Growing Pains

As much as I wanted to drag Donna all over the continent and introduce her to my favorite places and people, it was recommended by Wonder Woman that she take a few days to slowly get acclimated to the modern world now that she wasn’t stuck in a magical mirror.

Donna, like the responsible boring person she could be sometimes, agreed and was now on Themyscira getting a similar crash course on what you were, and were not, supposed to do on Earth while probably being told she had a home there if she just wanted to become part of the Amazons.

I wasn’t about to get in the way of her finally being able to meet what she considered her people just yet. I knew from our talks how much she wanted to meet other Amazons and be a part of them.

I would just drag her out on a few adventures if she didn’t leave on her own in a few weeks.

But that did mean I was once again left on my own with nothing to do once the Justice League members had to go back to their day jobs.

Part of me wanted to run off and find one of the other heroes to bother, I hadn’t seen Hawkie or the Sidekick Squad in a while, but those were things I wanted to do with Donna so I held off.

Instead I just kinda wandered down the streets of a random city somewhere on the west coast.

I think one of the Green Lanterns lived here? I hadn’t really interacted much with any of them, only briefly dealing with the black dude a couple times and even then it was more him focusing on his job while I just happened to be there then us actually fighting or working together.

I don’t think this was his city though. He didn’t really seem like a beach town kind of guy. Probably one of the other Lanterns then.

Maybe I should go find one of them?

My plans to find and poke the galactic space cops was interrupted by something crashing down from the sky right in front of me. I immediately jumped back and fell into a fighting stance, ignoring the screaming humans running away from whatever just showed up.

I didn’t have the luxury of getting distracted by them because whatever this thing was? I couldn’t sense its energy.

A bright pink thing shot out of the dust cloud straight at me and I instinctually ducked under it before leaping backwards to get some more distance. I didn’t know what this thing was. I wasn’t going to let it touch me just in case it had some kind of super poison on it.

The dust cleared and I got my first good look at what just attacked me.

It was a mostly pink robot…squid?...with some black and metal bits hovering in the air and suddenly I felt cheated. The stupid thing didn’t even look tough.

So with a disinterested scowl I raised a hand and shot it with a fairly strong ki blast. Only, instead of exploding like it was supposed to, my energy attack splashed harmlessly over some kind of shield.

Okay, slightly more interested now.

The robot squid shoots forward at me, almost like it was going for a tackle, which I sidestep easily enough. It’s fast, but after all the training I’ve done it’s not at a level I really have trouble with. At least until it flipped around and started using its four tentacles to either attack or try to grab me.

I don’t know what the things were made of but they were durable enough that all hitting them did was knock them out of the way for a bit and every time I did so I felt a weird electric tingling in whatever I touched them with that was slowly making my arms and legs heavier.

One of the tentacles speared towards my head so I sidestepped out of the way and grabbed the weird not-metal as it passed and used it to heave the squid over my shoulder and into the side of a nearby building. Not that it did much beyond damaging the brickwork.

I scowled as I looked around the street.

Most of the humans had cleared out by now but it was still too cramped to really cut loose without breaking something.

I needed to get to a more open area. Good thing the ocean was right there.

Now just to see if the squid will follow me…

-o-

The good news was that the robot squid was willing to follow me out over the ocean instead of staying in the city so the heroes wouldn’t need to lecture me about paying attention to my surroundings after I destroyed the thing.

The bad news was I still had no idea how to destroy the stupid thing.

I didn’t feel like going too far away from the coast but once I was far enough away from the city to not worry about hitting a building, I shot the squid with a serious ki blast. One that should have theoretically vaporized a skyscraper if it hit, but just like before the blast scattered harmlessly over the robot after hitting some kind of shield and I was back to square one.

Actually I was a little worse off because my limbs still felt heavy from whatever the tentacles did to them. It was fine for now but eventually it could be a problem. Come to think of it my Ki was moving a little more sluggishly than normal too…

I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and focused on the squid. No point worrying about those things if I just got blindsided because I was distracted. Something I was actually pretty annoyed at. I spent so much time trying to make using ki sense second nature that now that I couldn’t use it I felt like I was fighting half blind.

The squid caught up and looked like it wasn’t going to slow down even as it flipped and spread its tentacles to give it the biggest chance of grabbing me. I didn’t know why it seemed so focused on capturing me rather than fighting but that joined the rest of my thoughts in the mental ‘for later’ box as I counter charged the flying pink robot and punched it in the body right where the tentacles attached to the rest hard enough to cause a thunderclap.

I smiled because for once I actually felt the body deform from the hit. This thing was durable and strong, but I could beat it.

“Okay squiddie, I don’t know what your problem is with me. But if you think you’re enough to beat a Saiyan warrior, you’ve got another thi– hey, wait! Where are you going!?”

I was just going for a bit of banter and the thing dove into the ocean!

Did I just scare it off? The last alien I told about me being a Saiyan was those Imperium guys and they went as far as trying to claw pieces of themselves off trying to get away from me. Were Saiyans simply too scary? But this was a robot, it shouldn’t even feel fear!

I looked at the water and debated if continuing to fight the alien robot squid was worth following it into the water. On the one hand, it twinged my pride to just let the thing get away after attacking me. But on the other, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of getting soaked just to try and find something that could have run away by now with almost no chance of catching it.

