The Powers of Plant

Damnit, almost. The dagger blow itself was well-timed, but there was little she could have done in the face of Vocado’s shield of ki knocking away the relatively hard-to-land Pink Poison Punisher™. Unfortunate: she could only try one of those twice before needing to regenerate the components, as that poison couldn’t simply be created using her programmable matter, it had to be primed beforehand to be maximally effective, and lost its potency as a poison shortly after. She landed on the ground without issue.

”The Galactic Patrol makes no claims of sovereignty, and they act within a strict code of conduct determined both by what is ethical and what is, given potentially-offended local political powers, convenient. Warmaster, we are ourselves a polity, a sovereign set of nations conjoined in location and alike in dignity: it might not be our intention starting out, but such an enterprise is bound to result in Plantians acting in Plant’s ‘interests’ even when that is to the active detriment of other sovereign powers and other peoples.” Cheri spoke of ‘Plantian’ in the newer sense, as a demonym for the people of Planet Plant, and definitely not the ancient people also from Plant who were usually called by that name also. ”That leads to discontent, to war, to undue tension with other galactic powers and, even in the best of cases, with administrative strain from governing all of these places. Is that really worth scratching the saiyan itch for battle?” An actual question, not rhetorical, carrying the expectation of an actual answer. She had other problems with his argumentation, but those could wait. Actually, no, it couldn’t, she was curious. ”And how would you find these places in need of intervention, anyway? ‘Crisis’ isn’t exactly the cosmic default state.”

Meanwhile, Cheri was having trouble returning her atoms to the conventional state of being subject to gravity: a few times she’d almost started floating in place, as if utterly weightless. It almost tripped her up when speaking, and hampering her momentum as she positioned herself. She had to focus, Vocado was firing upon her… he wanted her to move, and she wanted to not give him what he wanted. Instead of dodging out of the way, Cheri would move into the ki attacks, catching them all with her left hand, the hand with that strange-looking glove on it. Eventually, she’d accumulated all of his attacks into a ki ball she held in her hands, and pumped it up with some energy of her own. When Vocado finally made his way to the almost-horizontal ground at the bottom (it’s a torus, none of it was truly flat nor horizontal), Cheri was waiting for him, throwing his own ki back at him alongside shooting at him with her right hand, which had turned into a laser cannon.

”Efforts are ramping up for the Sadala Restoration Plan, which has the added benefit of being your ancestral homeland. Is that not enough of a struggle, an effort, to captivate the culture?”

Cheri would only verbally retort once Vocado had been blasted back, his skin burnt and smoking. ”There is a marked difference between preparing for trouble and running into it: it is the same difference between surviving and our extermination. It is especially because of precisely those threats that we cannot afford to overextend ourselves and make enemies to scratch an itch. We can aid people against the disasters they face, perhaps even allow them into a wider federation if opportunities permit, but holding additional worlds will strain our resources more than add to them, and, when the threat we must best is a nation or cultural group we are directed against by the words of another, we throw away any impartiality or morality-derived justification system that otherwise would have benefitted us.” There was some value here in what Vocado proposed, Cheri recognised, but she saw its pitfalls for what they were. And even under the best of intentions, staging an operation on such a scale from what amounted to just one planet seemed… logistically unwise. But that’s why this wasn’t an argument, as such: it was a dialectic. Thesis against antithesis, to reach something new… synthesis.

”We can slay monsters and destroy rampant robots for, even if we fail in the moment, they wouldn’t be able to regroup, consolidate, and strike against us on Plant: the likes of a natural monster or a weather event are bound in place and lacking in intelligence. But toppling regimes is a riskier endeavour altogether— but perhaps that’s your goal? Seeking more long-term threats to rub the saiyans’ collective teeth against?”

Vocado referred back to an old saying about the cycle of conflict and strength. But Cheri knew some sayings of her own. ”There are enemies at the door; we cannot afford to shoot ourselves in the foot or throw ourselves to the horde. What could ‘not waiting’ have done for Arcose, or for us in a similar situation? We know not where they hide, and we would simply garner attention from those that might have otherwise left us alone. It’s a large universe, with many such threats. Surely you do not believe that every single maleficent power out there is turned expressly against us?”

