Growing Pains

Despite what I was expecting after giant crab space cops showing up calling for my arrest, we actually didn’t break out into another fight.

Someone back at whatever base Rhodes was piloting the suit from had taken over his speakers and had started spitting legal talk at the crab people who started spitting it right back.

I lost track of the conversation the first time they mentioned clause c of subsection; who cares, and hadn’t been able to figure out anything since.

Especially because both sides eventually seemed to default to ‘wait until a Green Lantern showed up to deal with this’ once the military dude let it slip they had contacted one.

They wouldn’t even let me leave either!

The crab guys because they still wanted to arrest me, and the military guys because they didn’t want to be responsible for an invasion if the crab guys came after me anyway.

They did agree to move this whole standoff to the beach though, which was nice because I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. Ki control was letting me move mostly normally, but it felt like everything was half-asleep.

I didn’t like it, hopefully it wore off soon.

Finally, after what felt like hours, I saw a flash of green heading towards us marking the arrival of the Lantern we were waiting on.

Not the one I expected though, because it was the same guy from the Imperium invasion and the H.I.V.E. thing and not the white dude with the mask.

“Sorry for the wait,” GL said as he touched down. “I’m Green Lantern 2814-2 Stewart. I got word of a jurisdictional dispute?”

“Greetings Lantern Stewart, we are members of the Centauri Police sent to deal with a violation of the Ekelon Accords. Which this planet’s military is blocking us from enforcing.”

“No offense, Crab-bucket, but we aren’t just going to let you launch drone strikes into an American city because you say you can.” Rhodes sniped from the side. I guess he got control of the microphone back for a bit. “And GL, can you explain to them that they need to say what they are here for in plain words? Because they and the legal eggheads keep going back and forth over a bunch of codes or references to those Ekelon Accords, which our best and brightest are pretty sure Earth hasn’t signed so…”

“Not true.” One of the crabs said, taking a step forward. “King Ἀλέξανδρος signed the accords several hundred years ago. As the majority ruler of the planet at the time, that was sufficient for Earth to be included.”

“King who?” Rhodes asked at the same time Green Lantern groaned and covered his face with a hand.

“King Ἀλέξανδρος, or King Alexander the III, also known as Alexander the Great. At the time he could have been considered influential enough to sign for the entire planet…as long as the person asking him to sign was shifty enough to not care that they were a bronze-age civilization to get another signatory attached to their name.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked, still lost with all the legal talk.

“Earth is technically part of the Accords, they have the right to respond to major breaches if there is no leader or nation in control of most of the planet.”

“And the United States doesn’t count?” Rhodes asked petulantly.

“The US, the EU, Russia, China. All of them are close enough that one of them can’t be considered the undisputed ruler of Earth.”

“Try not to let the Brass hear you say that. You’ll bruise their egos.”

“Now that this has been cleared up, will you stand aside so we can do our duty?” Left crab demanded, raising his bigger claw in my direction.

Rhodes moves to block him but is held back by Green Lantern. “Hold it, hotshot. Let’s finish hearing them out.” He turned back to the crabs. “What breach exactly are you responding to?”

“Article seven; clause four, subsection thirty seven.”

Green Lantern looked confused as his ring no doubt gave him the information what that actually meant. “The removal of invasive megafauna threatening to destroy a garden world? That should only apply to non-sapients…”

“Or species that cannot be reasoned with and found in small numbers. Saiyans are on the list.” Left crab interjected. I don’t think I liked him. “You’re lucky we detected her this early in the lunar cycle, she may seem reasonable now but Saiyans are savages that won’t hesitate to destroy everything around them.”

“That’s racist.” I couldn’t help but comment. I was starting to get annoyed about people talking like I wasn’t here.

“Tell that to the people of Sideralux after you Saiyans leveled half the planet fifty years ago.”

“Enough,” Right crab stepped in front of his partner. “We’ve given our reasons for targeting the girl. Are you going to stand in our way or not?”

“Two cyborg crab people picking on a kid? You bet I’m gonna–” Rhodes started before his suit locked up and stood, well, robotically. “Now that this is a confirmed law enforcement operation the US Air Force will stay out of the matter for now. Any action outside of securing the Saiyan will be considered a hostile act, if you plan on further operations on Earth contact the United States government ahead of time so we can avoid a repeat of this unfortunate situation.” A different voice, one I recognised as one of the lawyers, spoke up. And then the robot flew up into the air and started heading back towards the city.

I guess that means Rhodes got his suit taken away. Sucks for him.

“And you Lantern Stewart?”

“Are you requesting my help?”

“As if we need the help of a Lantern that couldn’t even realize a Saiyan was on his home planet. We don’t need you or your help.” Leftie cut in aggressively. “Just don’t get in our way.”

To my surprise Green Lantern just shrugged and took a step back. “Alright, just had to ask for the record.” Then he turned to me. “Try not to hurt them too badly, kid.”

Oh. Oooooh! I see what he did there. I just got the green - heh - light to kick these two’s butts off the planet and now they couldn’t even complain about it because they told GL to get lost.

He was cooler than I thought…

I looked over at the crabs and made a show of cracking my knuckles - I could mostly feel my hands again by now - and made a ‘come get me’ gesture at them.

Leftie didn’t hesitate to point his larger claw at me and charged. But he was even slower than the robot squids so it was easy to leap to the side and blast him in the back with a simple ki ball when he missed. His partner had a better idea by shooting some sort of weird translucent green tentacle out of his own claw, but after dealing with the effects of the robot ones I didn’t doubt for a second there wasn’t more to the thing than just an attempt to tie me up.

So I crashed back to the ground and used it to kick off so I went low under his guard.

