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Growing Pains [DBZ/DC]

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Chapter 14
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    • Growing Pains - Chapter 14

    The second the match started I couldn't stop myself from bounding forward, eager to test out the new things I had just learned.

    I saw the hero and his annoying sidekick open their mouths to try talking – probably trying to convince me to stop the fight – but I had been trying to get Batman to take me seriously in training for forever! Yet, everytime I brought up more intensive training or sparring he deflected by saying I needed more practice with the basics before that.

    And while he wasn't wrong, I figured he was more interested in keeping an eye on me than giving me new skills. But now he couldn't stop me! And I got to beat up Bird Brain at the same time!

    But first…

    "Batman!" Bird Brain cried out when I jump kicked at his mentor's head, missing by a slim margin. That didn't stop me though and I instantly dashed back at him the second my foot hit the floor.

    Batman kept trying to avoid me and create distance, but I wasn't going to let that happen!

    "And we're off to an acrobatic opening!" I distantly heard the announcer shout. "Califa isn't giving Batman room to breathe in a stunning display of martial arts, but he is countering her move for move! But since the Dark Knight isn't a broken mess it looks like our little alien menace has decided she wants to play with her food!"

    I mean, he wasn't wrong…

    If I wanted to just win then I would be blasting them from the air with Ki attacks. But where's the fun in that?

    The first hint that I might have dismissed Robin a bit too much was three little pellets landing in between me and Batman just after I failed to get him into a joint lock. Then they exploded and I was choking on the thick smoke they spewed out while Batman slipped away.

    "H-hey! Stay out of this Bird Brain!" I coughed. "I'm fighting Batman first!"

    "Why are you fighting us at all, you stupid monkey?!" The brat yelled back.

    "We're in a fighting ring, what else would we do here?!"

    "An illegal fight ring." Batman spoke up. "And we didn't choose to be here."

    "So wait, that bit with the manacles wasn't just so you could pretend you weren't here on purpose?" I asked. "Did you really get caught by these guys? How?"

    Robin blushed bright red and averted his gaze. Naturally that meant I had a laser focus on him.

    "You messed up didn't you." I stated.

    "I-I don't know what you're talking about."

    "Ha! You did~, hahaha" I was forced to hover midair from how hard I was laughing–

    *BANG!*

    –only to stop when a bullet impacted the ground by my feet.

    "A quick reminder that this is a Deathmatch." The announcer said threateningly. "No stopping halfway through for a chat."

    I stopped smiling.

    This random person was telling me how to fight? When he hadn't even shown himself at all? I must have grown a sense of pride when I wasn't looking because the thought of someone I could almost guarantee was weaker than me in every way that mattered ordering me around rubbed me in all kinds of wrong ways.

    I silently pointed a hand at the turret that had shot at me and vaporized it with a bright yellow Ki blast.

    "Don't tell me what to do." I said darkly.

    Then I turned back to Batman and Robin, who were both looking much more on edge than before. Well, at least it looked like they were going to take this seriously now.

    "He's not entirely wrong though. We can talk later… for now I'm going to have fun with this!"

    This time I charged Robin with a sharp grin on my face.

    To the kid's credit, he didn't freeze up or anything like that. Instead he somersaulted over my head by using my shoulder as a springboard and tried kicking at my back. Too bad it was a move he used against me a lot in our occasional spar so I was ready to turn and catch his foot on my forearm before punching him in the jaw.

    I wasn't ready for Batman to take advantage of the opening to punt me like a football, though!

    "So that's the way you – eep!"

    Batman didn't settle for just a single kick. I looked up just in time for a batarang to fly by, narrowly missing hitting me in the face followed by several more that I had to throw myself to the side to avoid and incidentally interrupting my attempts at mid fight banter.

    I ignored the tiny boomerang things hitting the arena wall and exploding and focused on my two opponents. I saw Robin nod at something Batman said and both of them splitting up so we all formed a rough triangle.

    Then I was stuck dodging as the two started throwing all kinds of things at me.