I was just about to give up on finding the robot squid and heading back to the city when I caught a flash of pink on the surface of the water. I had a split second to realize the reflection came from above me before the robot squid slammed into me and wrapped two tentacles around each of my arms.

What…how did it get above me that fast?!

I got my answer seconds later when the second, or rather the first, robot squid burst out of the water and grabbed my legs.

Okay, there were more of these things. Now I knew for sure someone was after me specifically.

Doing my best to ignore the growing numb feeling in my arms and legs, I flared my ki and spun in place before flexing my core and slamming the two robots into each other. My move worked and they lost their grip on me, even better I could see some sparks coming from where the two squids collided indicating some kind of damage. Whatever shield these things used to protect against my energy attacks didn’t protect against itself.

“Well, now we know I can break you. Any more friends you want to bring to the party?” I taunted the robots. Not that I was expecting them to talk if they hadn’t by now.

They didn’t talk but they quickly shut me up when two more robots exploded out of the ocean bringing my opponents up to four.

“That wasn’t an actual invitation.” I complained and then had to focus as all four attacked at once.

Between sixteen tentacles it was hard to find room to dodge and I ended up tanking a lot more hits then I wanted, but eventually I managed to catch one of them again and started using the rest of the squid as an improvised flail on the other three robots. Without the shields getting in the way I managed to do some decent damage but couldn’t take any of them down before the squid I had a hold of ejected the tentacle I had a hold of.

Still, going by the sparks coming off them now a few more solid hits should change that.

Unfortunately I wasn’t in much better shape because the whole time I was using a squid to beat a squid, whatever numbing thing the tentacles did had still been going on. I could barely feel my right hand right now and it took actual effort to form it into a fist. And that was after forcibly pushing ki as a sort of barrier to slow down the effects.

I could be in a bit of trouble here…

Then one of the squids broke off and started flying back towards the city for seemingly no reason. That was until I heard the sound of jets in the distance and saw what looked like a human robot flying out towards us. Oh hey, I recognized that thing! It was the knock off battlesuit/Ironman thing the army had!

“Attention Aliens: you are violating United States airspace. Either leave Earth orbit now or if you are unable to break atmosphere, surrender and disarm. You will be held in custody until you can be escorted off-planet.” the new arrival blared from a loudspeaker.

Huh, he sounded kind of familiar.

The robot squid close to him flipped and spread out its tentacles, either to block the newcomer from getting closer or in preparation for an attack. Either way, not the right choice as that caused the robot to open fire with some kind of shoulder mounted gatling gun that tore into the pink squid and after a few seconds caused it to explode.

I frowned at that because there was no way some bullets were doing more damage then what I could do. But it happened anyway. Either something about that gun was special or I was missing something.

Another issue for the ‘later’ box.

The three remaining squids decided this was the last shot they were going to get at me and rushed to go on the attack. But they made a mistake, not only did they group up, they also had given me enough time to gather my Ki.

“KAMEHAME–” I cupped my hands and focused on making the attack as dense as possible to give it the best chance of getting through the damaged shields. Then I let go. “HAAAA!”

Just as I guessed planned, the shields on the squids couldn’t hold off a continuous attack and eventually failed. The three squids exploded and without the shields protecting them, the resulting parts were vaporized by the energy attack.

That just left me alone with the new guy. Who I finally remembered the name of.

“Hey, Rhodes!” I half-sang, giving him an exaggerated wave to disguise the fact I still couldn’t really feel my limbs. “I see you got a new suit. Does this mean we get to have another match?”

The military drone slowed to a stop and gave me a lookover. “You look familiar. You don’t happen to have a younger sister do you? Gets into places she shouldn’t be? Likes to break expensive prototypes?”

“You have trouble hearing through that thing?” I scowled at the robot. “It’s me, Califa.”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But seriously, you look different. No more little monkey girl, huh? You had one heck of a growth spurt from the last time we saw you.”

“Thanks! It happened when I spent a month in a magical mirror training device. I met a new friend there too! I’ll have to bring her by so she can spar against your new suit too!”

“...magical mirror…? Right, gonna decide that’s above my paygrade. Anyway, look sharp kid. We got another UFO dropping on our heads. We’ll catch up after we figure out what they want or send them packing.”

I looked up and sure enough there was a spaceship heading right for us.

Not a very big one though. So either this was just a landing craft or whoever owned it was just bringing a handful of people. Especially when I saw the size of the two figures standing on top of the ship. Unless there was some serious space expansion wizardry in that ship you weren’t fitting more than two or three of the…crab-people? They looked like giant armored crab-people to me at least…in there.

“Attention Aliens,” Rhodes announced one more time. “This is Air Force Specialist James Rhodes. You are violating United States airspace. State your intentions or you will be considered hostile.”

Going by the look of the armor on these guys I was betting they were the ones behind the robot squid things, and since those hadn’t said anything I wasn’t expecting these two to either.

So it was a little surprising when one of them held up a golden badge and said, “In the name of the Grand Centauri Empire, the Saiyan girl is under arrest for violation of the Ekelon Accords. Once she is captured we will leave this planet. Stand aside.”

Wait. Were these some kind of non-Lantern space cops? Why were they after me, I hadn’t even done anything off planet?! And what were the Ekelon Accords?!