I gave him points for not panicking at me suddenly getting so close by attacking instead of flinching away, but once again he was too slow and his giant claw arm/weapon smashed into the sand behind me half a second before I buried my fist into his stomach area.

Even after my recent growth spurt I needed to fly a bit to pick the crab guy up and not drag part of him on the ground. These guys were tall.

And strangely heavy, too.

But that didn’t stop me from throwing the guy into his more impatient partner who had just recovered from my ki blast.

They went down in an explosion of sand and tangled limbs and I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Shouldn’t these guys be tougher than the robots from earlier?

“I don’t suppose you want to join their side?” I asked Green Lantern. “Make it a bit more interesting for everyone?”

He just gave me a blank look and raised an eyebrow.

Guess that was a no.

A laser beam shooting between us had me snap my focus back to the policecrabs, but they were either more shaken up from the hits I gave them and getting thrown around than I thought they’d be or they were terrible shots because I was able to dodge all of them just by flying around a bit.

At least that was what I thought until the heavily damaged robot squid I thought Rhodes destroyed slammed into me from behind!

“Quick, restrain her!”

I spat sand out of my mouth and stood just in time for one of the policecrabs to shoot that green tentacle thing at me and this time I couldn’t dodge. The thing wrapped around my upper body and I suddenly found myself with my arms pinned and a lot more tired than I had been a second ago.

Not a big deal though, I didn’t need my hands to beat these two.

I jumped into the air – and then fell right on my face when I couldn’t direct my ki to fly.

That’s what these tentacles did! They suppressed energy somehow!

I couldn’t even curse the crabs out because the tentacle had covered my mouth, so I did the first thing that came to mind and bit down on the thing as hard as I could…

Bleh…that was a mistake. Stupid tentacle tasted like burnt rubber and had basically the same feel too. But now that I got a good grip on the end, and if I used my tail just so…

“We got her! Bring the ship around so we can get her in the containment field. Let’s get off this planet before she pulls any more tricks.” One of the crabs said, I didn’t even care who it was anymore.

“On the way. Returning the capture probe too.” The other replied, pressing a button that had the damaged squid robot also head for the incoming ship.

They were in a rush. Probably because they didn’t want Green Lantern stepping in for some reason, but they should have been paying more attention to me. When the crab closest to me went to pick me up I kicked my legs around and drove my knee into his chest. Their fancy tech could stop me from using Ki in most ways, it did nothing against my base strength. He folded in half before I used him as a springboard to launch myself at his partner.

I blocked the swipe of his claw with one leg and then used it as a platform to kick his guard out of the way. Then I bounced around him delivering kicks to his face, chest, arms…pretty much any target I had a clear shot at while he flailed around until he made one more desperate stab at me with his claw arm that glanced off the tentacle wrapped around my chest.

With a twist of my neck and my tail, I was able to use the bit of room the crab’s claw had created to loosen the tentacle enough to move my arms so I could rip the whole thing off me.

Freed and able to use my ki once again, I flew low over the ground where I grabbed the crab by his leg and then went straight up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other policecrab trying to work the control pad so I interrupted that by doing the first thing that went through my mind.

I threw his partner at him.

It certainly stopped him from finishing what he was doing, but I guess suddenly getting hit with his partner made him hit the wrong button because there was a loud crash in their ship followed by an explosion. One of the engines cut out and the thing looked like it was going to fall out of the sky…

…right on top of the policecrabs…

Ah, dammit.

I quickly flew down and grabbed each of the crabs by the first limb I could get a solid grip on and got out of there before the ship hit the beach. At first it looked like it came out of the crash with nothing worse than some dents and scratched paint, but whatever caused the first explosion rattled out of a hatch and I had a split second to see the even more damaged robot squid before it blew up again and completely ruined one of the engines.

I guess they were trying to bring it out to cheapshot me again and something went wrong? Meh.

“So ready to keep going? Or you two wanna give up?” I asked as they picked themselves off the ground.

“Why don’t we call it here.” Green Lantern said, flying over and separating us with a transparent wall from his ring. “I think it’s pretty clear if she wanted to, Califa could have wiped the floor with you in seconds. Instead she held back and even saved your lives. I think that’s proof enough that her being here isn’t a violation of the Ekelon Accords.”

The policecrabs looked at each other and then at the wreck of their ship that had almost crushed them. “...Agreed,” The calmer of the two said eventually. “We’ll have to report this incident and we can’t guarantee that the Centauri Police Headquarters will make a permanent exception, but we won’t be taking any more action against this Saiyan today. As a reward for behaviors that go against the norms for her species.”

“This mean we’re done fighting?” I asked and scowled when I got three nods in return, “Lame.”

“Same bad attitude as other Saiyans though.” The second crab grumbled. I ignored him though.

I stuck around as GL helped them get their ship back up and running and gave the crabs a cheeky wave as they flew off into space. I even told them if they ever wanted a rematch they knew where to find me, much to the second crab’s annoyance.

Too bad for him.

“You shouldn’t antagonize them too much, they can make your life pretty difficult if they want.” Green Lantern said.

I raised an eyebrow at him, “I thought they said I wasn’t breaking those accord things, shouldn’t that be the end of it?”

“Yeah, unless their bosses disagree.” GL nodded. “But what they can do is put a capture bounty on you for a whole lot of other reasons. Earth doesn’t really have a spokesperson to tell the Centauri Empire they can’t.”

“So I might get random aliens coming here to fight me? Cool!”

GL just sighed at my response. “All right kid, why don’t you clear out while I finish cleaning up here? And try staying out of trouble?”

“I mean I could, oooor do you want to have a spar? That last fight kinda ended too easily and I haven’t fought a Green Lantern yet!”

GL just ruffled my hair while giving my head a shove and took off over the beach while a beam of green energy scanned the area.

“Is that a ‘no’ then?”