    Explosive discs, smoke bombs, taser things, and a few more. I wasn't going to touch them after I tried catching a taser batarang with the intent on throwing it back, only for it to go off immediately.

    My hand was still tingly.

    "A-and we're back in the ac-action folks! Our crime-fighting duo is keeping Califa at bay with an impressive amount of projectiles. But try as they might, the tiny alien terror is simply too slippery to get hit! But that might not be enough to take her out, she hasn't gotten serious yet!"

    I ignored the announcer again since it was clear he had no idea what Batman had planned.

    All of Robin's throws were aimed to distract or disorient me. They made noise, kicked up dirt and sand, and made smoke, sure. But the biggest thing they did was conceal where Batman's throws were coming from. Those were always thrown so I would have to dodge out of the way and were thrown hard enough that they usually didn't stop until they hit the arena walls.

    I was cheating with Ki sense, something I was pretty sure Batman didn't know about, to keep an eye on where the two were – and it was needed after a few seconds when nearly the entire arena was covered in smoke – but his projectiles didn't have Ki in them. I needed to use my other senses to avoid those.

    It was difficult, stressful, and incredibly frustrating trying to keep an eye on two people with one sense and as many as seven small flying objects with the rest.

    And I was having a blast with it!

    Here I was, an alien from space with powers far beyond a normal human and in a wide open room, and Batman had still managed to change the environment around to suit him and give me a hard time! Sure I wasn't using most of those powers, but I had already determined this was going to be a test of skill not strength.

    Speaking of Batman, he must have run out of things to throw at me because I could sense him getting closer.

    I turned to face him right as he burst through the smoke and went low, trying to kick his legs out from under him. He jumped over it in a move so smooth I would have sworn it was practiced if I didn't know better. My own dodge when he punched straight down was jerky and uncoordinated in comparison.

    You would think punching the ground as hard as you could would make a human pause for a bit, but Batman was shifting into a different stance the second he made contact. I dodged, weaved, and counterattacked as best I could while forcing myself to react at human limits. Why couldn't this be how we normally trained?!

    "Because you still need to brush up on the basics." Batman said, making me realize I said that last bit out loud.

    Then he took advantage of me overcommitting to a punch to throw me over his shoulder and into the floor. Hard.

    I wheezed a bit as the air was forcefully driven from my lungs and rolled when Batman went to smash my diaphragm. Only to fall into a trap when it turned out to be a feint and he caught me by the wrist and put me in an armbar.

    "You know I could break out of this right?" I grunted as I allowed my arm to be forced into a rather uncomfortable position.

    "You'll lose your game if you do." He replied.

    I tsk'd. Figures he would have realized what I was doing by now.

    "So what now? I might not be able to win right now but you'll probably get tired before I do, and I don't think our friends are going to be happy if one of us just gives up, ya'know?"

    Batman sighed in defeat. "What do you want?"

    "More sparring matches like this one! And you aren't allowed to hold back anymore!"

    "I haven't been holding back. You really do need that much practice with the basics before I could teach you more."

    "Yeah, but you could at least mix things up now and again."

    Batman didn't sigh again, but I had a feeling he wanted to.

    "Deal."

    "Cool!" I chirped with a wide smile. And with that I was released. "So what now?"

    -o-

    By now the entirety of the arena was just a mass of smoke. The organizers definitely hadn't thought about someone using so many smoke bombs that it could cover the entire floor so there were no countermeasures for it. Something the crowd was starting to get annoyed by.

    They had come to see a fight. Not just stare at some smoke for several minutes!

    Before too many of them could start making a fuss, a massive yellow beam tore through the smoke and a nearby wall.

    Then, even more of it started getting pushed away as I flared my Ki higher and higher.

    "And it looks like this might be the beginning of the end, Ladies and Gentlemen! Califa has apparently decided to stop playing around and has cleared the smokescreen with one attack!