The lights of the torus were the walls themselves: its ‘metal’ emitted light out alongside the ki-reflecting and ‘Super Saiyan’-surviving qualities. It was subtle enough that you’d hardly notice, though! ”’What happens?’ indeed. Do you figure Plant will be easier to defend with its forces spread across the stars? Do you figure our interstellar efforts will help warn us of such a tyrant? Perhaps! But then, what good do our battalions, pointed towards the stars, serve? Or do you suppose we can depose the tyrant from afar?” There were numerous issues wrong with that, too, but Cheri could let Vocado have his fill. Besides, she’d spoken enough… no, she’d decided, she actually hadn’t. Onto a different matter, however: ”The greatest known empires in history fell not to their enemies, as such, but to territorial overextension. I agree, we are well-positioned, harnessing the greatest of brain and brawn; this is precisely why we cannot squander what we have.” OK, that was enough. For now. Well, maybe just...

In time with Vocado, Cheri leapt forwards— indeed, everything after that semicolon was said mid-leap! She leapt up at him, aiming to push that energy ball out of his hands and finally get that stab in, even though its poison was no longer active.

”A good question,” Cheri admitted, whether she did so landing safely or through whatever else became of their struggle, ”but one I do not feel you have adequately provided an answer for, yourself. You speak of purpose, but you speak only of threats. Speak plainly, even, if you must.”

Damn; the dagger, even without poison, just wasn’t having a good day, was caught uselessly in a way that brought its chances of piercing flesh to nil. She tried to dodge out of the way and take advantage of her relative shortness again, but Vocado held the advantage in power and just a bit too fast for that to work: the blow stung, and pushed her back into the safety of distance.

Spreading out as a method of diversifying the Plantian people, so as to not, as the kids were saying, ‘put all our eggs in one basket’? The idea had merit, though, ultimately yet inadvertently, it was one that placed the survival of the culture and its species above that of the individual people that comprised it, as they would be more likely to survive on an individual basis on Plant, where they would be the best defended. It brought up the philosophical question of what value there was in extinction, and how worse it should be deemed relative to what it strictly implied. But, again, the idea had merit, and could be a boon if actualised both competently and wisely. ”If Arcose falls, its people die all the same: that is not retreating, that is a matter of the continuity of political identity. But a good point lies in there somewhere, in wait.” Mostly in regards to the expedition of trade in the sense of its benefits now being conveyed as a matter of domestic resource distribution… it would be a lot of work, and a truly grand task if you wanted to do it well, but it was also precisely the sort of logistical challenge that the tuffles were uniquely qualified to handle.

In free moments, when Cheri didn’t have to actively worry about Vocado being in her immediate space or flinging ki balls at her, Cheri was taking the time to recover, to breathe, and to encourage the duplication of her programmable matter by stimulating it with ki: she’d spent quite a lot of it shoot those many, many missiles, and their matter didn’t miraculously return to her. No, she had to bring the programmable matter’s mass up through a continually-running process of duplication. Let him have his flashy ki-gathering exercise: there wasn’t much she could do about that as she was.

”Wisely put, and I agree with the sentiment, but it’s not quite what I was going for. The purpose is not outward-facing, but inward-, surely? To appease the saiyan need for war, that want for conflict? But, then, there is a disconnect between these two ‘purposes’. Surely we cannot assume that this spread of influence will provide a consistent trickle of war?” She could elaborate either way, but Vocado answered shortly and so she’d respond in kind. Besides, he was a clever chap, he could connect the dots.

Vocado was getting rather poetic about this, huh? He used a lot of verbs. He used mostly verbs, even! Big, dramatic, verbs. Perhaps Cheri would have said something rather cheeky on this matter, something to the effect of ‘is this a grammar lesson now?’, but she was rather preoccupied with avoiding the tremendous power Vocado had gathered up in this moment to use against her. Instead, her response would have to be short, and cheeky only in the sense that it was laconic. ”Wasn’t my question.”

She said that was confidence, but that was a facade, a mask: she, too, was afraid of this power, both in the moment as something capable imminently able to harm her, and overall, as a power that could not rightfully exist. A moment later, he brought out of all that terrifying power at once, bringing it down onto her: sheer, raw power, the power of the legendary Super Saiyan— what could a mere mortal, a mere tuffle, hope to do against such might?

Cheri had one idea. She brought her ki around her body, and into force field generators that were now in her body and a part of her as much as her spleen or gallbladder were, which created a red spherical force field defense resembling an enlarged, translucent cherry to protect her. The ki shield stuck around only briefly, for there was little it could do against such terrifying power— but, when it was around, it acted to distribute its energy outwards and deflect its ki across the rest of the room, sending it pretty much anywhere else other than Cheri herself. This resulted in a partial success: Cheri was blown back by the power, with visible burns across what could be approximated as ‘skin’, and with the circuit wires visible upon her neck desperately trying to rewire themselves into place. A strange fluid escaped from her lips, but it didn’t seem like blood— did Cheri even have blood in this form?

