DRAGON BALL Z
AT ANY COST
CHAPTER III: DARK DESTROYER
BY
Sgamer82
LOCATION
Bridge of the Tsrufaiya starship Cauliflo
She stood tall, letting her long, spiky hair blow in the gentle breeze created by the air conditioning units. Captain Rutega stood in front of the captain's chair and watched as her crew did their jobs.
While she had been hesitant at first, she had slowly, but surely, adapted well to the role of captain. She was respected among her people as a great and determined fighter. Ever since the battle on the planet Kelvi, where she had been the first of the sub-Saiyan race to reach the level of Super Saiyan, or as it was referred to among her crew, Super Tsrufaiya.
She remembered those moments so clearly, when her mother Cauliflo, for whom the ship was named for, had given her life for Son Goku, Rutega's half brother. The anger she had felt at that moment, when Iciicla killed her mother, was something she honestly hoped to never feel again. Despite the power it granted her, it was a very unpleasant feeling for her. Many of the Tsrufaiya who had reached the super level agreed with her.
Today had been a good day, they had successfully managed to get another of the Pola's slave races, the feline Cait, to revolt and take back their homeworld. Some of them even chose to join their cause, to bring freedom of all sentient races under the rule of the Pola. She looked at one who had joined her bridge crew. His slender body hiding incredible strength and power. Her first officer, Cucom, a Tsrufaiya like herself, interrupted her thoughts with a message.
"Captain, something strange on the monitor." he told her.
Rutega nodded and walked to the deck of the radar officer Felo, the Cait she had just looked at.
"What is there?" she asked him.
"I do not know." answered Felo in the Cait tongue, which was being translated through a translator-collar around his neck, "There was an object a second ago, but it just disappeared. It was nowhere near big enough to be a ship, but I know not what else it could be." Just as he finished speaking the signal returned, spotting the UFO that Felo reported.
"Get me a visual." Rutega ordered.
The Felo quickly obeyed and turned on the main bridge monitor. Rutega saw a large empty stretch of space where the signal was supposed to be.
Wait a second! she thought. She noticed that stars were suddenly blinking in and out of space.
Odd. Rutega thought. She looked very closely, having Felo zoom in on where the stars were disappearing. She could almost make out a figure, but not clearly enough to identify what it could be. Before Rutega could order Felo to zoom in even further, two red lights shined from the top of the figure for a brief instant. The shining was quickly followed by a sudden lurching of the ship.
"What happened!!" Rutega asked.
"We've taken a direct hit!" said the defense officer, "The shields are completely gone and the main reactor's threatening to blow. There's no way to repair it before it does!"
Rutega was dumbfounded, they had just been hit by...nothing? Whatever had just happened there was only one thing Rutega could do now.
"Abandon ship!"
The Comm officer quickly gave the order to the ship, and all but some of the sections mid-ship were acknowledging the order. All but the sections hit by whatever attacked them.
"Everyone get to the escape pods!" Rutega shouted, "We're still close enough to the Cait planet, we should be able to get there with the pods' power."
When Rutega was sure everyone was safe, she went to her own pod and quickly entered it. Her pod blasted out of the ship and she steered it on a course with the others, toward the Cait homeworld.
When Rutega looked out of the porthole in her pod, she saw the figure that attacked them come right up to it. She couldn't make out details in the blackness of space, but she immediately noticed its cold, blood red eyes.
END OF CHAPTER III