01-03-2009, 08:33 AM
The fight hadn’t lasted very long. Only about ten minutes or so, but so intense was the desire of each to beat the other that both had rapidly used up a vast quantity of energy. The two of them sat across from one another, their enormous powers waning. Bra frowned as she fought to find her footing, taking delicate care of her arm, which hung loosely at her side.
Vegeta had a harder time getting to his feet, his crippled leg providing no help in his ascent. Ultimately, he had to float just off the ground to keep his weight off his shattered knee, his hand pressed against the ever-present stab wound in his abdomen.
Bra just watched, her breathing heavy and labored. Her father’s came out similarly, perhaps a touch more ragged thanks to the internal bleeding. The princess lunged forth in a mechanical, disjointed motion, haphazardly lashing out at Vegeta, who’s movements were equally deliberate.
The two of them threw a few punches, and in moments they loosened up, each regaining some semblance of rhythm. The pace of the battle quickened significantly, and the two exchanged blows with a renewed fervor, despite their respective crippled limbs.
Vegeta was stripped of his devastating kick combinations, and Bra was no longer able to put up much of a fistfight. Still, they didn’t seem to have much of a problem hurting one another. The king kneed his daughter in the gut with his good leg, and planted a powerful uppercut to her chin, propelling her up into the air.
As the princess hurtled up through the sky, Vegeta pooled a gargantuan amount of energy into his hands, and unleashed a behemoth ki wave up at Bra, who took the full brunt of the attack with her guard down. The explosion left her deaf and blind, and she spiraled out of the sky, crashing into the ground below.
The mighty warrior king collapsed, the sheer magnitude of his exertion felling him once more. After some time, he was upright again, and lamely shuffling toward the spot where Bra had crashed. He could feel her ki waning, but he knew his was doing the same. He cracked his neck. He would kill her now, before she got back up. This fight was finished.
Bra was flat on her back, spread-eagle, staring at the sky. The searing pain of burns all over her body greeted her numbing senses, but she couldn’t move to see how bad it was. Her head and her limbs all felt so heavy. Even as a super saiyan 2, she just couldn’t summon the strength she needed to move anymore.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Vegeta unleashed an enormous amount of energy very quickly. Surely that was having an effect on him, as well. Her contemplation was cut short, however, when she found him standing over her. Her eyes were heavy, too, and it was all she could do to keep them open as he came closer. He hovered right up to her, his feet right by her head, and his eyes found hers.
“Prepare yourself,” he warned, setting his jaw with a deep frown. He extended his hand at the prone girl, drawing his energy into it. Bra watched in helplessness as energy was fed into his palm. It was taking longer than it needed to, Vegeta seemed troubled. The halfling didn’t really have time to process what that meant, though.
The energy flared and Bra squeezed her eyes shut, only to hear a yelp of surprise and a loud thud. Opening her eyes, she found Snowball on top of the saiyan thoroughbred, it’s paws pinning his shoulders to the ground. “No way...”
Growling in rage, Vegeta swatted the shadow monster off of him and launched into the air, energy still in hand. He hurled it at the menacing creature - a move that completely surprised Bra - and utterly destroyed Grimshaw’s Memento.
Fueled by a sudden revelation, Bra found the will to push herself up to her feet once again, as Vegeta descended to meet her eye-to-eye. “You’re...” she began. “Do you even realize you just made a gigantic mistake?”
“Wha-?” the king seemed shocked.
“You’re getting rusty, aren’t you?” she prodded. “You’ve obviously been training, but it’s been a long time since you’ve been in a real fight, hasn’t it? You just did something any sensei would have criticized you for... for weeks!”
“What are you talking about, girl?”
“Haha,” Bra smiled, “You probably had enough energy in the palm of your hand to kill me, and you wasted it on my Snowball. He’s a projection of me. You let him distract you, but you could have killed me instead; it would have taken him with me.”
“What difference does it make? You’re completely drained. I can still kill you,” Vegeta countered.
“...I know. So... do it, already,” Bra conceded. The truth was, she wasn’t bluffing. There was no grand plan, no cunning scheme. Bra was too tired to even feel sorry for herself. All she could process was that she’d lost a fight she knew she couldn’t win, and now she was going to die. All she could do was wait. She raised her arms at her sides, giving herself up as a target.