”A shame, I was hoping to ‘win this spar’ without getting hurt. Well, I suppose I can still minimise harm… to whit:” It wasn’t really a spar, it was more of a tech test, hence her altered inflection.

Her right arm became a missile launcher once again, shooting another large missile out into the room, though this time it was empowered by a battery of ki power independent from her own body’s ‘natural’ supply.

Cheri gave a mock ‘pout’ expression, demonstrating at least the image of disappointment. ”Aw, but isn’t the dialectic half the fun?” She clearly wasn’t actually upset, she was just playing the battlefield game that, as a soldier, she knew how to play well. ”Very well.” It wasn’t like she could force the matter, anyway: a dialectic had to be a mutual affair, it could cease to be if an attempt was made to continue it from just one side.

On the one hand, her gambit succeeded… on the other hand, it succeeded perhaps too well. Cheri had smiled when Vocado caught the rocket in mid-air, a smile which quickly faded when she had to resort to using an external charge to teleport most of the exploding missile away from her. Clearly the worse for wear, Cheri spat out something that probably wasn’t quite blood. ”I’m glad you squandered your energy going for the bait— but I certainly hadn’t thought you’d put that much energy into such squandering. Congratulations, Vocado: you got a second time. Can you hit me a third?”

Hoping to take advantage of Vocado's low-energy state, Cheri would rush forwards, having transformed her left hand into a chainsaw and having shaped the fingers of her right hand into fine, sharp dagger points. Slash with right, then left, then right!

Even mid-charge, Cheri could not stop herself from rolling her eyes as Vocado claimed his next attack to land could be lethal. He blocked her chainsaw arm with a ki shield, and then again, and then again! It was an astounding, incredibly dramatic visual, and it was rather a shame that the encounter wasn't being recorded for television entertainment... well, it was being recorded, just not for that.

”Don’t be ridiculous, Warmaster. Of course I can.” She said it calmly, as if she wasn’t currently struggling to push her chainsaw arm through the ki shield of a legendary Super Saiyan. Cheri did not anticipate Vocado’s headbutt: a new ringing between her ears, she was pushed backwards, and seemingly unable to counter Vocado’s tail strike…! But Cheri was a quick thinker, and arguably now had a supercomputer for a brain, and then seemed to act as if this was her plan all along (hint: it was not). Her chainsaw hand rapidly changed into a formless, ceramic-grey mass that moved with great speed to catch Vocado’s tail before it fired and squeeze! Even with so-called ‘tail training’, that ought to hurt. If it worked, Cheri would then yank on the tail and bring great force into using it to slam Vocado into the ground!

It worked, though only briefly. Vocado was hurt, but far from out of the fight… good. Cheri wasn’t done with him yet. ”Oh? And a greater saiyan would instead merely imply the dishonour of their opponent, is that right?” Not what she believed, of course, but this was a spar, these were the sorts of things one said: you anger the opponent to tempt them into making foolish judgments, and then exploit their errors. It was right up there in the tuffle playbook, and ten million tuffle deaths ensured that it would stay there for many generations to come.

Cheri had more than enough time to see Vocado’s ki attack skid against the curved surface of the torus to figure out precisely what he was going to try to do with it. ”Not sure about ‘the dagger’. That poison is hard to synthesise, and you didn’t seem to appreciate it the last time.” While the ball was still skidding up, Cheri took a purposefully exaggerated ‘thinking’ pose, though of course she was ready to get out of it in an instant. Then, also exaggerated, she made the motion that implied ‘ah, an idea!’ before doing something quite strange with both of her hands, as they transformed and became malleable together, as one.

When Vocado’s ki ball finally fell down to the ground, Cheri revealed what she had created, another large missile, by using it as a baseball bat to hit Vocado’s ki ball attack straight at him! She would continue with the motion of her swing, throwing the missile which began to accelerate on its own power around the torus’ pillar.

”The limiting factor on how many rockets I may fire is not the ‘number of rockets’,” she said that as if it implied something rather ridiculous, ”but whether or not I remain to fire them. And since you have demonstrated an inability to stop me, expect no shortage.”

Once again seeking to keep Vocado distracted, Cheri rushed forwards, having turned her left hand into a rapier and her right arm into a buckler, where she would attempt to use traditional fencing as a fighting style. Rather disorienting, if Vocado wasn’t familiar!