power could still be felt in the explosion of its blast which, if Vocado did not move quickly, would envelop and burn him!

But Cheri, as described, was advancing, and would take full advantage of this opportunity. Her hands, now seemingly made of the programmable matter she’d had years of experience manipulating, were transformed into metal-grey razor steel-sharp metal claws… and they were already slashing away at Vocado in wide, ambitious-for-the-sake-of-demonstration slashes!

”Certainly. What shape would you like it in? My newly programmable flesh can do oh so many new things.”

Vocado survived the missile’s explosion by bringing some more ki across his body to brace himself for the impact. Good: it would have been a rather poor showing for the golden power of the legendary Super Saiyan if Cheri could get it to bleed so early and so easily. Allow him his shield, permit him his protection— the energy he burns early now is the energy he will lack and be without when he is unable to prevent Cheri’s more complete and thorough crushing of him later.
Potentially.
If plans permitted.

”I’m providing the pound of flesh, I’m providing the shape in which it will be cut, and I’m even providing the arena in which the event is ever-so-gracefully hosted— tell me, Vocado, what good do you bring to the table, again?” Traditional Vegetan battlefield taunting, Cheri knew it well. It was all a part of the process. It worked especially well on Vocado, Cheri had experience with that much. ”Let’s go for a ‘sphere’. It’s a simple shape, I’d loathe to confuse you.”

Offense, defense. Strike, avoid. Swing with metal claws, duck out of the way. Vocado saw a gap and took it: a blow to the chest to knock her back. Cheri saw that as an opportunity, too, and let his energy give her some more distance.

Vocado expanding his mind to her ki network did not go unrewarded. This form of hers was new, unpracticed: like any new technology, it had kinks yet to be ironed out. The eyes, for instance, had rather a bit more ki in them than Vocado ought to have figured ought to be there, perhaps owing to the scouter tech, and whatever other tech was integrated in there, all working in that small space.

Stepping away from her assault, Cheri took only a moment to transform her hand once again into a missile launcher: this, if Vocado still had his Shattersense up, would have been a brilliant opportunity to see the peculiar, and potentially exploitable ki distribution of her ‘programmable matter’ when it was in a state of flux, temporary though those were.

”In a narrow sense, yes. In other news, here’s your opportunity: you know exactly how this will go if you let it come to pass.” She shot the missile which, once again, would rotate around and around, picking up speed.

Done with the rocket, Cheri would have her arm once again enter into a state of flux to bring it back to her normal configuration.

Anticipating Vocado’s assault, Cheri caught Vocado’s elbow with her own powerglove: from that position, she’d release a pulse of energy directly into his flesh, which would push him back and cause that elbow to feel rather fuzzy and numb for a few seconds. If that didn’t work, Cheri would go with Vocado’s tail fling, putting energy into her neck to protect it but not putting any energy into preventing the movement: she generally liked to keep distance, it seemed, as so much of her repertoire benefitted from such a thing. Even if it hurt the neck a bit.

”I can shoot a lot more rockets than that. Allow me to demonstrate:”

Hatch openings that weren’t there a moment before opened up over Cheri’s shoulders and upper back, from which a dozen tiny homing rockets flew out at Vocado— and then a dozen more a second later, and a dozen more the second after that, for ten whole seconds or until Vocado could do something about it. They came in many at a time, and from many different angles, with some ‘overshooting’ only to turn around and go for Vocado’s back. Ultimately, though, this barrage of missiles did not carry much power: each one could make a flashy, smoke-making explosion, and hurt enough to annoy, but they were not Cheri’s attack… they were the distraction from the far larger missile which was now at max speed, and headed straight for the Vegetan Warmaster.

It was in moments like this when it was easy to forget that you were fighting a legendary Super Saiyan as its equal, but Cheri did not forget. This was… wild. On one hand, she didn’t feel like she deserved to be this powerful, one mere mortal against a force of nature. On the other hand, Cheri knew of no saiyan who had truly earned their Super Saiyan power.

Wait, that worked? Cheri hadn’t expected that to work. Just what was Vocado trying…? Still, he kept at it, trying to close the distance with a kick. Cheri tried to block his powerful knee strike, and succeeded at a glance, but the pushback and reverberation across her body from that attack would still sting: his attack was a success, even if she’d managed to mitigate most of the harm. Leveraging her relative shortness, she moved under Vocado— his leg still high from that knee attack— and dashed behind him to gain some distance.

”My apologies: I appear to have shot too few rockets. Allow me to redeem this mistake.”

The same missile vents opened as as before, but now both of her lower arms transformed into what looked like miniature missile platforms, brimmed with so many finger-sized rockets that you could dedicate a whole day just to counting them all and you’d die immediately because these are exploding missiles, what did you expect to happen? The missiles all shot out at once: they were more numerous than before, more varied, and carrying substantially more power: while the previous ones were meant to annoy and distract, this barrage was capable of felling a powerful warrior in one. These missiles had many purposes: to explode across Vocado’s body, yes, but also explode before that point to blind Vocado in dust, with another dozen to explode into a hot custard-like glue to stick his legs to the ground, and a few dozen more dedicated entirely to countering whatever ki attacks Vocado thought to utilise.