Saiyan application: "Reconnaissance"

Byond Key: NakamotoWilfre
Character Name: Haricot
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Race: Saiyan
Age: 16
Topic: You have gone Oozaru for the first time. Explain what happened and the aftermath.

Her first mission since overseeing the Arconian genocide was a reconnaissance one. Get in, record some footage of a rebel mercenary checkpoint, and get out at the end of the day. Her commanding officer, Navet, had been hesitant about letting such a weak Saiyan go, but Haricot was persuasive. Although, she supposed it was mostly because her sister, Brocclin, had taken her side that she was really allowed to go, but she would take what she got without complaint.

The strike team had set out on Lord Sleet's orders into a barren, cliff-laden area of the Desert planet. They had set up camp somewhere along a lengthy ledge on one of the cliff's faces, concealed by several boulders that Haricot had moved over to their position, just in case, and began their work.

She was on a team of four— herself, Navet, Brocclin, and Kale. All she needed to do was sit around while the others tried to get an up close look at the enemy campsite. The rest of them needed someone to watch their back, hence why Haricot was there.

But then there was Kale.

It's not like the Saiyan was being subtle with the looks he was casting at Brocclin's backside. The high-class Saiyan was currently lounging at her side, fiddling with his scouter. His hair was pulled down over his eyes, and Haricot supposed he thought he was being discreet about where he was looking, but occasionally he would inhale sharply and his face would flush, and Haricot was suffering because he was hopeless and that was her sister, for crying out loud.

"Gross," she said. The high-class Saiyan beside her glanced up at her and scowled in response.

"You better watch what you say, runt."

Now it was Haricot's turn to scowl. She would never get this mouthy with someone with a higher power level than her, but commander Navet was watching them closely. If Kale were to start bringing blows down onto her head, the strongest of them would protect her. She was much more condifent for it, and lipped off much more than she would otherwise.

"If you were just going to come here to be gross, could you at least make yourself useful and help Brocclin scout the area rather than scout her butt?"

The older, more experienced fighter growled in response, his voice a sultry drawl.

"Would you rather me scout yours?"

Repulsion. Genuine repulsion flooded her, but Haricot masked it quickly as to not offend the high-class Saiyan. His advances shouldn't effect her, they really shouldn't, but it did, because he was disgusting. Bitterness and frustration were flexible, but repulsion was wild and unpredictable.

The Saiyan blood within her sputtered angrily for a second, but Haricot took control just in time to quell the most of the flames. In the end, she just huffed, muttered a little 'fuck you' and returned to surveying the bland, yellowed scenery. It was not quiet for very long, and, surprisingly, it was Navet who broke the newfound silence.

"Brocclin, groups A and C are shifting position. Heading northwest, it seems. Speed is progressive, but not alarming."

The Saiyan woman in question murmured a half-hearted 'acknowledged,' but didn't respond or react other than that. She only continued to work more intensely through her binoculars, from what Haricot could see.

Hours passed. Kale and Brocclin were chatting quietly. Navet was busy navigating the drone. Haricot was dozing nearby, idly perusing for hostiles, overheated and semi-conscious. It was nice.

---

It was semi-consciously that Haricot noticed something approaching in the near distance, undetected by her scouter, cutting through the air towards their position. They were black specks that were growing larger with every passing second, appearing to gain speed the longer she looked at them. They looked somewhat familiar, but she was too hot and too dizzy to know exactly what these three shapes were.

And then it hit her with a cold rush of dread when the shapes flew in front of the sun for the briefest of moments, forms silhouetted against the glowing star. Those were /people./ Flying people. She realized too late that they weren't soldiers of Lord Sleet's army.

They were members of the enemy mercenary group that they had been sent to track. Dammit - how could she have been so careless?

"Get down!" she shrieked, jerking away to fly away as quickly as she could. But she wasn't fast enough. /Too weak again,/ she thought.

The impact of the Ki explosions made the entire cliffside shake, and Haricot couldn't see anything through the thick smoke filling her vision, filling her lungs. Her back was singed, but at least her armor had blunted the most of the impact, save for the fact that it had horrible black smears across its shiny surface.