    But what's this? Our Boy Wonder doesn't seem to be in the ring anymore! It looks like the Dynamic Duo is down a member! Was he caught up in that last blast?!"

    The grumbles were replaced with cheers as the crowd's bloodlust peaked.

    I rose a bit further into the air and attempted to speak, but couldn't get anything out over the noise.

    That was…pretty impressive actually.

    I just hovered in place, arms crossed, tapping a finger while I waited for the noise to die down.

    Once it finally did, I raised my hand and pointed down at Batman dramatically. "Everyone, listen up!" That killed the last of the noise. "I have just one thing to say before I end this!"

    "As the future conqueror of Earth, I judge Batman as a worthy champion I must defeat! A Champion of Skill! But…!"

    The crowd seemed to lean in, waiting for what I was going to say next.

    "...I can't do that yet. So I give up!"

    There was a beat of silence, and then the crowd erupted in rage at being denied their entertainment. Too bad for them I didn't really care.

    "Well, that was certainly a surprise. In a shocking turn of events Califa has forfeited the match! But don't worry folks, we promised you a deathmatch so that's what you're going to get! Unleash the turrets!"

    At the announcer's command there were a bunch of mechanical groans as the turrets he mentioned tried to deploy. But it turned out Batman had already beaten him there. While I had assumed he had been using the earlier smokescreen to attack me by surprise, it had really been so that he could disable the turrets around the arena without anyone noticing.

    Of course there were a handful that he missed, but it was easy enough for me to blast them with a Ki attack before they could really get going.

    "Ah, ahem, nothing to worry about, folks. We have contingencies for just such an occas– *BAM!* – w-wait! What are you doing in here!?"

    There were a few sounds of a struggle over the system before Robin's smug voice rang out.

    "And that's one hack of an announcer taken care of! With that taken care of, it's a total victory for the heroes! I hope you all enjoyed the show, ladies and gentlemen. Please feel free to give us a review while we wait for the police to help you on your way out. Thank you and have a nice day."

    By then even the dumbest in the crowd had realized the fight club had lost control of the situation and started running for the exit, but it was no use as several security gates slammed closed at the exits.

    Not the best ending to my first fight arena, but I still had fun. I'd have to check back with the recruiter guy to see if they had a branch that wasn't dumb enough to kidnap Batman and see if they were looking for new fighters later.

    -o-

    "So how'd you get caught anyway?" I asked as Batman and Robin waited for the last of the fight ring organizers to get carted away.

    "We were investigating a few disappearances and stumbled across a recruiting center." Batman said simply, opting to just leave it there.

    "And I tried to stop the recruiter from escaping out the back."Robin rubbed the back of his head and sheepishly added. "There was a gas trap we didn't see."

    I just stared at him.

    That was it?

    "Wow, that's so lame."

    "Yeah, well what about you? Did you just follow the first stranger offering you a fight, you muscle-brained monkey?" Robin snapped. Then when I didn't reply, he smirked. "You totally did, didn't you!"

    "Shut up, Bird Brain! I was looking for someone else to train me while Batman was busy!"

    "That doesn't make it any better." he laughed.

    I wasn't about to take that lying down and tackled him to the ground where we both tried to wrestle the other into submission.

    I was so focused on delivering sweet justice to the bird brained idiot that I didn't notice Batman shake his head and walk off with a small smile on his face.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • it's always fun to see people remember that they have a superman lite (for now) whose only moral compass of what to kill/destroy and what not is fighting and having fun....mostly
     
    Azura said:
    I wanted to fight the heroes a bunch, and having them not hold back or lock me in a hole somewhere meant I wouldn't be able to do that as often. So I planned to be a reoccurring villain that popped up constantly, but wasn't that big of a deal as long as I got what I wanted.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I think her plan succeeded.

    The world should be thankful how Easily manipulated sayains are, can you image how much shorter dragon ball would be if that wasn't the case? "Let me reach my ultimate form." "No"
    Episode ends.
     