“...You fought well. I’ll give you an honorable death,” Vegeta curtly replied. With that, he stood bolt upright, facing perpendicular to Bra, ignoring the pain shooting through his leg as he put weight on it. He leveled his palm at her and began to channel energy into it.
At first, the princess just figured he was going to incinerate her and be done with it, but more and more energy was being forced into his hand. Veins started appearing on his arm, and soon, his whole body was covered with them. He released a deep, feral roar and his pupils and irises seemed to dissolve into the whites of his eyes, leaving nothing but a look of absolute frenzy on his countenance.
He was going to put everything he had into this attack, and send Bra out with a bang. She smiled. He didn’t have to do that, at all. In some twisted way, this must have been a sign of respect. He was going out of his way to do this, after all. A normal opponent, he would have just unceremoniously broken and left the body where it fell.
Bra took a certain kind of pride in this. She straightened her back and raised her chin. She would take this with grace. May her atoms be scattered on the winds and may she die unafraid. How absurd. So long had she spent terrified of people like her father, and now that she knew she was going to die, it seemed so... so unimportant. The fear was gone.
The outrageously powerful column of energy lanced from Vegeta’s hand, rushing at the girl with every ounce of strength the king could muster. Bra stood stone stiff. She had finally become a super saiyan 2, after so many years, but even her new, overwhelming power was not enough. She knew that her condition made it totally impossible to dodge the attack, so she made no effort to try.
Her utter acceptance to her fate made what happened next so difficult to grasp. Something smashed into her, hard, knocking her down, but more importantly, throwing her out of harm’s way. The wave hit whatever had dislodged her and exploded. Unfortunately, Bra was still close enough to be hurled across the landscape, and was sent skidding painfully across the wasteland.
“Ugh... what...” she rubbed her head, forcing herself up. “How did...”
Her ki sense flared.
“No!”
There, amidst the aftermath of the explosion, lay a figure, writhing in pain. “No!!”
Racing over as fast as she could, Bra fell to her knees before even slowing down, sliding across the ground on them toward the fallen figure. The person who’d pushed her out of the deadly beam’s path.
“Kirano,” she breathed, putting her hand on his chest. He was horribly injured, but it looked like he wasn’t about to die. A sigh of relief escaped the girl, and she let the tears roll down her cheeks. “I... I can’t believe you would do that... for me...”
“Yeah, well... Gehr’s already dead so... I didn’t have anything else to do, you know?” replied the bloody, blond warrior. “I was in way better shape than you are, so I figured... why not?”
“You saved my life,” Bra managed, her eyes widening with realization. “You could have been killed.”
“I told you, you couldn’t do this alone,” Kirano flashed a grin despite the horrible pain he was in. “But, ah, I’m sorry. That’s all there is, I can’t move.”
“That’s-”
“Bra!” he interrupted, his eyes blazing. “There’s no time for this! Don’t waste the opportunity, finish this fight!!”
The princess glanced over at her father, and then back to Kirano. She nodded. Summoning every pitiful scrap of ki left in her, she sailed through the sky far slower than she would have liked, toward her father. He didn’t move. He couldn’t even raise his arms to defend himself. A kienzan dagger flashed into her hand, and she drove it deep into his abdomen, creating another wound only inches from the first one.
Vegeta gasped, stiffening against the horrible pain. Bra let the dagger fade out of existence, and caught her father before he could fall. His hair almost immediately faded to black, but he kept fighting to stay conscious.
Carefully, the princess set him down on his back, and knelt down at his side, a hand on her forehead. “Dad, I-”
“Why?”
“Wha-?”
“Why haven’t you killed me!?” the king hissed.
“What!?”
“You have to finish the fight! You have to kill me!!”
“The fight is finished-”
“NO!!” Vegeta boomed. “You made an official challenge for the throne! That’s a fight to the death! The victor must kill the loser!”
“But-”
“Bra... do you know how badly you would dishonor me if you didn’t go through with it? In order to retain my dignity, it must be known that I defended my throne to the death. If you... have any... compassion for me... in your heart... you would do as I ask,” Vegeta pleaded.
