The Powers of Plant

She was tempted to look back up to the missile once again, but the tone of Vocado’s voice kept her attention on him. ”It is not my place, as the Tuffle Chancellor, to inspect them.” Officially, the tuffles had lost the War, after all. Zuqetta had not asked for tuffle assistance in installing them— which was ultimately a concern only in the sense that they were possibly installed wrong as a consequence— and much of their operation was beyond any tuffle’s knowledge. ”All I can say is that, if they are capable of spilling poison, they have not yet started.” Cheri wanted to say something like ‘they aren’t there to terraform’, but that was just a hope. ‘Terraform’ implied something well outside of the scope of reason. But she simply could not say, this being more a matter of Zuqetta’s personal proclivities. While it was certainly unnecessary, time was yet to tell if it was also foolish.

”Warmaster.” She said in a peculiar tone of voice, meant mostly to get his attention. ”Have you forgotten to whom you speak? I know. I, especially, understand the dangers, if this process is not performed up to tuffle standards. Frankly, there are more concerns than what you’ve listed, but I reiterate, I have no way of knowing. It’s entirely possible that these towers will have a neutral or positive effect, also, based on what Arcosian terraforming technology is capable of, though of course this is a different beast altogether. They certainly seem like they would be easy to remove after the fact, anyway.” Again, this wasn’t terraforming, not quite. Actual, direct terraforming would be a disaster on an already inhabited planet.

She looked away, to the missile, and to the torus’ central pillar. ”Computer. Teleport the missile to the Chinzera Nebula, the largest planetoid there.” In a flash of light, the missile teleported away to somewhere far, far away, somewhere where it could explode in peace and make rather the impressive lightshow in doing so. The Chinzera Nebula did have some native organisms, the Chinzerans, a gelatinous species, but they weren’t anywhere near the few planetoids in it, instead living distributed across the cosmic dust. Being Chinzerans, they could only benefit. And they were cute, so Cheri was fine with that.

She looked back, and then to the door Vocado had come in. She moved towards it at a leisurely pace. ”I could not say. I had something of a rapport with a previous leader, Azoth, but it ended up resulting in little.” Promises of brilliance and economic power and cooperation… that didn’t lead anywhere. She could only hope Ticoga could do for them what Azoth could not.

”It’s not a matter of ‘allowed’, is it? That’s the weakness in determining your leadership through challenges of power. Whoever has the power, wins. Whoever wins, leads.”

Right by the door, Cheri raised an eyebrow at Vocado’s comment. The crown is a curse, its rapid changes left the people unfocused, sure— but, what to do about that? ”I understand. Officially, I have heard nothing of your concerns, or your plans. Our relationship will not change, for nothing has happened that might cause it to change.”

There is a certain class of camaraderie you could only accomplish through moving on the intense desire to murder each other. With no apparent input from either of them, the door to the exit opened, revealing the elevator. ”Unofficially, I will say that challenging Zuqetta for her position is unlikely to alleviate any of the issues you’re so concerned with. Especially as, and I trust you won’t take offense at the notion, you are incredibly unlikely to win that fight. And, if you did, you are unlikely to keep the throne for long, if that census was anything to go by. Monarchy is a throw of the dice.” ‘The weakest Super Saiyan’. It was like being called ‘the smallest giant’, or the ‘least grand god’.

She entered the elevator, ready for Vocado to join her. Its buttons were at tuffle-height.

”What you’d need is governmental reform: republicanism, a parliamentary system, ideally even democracy. But can the Vegetan culture handle such a change, I wonder? Could a monarch bear to give up such power before it's too late?”

Hm… was Zuqetta even stronger than Cheri thought? Crushing Vocado at a half- or third-power was certainly a dramatic image, but it didn’t align with what Cheri understood of their relative power.

She smiled. ‘Giving up a crown means you need the strength to wield it’, impressively said! He could write his own speeches, she thought to herself, if he ever needed to. ”Then the monarch must give up that power, too. Taori managed it, though ultimately his reasons were short in scope.” That wasn’t to say that family wasn’t important, merely that to act for one’s family was a selfish endeavour when one’s people as a whole were on the line. If the saiyans and tuffles of Plant were to continue living there for the indefinite future, perhaps the greatest possible outcome would be to see the two united, truly, under a single government that represented them both— but that seemed a ridiculous dream from here, as unattainable as peace once seemed.

Something beyond, how ridiculous a notion. Funnily enough, though, Nasu had brought up exactly that idea, and the way he described it made Cheri believe in the possibility. ‘Who’s to say’ indeed… She didn’t seem shocked at all, her face entirely unaffected.

She pressed an unmarked button, which lit up. There wasn’t a light on the other side of the button that shone through it, no, the ‘glass’ itself of the button was that which glowed, something Vocado probably didn’t see often, if he’d noticed it at all. The elevator doors slid closed, and were briefly also protected by a forcefield just in case. Then, the signature jolt of gs as they began to rapidly rise up through Plant’s earth.

”I hope so, too. With every act, with every thought, I work towards that. Good luck, Vocado.”