    Growing Pains - Chapter 15
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    • Growing Pains - Chapter 15

    "You know there are easier ways to get my attention, right?"

    "Yeah, but this is the most fun!" I smiled as I adjusted the weight of the car so it wasn't slipping off my shoulder anymore.

    The Flash wasn't as amused as I was. Or at least he was pretending to not be.

    It was bad form for a superhero to laugh at the police chief when his car was stolen by a passing supervillain and held hostage twenty feet off the ground, not when the guy was right there. Especially since this was the fifth time I've done something like this.

    Flash hadn't exactly been thrilled to find out he had been training a supervillain instead of the aspiring hero he had assumed I was, but after a week of needling him I managed to work out a similar deal to the one I had with Batman. I wouldn't do major crimes in Central City in return for continued speed training.

    He tried avoiding me a bit and relying on our agreement to keep me from doing something too noticeable.

    So I went to someone that would complain loud enough that Flash would need to check in even if I wasn't doing anything super evil.

    And the police chief could certainly yell. Especially when his 1965 Mustang kept mysteriously finding itself in places a car couldn't get to…like a roof or a tree. Luckily for him there was a helpful alien invader that would be happy to get it down, as long as he could get the Flash here for a bit.

    Flash told me I could stop after the third time. I kept doing it because it was funny.

    "That is not the way to treat a classic." Flash shook his head in mock despair. "Come on, give the Chief back his car. I know what you want."

    "Sure thing!"

    I dropped the car back in a parking lot and ignored the Police Chief as he rushed to inspect the thing for damage. Seriously, it was a car. An old one sure, but older doesn't always mean better!

    And there was certainly no reason to cry about it…

    "Normal spot then?" Flash asked, doing some light stretches with a challenging smile.

    "You're on."

    After a silent three count, both of us went speeding towards the city limits.

    Needless to say Flash beat me by a few miles.

    -o-

    Two hours later I was laying on the ground, drenched in sweat and panting like a dog. All I could do was glare at Flash who, despite everything I tried, was barely sweating at all. And I couldn't even be sure that wasn't from just standing around in the sun for a few hours.

    "Hey, don't give me that look. You're doing much better than when we started." He said genuinely. And if he stopped there you could mistake him for being a kind, caring individual. "Who knows? In a year or so, you might get me to break into a light jog!"

    Yep, there it was.

    Jerk!

    "Oh come on, is that any way to treat your favorite training partner?" Flash continued when I glared harder.

    "You aren't my favorite. Hawkie's my favorite, it's just that it's really hard to find her before she moves cities or she has her partner with her. And I can't fight both of them at once yet."

    "Oooph, scathing." Flash mimed grabbing his chest in pain. "Well, anyway, I've gotta run. I've got a date in a few minutes. Wouldn't want to be late."

    "Is a few minutes enough time to get there and be ready?"

    "Sure it is, I'm the fastest man alive!" He said confidently.

    "Oh, I feel bad for your date then."

    "Yea– wait, what do you mean by that?!"

    "Nothing," I said 'innocently', "just that it's a shame if all your dates end too soon because you go too fast."

    Flash narrowed his eyes at me and tried to guess if I was implying what he thought I was, unfortunately for him I was used to trying to hide my thoughts and reactions from Batman (not that it seemed to make a difference) and Flash was certainly not Batman.

    Eventually he gave up his one sided staring contest and turned towards the city.

    "Right. Well, stay out of trouble. Don't go trying to take over a city or something."

    Hah! I wasn't about to tell him that was my next idea on how to force Superman to fight me. The Metropolis mayoral election was next week, I was totally going to crash it and declare myself mayor.

    Flash gave me a two fingered salute and began to run back to get ready for his date.

    He made it all of three steps when there was a massive flash of light behind us.

    We both turned to see what looked like a dozen flaming meteors burning through the atmosphere trailing dark black smoke. It didn't take long for me to realize these weren't normal meteors.

    Those didn't tend to change direction midair and scatter in several directions.