“I can’t, I can’t-” her breathing came in difficult gasps.
“Bra! This is what you wanted!! The throne is yours! You have to take it from me!” the fallen king demanded.
“Keep your throne!!” Bra shrieked, sobbing loudly now.
“I can’t!!” Vegeta thundered, hacking and coughing as a result.
“I... I... I want to hate you so much, but I can’t! You weren’t there for me but you’re still my dad! Even if the things you’re doing are cruel...”
“Bra... if you don’t take your victory, I’ll be disgraced. Rejected by my own council. Ridiculed. Exiled. The Vegeta Dynasty would be over, and I would... be forgotten. You have to understand, to kill me is to let me keep my dignity. I know you think sparing my life will be doing me a favor, but the truth is, I won’t have any life worth living left!”
Bra closed her eyes, and released a long, dejected sigh. “Is there... any way to avoid me having to kill you? Any way at all you can stay king? Any way to let you live!?”
“No,” Vegeta replied. “Well... it would be seen as acceptable if you spared me in order to make me an advisor. Historically, some kings would be considered too knowledgeable to kill, and the victor would keep them around for political advice and the like. It’s not... as desirable as dying in battle, but...”
“Dad,” Bra sharply retorted. “Do you honestly think I could run a planet without your help?”
“Well...”
“And there’s no way to let you keep your title?”
“The rules of this challenge are strict, Bra. You shouldn’t have challenged me for the throne if you weren’t prepared to rule,”
“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be able to beat you,”
“You probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for...”
“Kirano,”
“Who?”
“He’s... well, it’s been a long time, dad,”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, if I promise to explain it all later, can we all go to a rejuvenation chamber first? I’m about to black out and both you guys can’t even walk,” Bra swiftly deflected.
“You had best explain yourself when I wake up, then,” Vegeta warned.
“I promise,” Bra agreed, and then set to the task of taking both her father and Kirano back to the palace with just one arm.
OOC: Hay Kirano. This post takes place after Gehr dies. If you want to fluid time fighting/killing him, go nuts. I needed to use Kirano to save Bra's ass so I apologize.
Vegeta had a harder time getting to his feet, his crippled leg providing no help in his ascent. Ultimately, he had to float just off the ground to keep his weight off his shattered knee, his hand pressed against the ever-present stab wound in his abdomen.
Bra just watched, her breathing heavy and labored. Her father’s came out similarly, perhaps a touch more ragged thanks to the internal bleeding. The princess lunged forth in a mechanical, disjointed motion, haphazardly lashing out at Vegeta, who’s movements were equally deliberate.
The two of them threw a few punches, and in moments they loosened up, each regaining some semblance of rhythm. The pace of the battle quickened significantly, and the two exchanged blows with a renewed fervor, despite their respective crippled limbs.
Vegeta was stripped of his devastating kick combinations, and Bra was no longer able to put up much of a fistfight. Still, they didn’t seem to have much of a problem hurting one another. The king kneed his daughter in the gut with his good leg, and planted a powerful uppercut to her chin, propelling her up into the air.
As the princess hurtled up through the sky, Vegeta pooled a gargantuan amount of energy into his hands, and unleashed a behemoth ki wave up at Bra, who took the full brunt of the attack with her guard down. The explosion left her deaf and blind, and she spiraled out of the sky, crashing into the ground below.
The mighty warrior king collapsed, the sheer magnitude of his exertion felling him once more. After some time, he was upright again, and lamely shuffling toward the spot where Bra had crashed. He could feel her ki waning, but he knew his was doing the same. He cracked his neck. He would kill her now, before she got back up. This fight was finished.
Bra was flat on her back, spread-eagle, staring at the sky. The searing pain of burns all over her body greeted her numbing senses, but she couldn’t move to see how bad it was. Her head and her limbs all felt so heavy. Even as a super saiyan 2, she just couldn’t summon the strength she needed to move anymore.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Vegeta unleashed an enormous amount of energy very quickly. Surely that was having an effect on him, as well. Her contemplation was cut short, however, when she found him standing over her. Her eyes were heavy, too, and it was all she could do to keep them open as he came closer. He hovered right up to her, his feet right by her head, and his eyes found hers.
