[1] Hunted in the Abandoned Town

[Super Buu]

At least it’s not as bad as that time in South City … Rose thought. Her body hurt all over. But she was still conscious, and nothing seemed to be broken. She guessed she had her father’s blood to thank for that, in part. And luckily she wasn’t that fast a flyer yet.

“Hello?” came a soft voice from the doorway of the abandoned store. “Is anyone in here?”

The young woman tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak cough. She heard the sound of footsteps and crunching glass, and looked up; another girl was approaching. She had a similar shade of pink hair – though Rose suspected it was dyed, unlike her own – and seemed to be about the same age.

“Are you alright?” came the concerned voice of the other woman. “Here.”

Rose took the other girl’s outstretched hand with gratitude, climbing to her feet with a pained grunt. Shaking off the broken glass, she muttered, “Thanks.”

“That was a nasty … um … crash,” said the other woman, who seemed even more overwhelmed than Rose by the situation. “You don’t look so good.”

She didn’t feel so good either. The adrenaline rush was starting to wear off, and now her brain was screaming for her to pay attention to her injuries. She ran a hand through her messed-up hair and winced as her fingers touched a nasty bump. The elbows of her orange hoody and the knees on her jeans had been ripped open, leaving grazed and bloody skin underneath. And all over, she could feel bruises starting to swell up. But still ….

“That was so awesome! Did you see that? Man!” Rose laughed.

“Um, yeah.” The other girl laughed nervously. “To be honest, I was a little taken aback. My grandfather told me things like that were possible, but … knowing it exists and actually seeing it are two different things, you know?”

Rose nodded. “No, I getcha.” She doubted the girl would believe her if she said that, just a few weeks ago, she’d never seen a ki blast in her life. “It’s crazy. My teacher Dog-Sensei says everyone has ki, you just don’t know it’s there until you learn to feel it.”

Ashe glanced back at the doorway. “That other girl was using it too.”

“Oh yeah!” Rose gasped suddenly as she recalled it. “That crazy bitch! She nearly shot me down!”

Noticing that the other woman had taken a step back, Rose relaxed. The last thing she wanted to do was make the girl scared of her. So far on Earth, Rose had met aliens, psychopathic murderers, and a martial arts dog – but truth be told, she just wanted to meet some people her age. Normal teenagers, the kind she’d dreamed about meeting when she was back in the Illumis dimension. To that end, perhaps constantly flaunting her new powers was a bad idea.

“Uh … I’m Rose!” she blurted out. “Nice to meet you! Though I suppose it’s not the nicest place to meet,” she added awkwardly.

“Ashe.” She paused. “Maybe we should get back to the group.”

“Right.” Rose nodded. She stopped for a moment to look around at the room and survey the destruction she’d caused, and then followed the other girl out into the street, where the rest of the ‘competitors’ had been tied up. Aside from the two teenage girls, there were three men, who escaped her attention at the moment, and the woman who’d thrown the ki blast.

As they strode over to the group, Rose shouted. “Hey! What were trying to do back there, kill me?!”

The raven-haired woman turned and shot a glare back. “I could have taken then down if you’d have stayed out of the way. Thanks to you, they escaped.”

“It’s not my fault!” retorted the younger woman. “You threw me off balance! And some kind of weird gravity field kicked in when I went too far!”

“Oh right.” The older woman rolled her eyes. “What amateur excuses. Next time, just stay out of the way, otherwise you’ll have much more than grazed elbows.” She glanced contemptuously down at the pink-haired girl’s tattered appearance.

“That’s enough arguing!” barked one of the group, a black-haired man who was dressed like a samurai warrior, with his hair tied back in a queue. “We need to search these buildings and see if there’s anything of use to defend ourselves against the other group.”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “Why should we listen to the orders of some cosplaying geek?”

The warrior growled. “Because your plans obviously aren’t working,” he said, pointing to the broken window of the abandoned store.

“That wasn’t my fault!” The girl threw her arms up in exasperation. Glancing to the last two members of the group and wondering if the selection could get any worse, she saw something which made her gasp – the same kid she’d seen a while back, the one who’d been helping that psycho in South City. What the hell had happened that day? One minute, she was fighting the freak, the next minute, she’d woken up in a hospital. It was all a blur, and it had reminded her that fighting before having done any training was probably a bad idea. Things’ll be different this time … she thought to herself.

The town they were in looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. It was strange. Why would so many people just up and … leave? Everything was still here, except for the people. The blackened, moldy remains of bread in storefronts, rusted machinery, baubles and trinkets. Why didn’t they take anything with them?

The man who looked like a scientist was speaking now. “I found some bags,” he was saying. “Next to the map.”

Rose approached eagerly with the others, snatching up one of the satchels and pulling it open. There was a compass, another map, and a stick of bread. The last of these she made to stuff into her mouth whole, before it was plucked out of her hands by the samurai cosplayer. “Hey!” she protested. “I’m hungry!”

“You don’t know how long we’re going to be spending here. I’d ration it if I were you.”

The young woman grumbled and wrapped the bread back up in its plastic film. No food? That was one more thing they were going to pay for.