    "Huh, looks like another alien invasion." I idly commented, causing Flash to slump over.

    "I'm not going to be on time for my date, am I?" He asked rhetorically.

    -o-

    From what I gathered on the internet, the last three alien invasions used the same plan that went something along the lines of this:

    Step 1: Invade in one big group.
    Step 2: Use landing location as a beachhead to attack nearby city. Or for the more aggressive ones, just attack city directly
    Step 3: Quickly overrun the population and military forces until nearby hero (or Superman) shows up.
    Step 4: Send out Champion(s) that are the pinnacle exception in strength compared to the rest of the invasion force.
    Step 5: Lose.
    Step 6: Pull back all forces and flee because without Champion(s) X, the invasion force is too small to actually hold the planet and the foot soldiers like living or because the Champion was the invasion force.
    And (Optional) Step 7: Leave Champion(s) behind to act as infiltrators/scouts for when the next invasion occurs.

    And considering that these invasions were usually wrapped up in less than a day, a lot of people didn't bother panicking unless they were right near the initial invasion point since everything would go back to normal by tomorrow.

    So when the black smoke being trailed by the meteors turned into oily black clouds that covered the entire sky and showed no signs of dissipating almost a day later, people started to worry. They began outright panicking when it turned out that the invasion force was actually the second wave and that several people in the military, government, and science facilities had been replaced by shape shifting aliens that had sabotaged local responses and revealed more machines that were pumping the air with black stuff all over the continent.

    The following armies of white gray and black, gelatinous, homicidal goo-people with laser rifles didn't do much to calm them down either.

    Fortunately for the humans – and unfortunately for me – the aliens themselves weren't so tough that a person with a gun couldn't at least hold them off for a bit. So it wasn't like the invaders were just rolling over any resistance just yet, but there were a lot of them and they weren't even fun to fight.

    "Get off this planet!" I yelled as I vaporized another squad of goo-people. "I was here first! I called dibs!"

    I'd have said that I'd lost count of how many of the invaders I had done that to by now, but that would imply I was keeping count to begin with. I was far more interested in stopping them from blowing up my favorite restaurants than counting blown up aliens.

    Central was the only city I'd found so far that had decent serving sizes and didn't try calling the police whenever I just wanted something to eat. I wasn't going to let some random invasion force me to go hunting for decent food again!

    I spotted another group going down Fifth St, shooting at people as they ran away and wrecking buildings thanks to some kind of armored vehicle that looked like a misshapen potato attached to four spider legs that also shot lasers.

    I flew over to it, blasted three of the legs off, caught it by the remaining one, and started using it as a giant hammer to squish the smaller foot soldiers running around in panic. Then when there was only one remaining, I swooped down and grabbed it by its…skin? Eww…and lifted it into the air.
    "Alright slimeball, listen up. I was having a good day until you jerks decided to show up. So, I'm going to give you one chance to tell me where your leader is so I can politely tell them to turn around and get off this planet before I vaporize all of you. Sound good?"

    The alien made a weird repetitive hissing sound that I eventually recognized as an attempt at laughter. "We ArE tHE iMpEriUm. We WiLL conQuEr thiS paThEtIC PlANet AND feED On it. YoU hUMANs CannOt sTOP THIS. EVen yOuR PoweR wiLl jUst make us STrONgeR."

    "Sorry, not a human. I'm a Saiyan. Got the tail and everything." I said, waving said appendage behind me.

    I then got to witness the fascinating experience of something going absolutely statue still for a moment, before frantically doing its best to claw my hand off it's skin and when that didn't work, claw away at itself in order to escape.

    The whole sudden spectacle shocked me enough that I just floated in stunned disbelief even after the goo-person managed to free itself only to fall several hundred feet back to the ground where it splattered on impact.

    "What the hell was that about?"

    Unfortunately for me, the universe didn't suddenly leap to answer my question. But that didn't mean the invasion had stopped just because something weird happened to me. A nearby explosion drew my attention to another one of those walking potato tanks and more foot soldiers.