But that wasn't what she was worried about. That wasn't even relatively important to her right now.

"Navet!" she thundered into the scouter's comm. "Brocclin, Kale, please respond!" All she got in response was static. Her heart was pounding.

Ringing.

Haricot hefted herself off of the broken ground to get a better view. She wasn't as fine as she thought, would like to think, needed to be.

Ringing. Ringing. Loud, blurred. Confusion. Panic. Move. Move, damn it.

Smoke filled her vision, and when she breathed her lungs burned and ached at the bitter taste of it. She coughed, and coughed, and then realized it was hopeless and let it burn within her. Haricot began to wade through the smoky, black ocean, eyes viciously tearing through the haze, scanning for any sign of life.

She was out of options, and out of time. Haricot was panicking. Frozen. But there were also her teammates and why did she have to be the only one conscious? Why did she have to be the one to fight off rebel mercenaries?

She needed a plan. She needed time. She needed back-up.

She had none of those things. She had to fight alone.

---

She had fought so hard for so long that it was almost nightfall. The stars came into view, and the sun sunk low over the horizon.

In a rare moment of calm amidst the chaos, she briefly checked her vitals as she cowered behind cover.

She had a cut on her right eyelid, and the blood had sealed her eye shut, impairing a good half of her vision. The eye beneath was likely damaged, too. It'd been a fragment of her shattered scoutter, when she'd taken one too many hits to the glass. There was a broken blood vessel in her other eye, tinting everything else in her limited field of vision splotched and red. Two Ki blasts had struck her left thigh, burning with searing pain. She felt them vividly whenever she moved. The small wounds were white-hot.

Sand had clustered in her blood-clotted nose, and the small grains had begun a relentless attack on her already sore lungs. Each breath was now a painful rasp: hoarse, brittle. The could feel the blood crawl up her throat before she inhaled, and she tasted it on the back of her tongue whenever she exhaled.

Her left arm was fractured in multiple places along the forearm, and she was pretty sure that some pieces of the bone had broken through the skin, but she wasn't entirely sure. She couldn't feel that arm— which was probably for the best. It was sagged against her, bent at an unnatural angle, unmoving, and she almost wished it was gone entirely because it was only dragging her down at this point.

Her right leg was broken at the knee, preventing her from moving it in any direction that didn't hurt. It made the whole limb feel disconnected. The limb throbbed with every pulse of her unsteady heart, and it gushed and spilled her blood with every beat. From it, she was losing blood. Quickly so.

A plan darted through her thoughts. She grasped it, desperately, flitting through the details, and was horrified. She was sorry. She was so, so sorry it had to be like this.

She had fought so hard for so long that it was almost nightfall. The moon was high in the sky.

The mercenaries found her hiding spot.

There was only one thing left to do. She sucked in a deep breath, and she stared up at the stars. She looked up at the moon.

She hoped it didn't hurt.

She can see realization dawn on the rebels' faces, and as fur sprouted on her body, they backed away in terror. Not quickly enough.

---

A Ki beam fired from the mouth destroyed the faraway mercenary camp site. Distant screams rose from blackened smoke.

Brutal, mechanically relentless punches pursued fleeing victims. None of them made it far before death came upon them, reducing their skeletons to paste.

A mercenary rose from the dust with a howl, bleeding from the leg, but she stomped them to pieces before they could do more than stand.

Her terrific howls were heard from distant desert settlements, far from the source of the conflict. Frightened children were consoled by frightened mothers that everything would be alright.

There were no survivors, and very little evidence.

---

When Lord Sleet and his reinforcements later arrive on the scene, barely fifteen minutes later, there isn't much left. The rebel mercenaries who weren't lucky enough to be incinerated instantly are barely recognizable as something once vaguely humanoid.

He saw the unconscious Haricot in the center of a crater, the only surviving member of her small strike force. Her chest rose and fell, weakly and unsteadily. He said something brief to a commanding officer, then briskly turned on his heel and returning to his ship. The officer nodded in response, barking orders to the alien soldiers that occupied the desert.

"Get the Saiyan a gourney! One of you, ready a healing tank back on the ship! Lord Sleet wants her back alive!"