“Prepare yourself,” he warned, setting his jaw with a deep frown. He extended his hand at the prone girl, drawing his energy into it. Bra watched in helplessness as energy was fed into his palm. It was taking longer than it needed to, Vegeta seemed troubled. The halfling didn’t really have time to process what that meant, though.
The energy flared and Bra squeezed her eyes shut, only to hear a yelp of surprise and a loud thud. Opening her eyes, she found Snowball on top of the saiyan thoroughbred, it’s paws pinning his shoulders to the ground. “No way...”
Growling in rage, Vegeta swatted the shadow monster off of him and launched into the air, energy still in hand. He hurled it at the menacing creature - a move that completely surprised Bra - and utterly destroyed Grimshaw’s Memento.
Fueled by a sudden revelation, Bra found the will to push herself up to her feet once again, as Vegeta descended to meet her eye-to-eye. “You’re...” she began. “Do you even realize you just made a gigantic mistake?”
“Wha-?” the king seemed shocked.
“You’re getting rusty, aren’t you?” she prodded. “You’ve obviously been training, but it’s been a long time since you’ve been in a real fight, hasn’t it? You just did something any sensei would have criticized you for... for weeks!”
“What are you talking about, girl?”
“Haha,” Bra smiled, “You probably had enough energy in the palm of your hand to kill me, and you wasted it on my Snowball. He’s a projection of me. You let him distract you, but you could have killed me instead; it would have taken him with me.”
“What difference does it make? You’re completely drained. I can still kill you,” Vegeta countered.
“...I know. So... do it, already,” Bra conceded. The truth was, she wasn’t bluffing. There was no grand plan, no cunning scheme. Bra was too tired to even feel sorry for herself. All she could process was that she’d lost a fight she knew she couldn’t win, and now she was going to die. All she could do was wait. She raised her arms at her sides, giving herself up as a target.
“...You fought well. I’ll give you an honorable death,” Vegeta curtly replied. With that, he stood bolt upright, facing perpendicular to Bra, ignoring the pain shooting through his leg as he put weight on it. He leveled his palm at her and began to channel energy into it.
At first, the princess just figured he was going to incinerate her and be done with it, but more and more energy was being forced into his hand. Veins started appearing on his arm, and soon, his whole body was covered with them. He released a deep, feral roar and his pupils and irises seemed to dissolve into the whites of his eyes, leaving nothing but a look of absolute frenzy on his countenance.
He was going to put everything he had into this attack, and send Bra out with a bang. She smiled. He didn’t have to do that, at all. In some twisted way, this must have been a sign of respect. He was going out of his way to do this, after all. A normal opponent, he would have just unceremoniously broken and left the body where it fell.
Bra took a certain kind of pride in this. She straightened her back and raised her chin. She would take this with grace. May her atoms be scattered on the winds and may she die unafraid. How absurd. So long had she spent terrified of people like her father, and now that she knew she was going to die, it seemed so... so unimportant. The fear was gone.
The outrageously powerful column of energy lanced from Vegeta’s hand, rushing at the girl with every ounce of strength the king could muster. Bra stood stone stiff. She had finally become a super saiyan 2, after so many years, but even her new, overwhelming power was not enough. She knew that her condition made it totally impossible to dodge the attack, so she made no effort to try.
Her utter acceptance to her fate made what happened next so difficult to grasp. Something smashed into her, hard, knocking her down, but more importantly, throwing her out of harm’s way. The wave hit whatever had dislodged her and exploded. Unfortunately, Bra was still close enough to be hurled across the landscape, and was sent skidding painfully across the wasteland.
“Ugh... what...” she rubbed her head, forcing herself up. “How did...”
Her ki sense flared.
“No!”
There, amidst the aftermath of the explosion, lay a figure, writhing in pain. “No!!”
Racing over as fast as she could, Bra fell to her knees before even slowing down, sliding across the ground on them toward the fallen figure. The person who’d pushed her out of the deadly beam’s path.