    …welp, guess the only thing left to do is find another alien to explain what the heck just happened. And if that one didn't give me an answer? Well, there were plenty more of them wandering around.

    -o-

    Hours later I was tired, hungry, and absolutely covered in soot from all the fires popping up all over the city. Not to mention I was starting to get really pissed off that I wasn't any closer to finding out why the invaders were freaking out about a single Saiyan child on the planet they were attacking. Did Saiyans actually exist in this universe? And if so why am I what's causing them to panic rather than the yellow sun-charged Kryptonian that should be a much bigger threat?

    Sure a group of Saiyans would absolutely demolish these Imperium guys, but it was only me here.

    My musing was interrupted by a red blur streaking by and doubling back that predictably turned out to be the Flash. He looked a bit scuffed up and more tired than I had ever seen him – not that that said much – but he also looked pretty happy to see me, so I guess he was fine.

    "Hey Kid, glad to see you're okay." Flash said quickly. "And I heard you were doing a pretty good job taking care of the city, a lot of people were talking about it!"

    I scowled. I wasn't exactly doing that for the people here. But if they were grateful I better get a few free meals, at least!

    "Cool, great to hear. I'm guessing the heroes won and now it's just dealing with the leftovers?" If so I was going to be bummed. Despite the amount of destruction they caused, the Imperium was kinda weak. I was hoping for one good fight at least.

    "...yeah, about that…" Flash rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.

    -o-

    Minutes later I was standing in the middle of an American Army base and surrounded by several heroes including Superman, Hawkie, and Wonder Woman who I actually hadn't been able to meet before now. Normally, I'd be ecstatic about that, but I was currently too busy glaring daggers at the green skinned man in a blue cape.

    "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right. Run that by me again?" I grit out.

    Martian Manhunter didn't have any hair, so it looked a little weird when he raised an eye-ridge at me.

    "As I said before, the Imperium plan to terraform this planet into a feeding ground–"

    "I don't mean that!" I angrily swiped a hand through the air. "I meant, what do you mean you left Batman behind?!"

    I could feel a bunch of looks from the other heroes but I ignored all of them. Or at least I was going to until Superman put a hand on my shoulder and I began to debate if it was worth hitting him with a full power Kamehameha.

    "Look Califa, I know it's hard to hear. He was my friend too. But these things happen and sometimes there's nothing you can do."

    "Batman's gone…"
     
  • Threadmarks
    • So... we hit the end of the second of the three parter then? This should be good. Is Califa going to be a founding member of the Justice League?
     
    Ah, I remember reading and watching this plot. Well, on the downside there's no Martian civilization neighboring Earth, and no Miss Martian gal-pal.

    On the plus, character development! And possibly the League seeing what Califa's like sans any interest in playing fair or seeming harmless and with a major (for her) grudge.

    Also more hints about other Saiyans, but still to little to make any real theories (restricted lantern info, and a fearful hive-mind has some implications, but a lot of that rep could just be the Saiyans having a rep for destruction that outmatches their actual current power (much like the OG pre-Frieza Saiyans).
     
    well...it's a reasonable reasonable reaction nor to discover that your enemy is someone of the race that considers conquering planets and eradicating all (or most) intelligent life from a planet in small groups like any Monday...
     
    There is actually a superman (well, wonderwoman) level threat that is a child, look up 'devastation', if you want a playmate that is the same age (thus will not hold back much - or anything considering the personality).
     
    Last edited:
    Aeveth said:
    I wonder if that'll be enough for super saiyan...but it doesn't feel quite right for it.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    well...she doesn't meet the requirements unless she is holding back a lot although she doesn't seem to since so far she shows a power level of between 10-500...something far away from the minimum requirement to meet the super saiyan and she doesn't seem to be empathetic enough to have a lot more cells s than her power level so I also see something difficult for her to get the fake super saiyan or for some reason transform into a super saiyan....although the ozaru or ikari mode is possible.
     
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