”No insurrections or attacks on the city as a whole, no. There was an attack from a radicalised tuffle-saiyan hybrid that targeted me and Queen Zuqetta, but that didn’t result in much. And, as well you know, there was the destructive attempt on my life from the Earthling terrorist, Kimono Lamellar.” Vocado knew about that event one way or the other, whether she’d told him about it or he’d gotten involved himself. Who could say?

There was a strange, sometimes seemingly paradoxical, balance to how tuffles and saiyans should be seen in each other’s lives. Perhaps, one day, that much wouldn’t be something that must be considered first, its risks measured. Already, in revitalisation colonies built on Plantian land previous lost to destron, saiba, and war in general could benefit from tuffle and saiyan cooperation on even the community level, where one’s first thoughts regarding your neighbours to your left and to your right were not their genes. Tuffle and saiyan kids being raised together, dogs and cats in harmony, peace and love, et cetera.

”Of course. Always.” That was how a healthy democracy needed to be. ”Chances are, you wouldn’t recognise the names of my political opponents if I told you. Their Power Levels are well, well below a hundred, as they are politicians by trade, and not at all warriors. I must keep active on that front, too; the competition keeps me active, and politically fit.” Lest she fall to the sharks of opportunism and scandal.

The elevator ride continued.

Cheri gave Vocado a sly look, thinking of multiple potential ‘elephants in the room’ Vocado could be referring to— though of course, with the adjectives given, Lottus was the obvious pick. It was quite the peculiar expression— Earthling, she imagined?— but it seemed prescient. There were rather a few of these large elephants, in rather a small, tuffle-appropriate room.

”In its own way, yes. It’s something you need to be culturally accustomed to, or otherwise you wouldn’t be able to make sense of it at all.” There were certain speech patterns and codes of respect, and rules, specific to those very contexts. Things had developed this way for good reason, culturally relevant and interesting reasons that, even when they did not explicitly serve a practical purpose, were worth keeping around all the same on account of their cultural value as something a tuffle could see and be proud of. Vocado told her about Vegetan politics— but, of course, Cheri already knew, Vegetan anthropology was her primary field of study. ”Sounds like a problem a monarch would have to actively focus on and force to change.” She said this because she’d seen it a thousand times before, in her books, across the known and historied cultures of the stars.

”Earth has the startling tendency to become relevant, for good and for ill. Before the first Vegetan attack on Hatchi of my chancellorship, I went to Earth to seek out its heroes, to persuade them to come to our aid in case of attack. In that, I had some success. The planet seems teeming with powerful, headstrong warriors who know little of their situation in the wider cosmos.” Though she raised an eyebrow. ”’Ambassadors’?”

The elevator door opened, revealing the outside world and, finally, natural sunlight.

”Indeed.” A matter for another day, certainly, and not any time soon. President Chomei’s political legacy was an odd one, especially in terms of the economics of widespread magic materialisation, but they weren’t an active threat, and seemed delightfully ignorant of wider matters. On one hand, Earth was also a democracy, and so President Chomei would inevitably leave the office, assuming there was no coup at any stage. On the other hand, the same was not necessarily true for his ideas, as crazed as they were both in terms of economy and foreign policy. Cheri could only hope the people of Earth recognised what horrors he’d wrought upon them.

Cheri raised an eyebrow at the description of the ambassadors— today had been a good day for eyebrow exercise, all in all. ”Fascinating. Well, I’m in contact with Amara, so I can simply ask her about it later.” The knowledge that Amara was a part of the plan reassured Cheri that, whatever they were trying, it mustn’t have been too bad: if they were trying something especially heinous, Amara would have been actively opposed to their efforts. It was entirely unclear how much Cheri believed Vocado’s tale, an eternal enigma.

”You were on Earth watching their Tournament, weren't you? You tell me.”

Cheri stepped out of the elevator, and into the wide outdoors. Was this to be goodbye?

Yes, a paranoid mess, Cheri could have guessed that much. The War had done awful things to many people, even after it had ended, even for those who did not fight in it. She gave him a strange look: this was the disclaimer he gave after learning that Cheri made it clear she had access to another source of gaining knowledge of what happened on that day? Most peculiar. She’d have to look into that, later.

”Duty cares not for one’s schedule.” Even if there were free days and sick days and such, there would always be more to do, and always more your effort could contribute to the world and to your people. ”Hm. Well, have fun with that.”

Vocado started to float away, ready to fly to his duties, his tasks, and his meetings. ”Yes, of course, do that. And, likewise, I will keep you informed regarding developments in Project Potara.”

Cheri would not fly away herself, no, flight took far too long to traverse cross-planetary lengths. She stood still, ready to be teleported away to her secret facility deep underground, where she will have to undergo the still mildly painful, hour-long ‘detransformation sequence’ and accompanying tech-sickness. She gave no salutes of her own, that wasn’t her way.

”Goodbye, and good luck.”

And while Vocado was now leaving, he would detect, a few seconds later, the sudden absence of Cheri’s power signature. She was there one second, and somewhere else entirely the next.