“Kirano,” she breathed, putting her hand on his chest. He was horribly injured, but it looked like he wasn’t about to die. A sigh of relief escaped the girl, and she let the tears roll down her cheeks. “I... I can’t believe you would do that... for me...”
“Yeah, well... Gehr’s already dead so... I didn’t have anything else to do, you know?” replied the bloody, blond warrior. “I was in way better shape than you are, so I figured... why not?”
“You saved my life,” Bra managed, her eyes widening with realization. “You could have been killed.”
“I told you, you couldn’t do this alone,” Kirano flashed a grin despite the horrible pain he was in. “But, ah, I’m sorry. That’s all there is, I can’t move.”
“That’s-”
“Bra!” he interrupted, his eyes blazing. “There’s no time for this! Don’t waste the opportunity, finish this fight!!”
The princess glanced over at her father, and then back to Kirano. She nodded. Summoning every pitiful scrap of ki left in her, she sailed through the sky far slower than she would have liked, toward her father. He didn’t move. He couldn’t even raise his arms to defend himself. A kienzan dagger flashed into her hand, and she drove it deep into his abdomen, creating another wound only inches from the first one.
Vegeta gasped, stiffening against the horrible pain. Bra let the dagger fade out of existence, and caught her father before he could fall. His hair almost immediately faded to black, but he kept fighting to stay conscious.
Carefully, the princess set him down on his back, and knelt down at his side, a hand on her forehead. “Dad, I-”
“Why?”
“Wha-?”
“Why haven’t you killed me!?” the king hissed.
“What!?”
“You have to finish the fight! You have to kill me!!”
“The fight is finished-”
“NO!!” Vegeta boomed. “You made an official challenge for the throne! That’s a fight to the death! The victor must kill the loser!”
“But-”
“Bra... do you know how badly you would dishonor me if you didn’t go through with it? In order to retain my dignity, it must be known that I defended my throne to the death. If you... have any... compassion for me... in your heart... you would do as I ask,” Vegeta pleaded.
“I can’t, I can’t-” her breathing came in difficult gasps.
“Bra! This is what you wanted!! The throne is yours! You have to take it from me!” the fallen king demanded.
“Keep your throne!!” Bra shrieked, sobbing loudly now.
“I can’t!!” Vegeta thundered, hacking and coughing as a result.
“I... I... I want to hate you so much, but I can’t! You weren’t there for me but you’re still my dad! Even if the things you’re doing are cruel...”
“Bra... if you don’t take your victory, I’ll be disgraced. Rejected by my own council. Ridiculed. Exiled. The Vegeta Dynasty would be over, and I would... be forgotten. You have to understand, to kill me is to let me keep my dignity. I know you think sparing my life will be doing me a favor, but the truth is, I won’t have any life worth living left!”
Bra closed her eyes, and released a long, dejected sigh. “Is there... any way to avoid me having to kill you? Any way at all you can stay king? Any way to let you live!?”
“No,” Vegeta replied. “Well... it would be seen as acceptable if you spared me in order to make me an advisor. Historically, some kings would be considered too knowledgeable to kill, and the victor would keep them around for political advice and the like. It’s not... as desirable as dying in battle, but...”
“Dad,” Bra sharply retorted. “Do you honestly think I could run a planet without your help?”
“Well...”
“And there’s no way to let you keep your title?”
“The rules of this challenge are strict, Bra. You shouldn’t have challenged me for the throne if you weren’t prepared to rule,”
“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be able to beat you,”
“You probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for...”
“Kirano,”
“Who?”
“He’s... well, it’s been a long time, dad,”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, if I promise to explain it all later, can we all go to a rejuvenation chamber first? I’m about to black out and both you guys can’t even walk,” Bra swiftly deflected.
“You had best explain yourself when I wake up, then,” Vegeta warned.
“I promise,” Bra agreed, and then set to the task of taking both her father and Kirano back to the palace with just one arm.
OOC: Hay Kirano. This post takes place after Gehr dies. If you want to fluid time fighting/killing him, go nuts. I needed to use Kirano to save Bra's ass so I apologize.
![[Image: Sage.jpg]](http://rebecca.florizone.com/sig/miscsig/Sage.jpg)