"I sympathize with the guy as a fellow man... but an opening's an opening! I'm ending this right now!"
Swapping out with Lisette, Turles was the first to lunge. His face was contorted with the hunger of a predator as he closed in on the still-reeling Bojack. He possessed no sense of chivalry; he wasn't about to wait for his opponent to recover from a low blow. Honor was for the dead.
Dirty tricks? Rough fighting? Turles didn't care. He was the former leader of the Crusher Corps—he lived for the slaughter. In his world, there were no rules, only the eater and the eaten.
Turles accelerated, driving a reinforced elbow into Bojack's face. As the pirate stumbled, Turles grabbed a handful of his orange hair and hammered his knee into Bojack's nose.
Once, twice, three times!
It was a street-brawl style of execution. Turles grinned sadistically, his face flecked with the pirate king's blood as he delivered a relentless flurry of strikes.
"Don't... get... cocky!" Bojack roared, his hand snaking out to clamp around Turles's face.
Turles struggled, but in a contest of pure physical grip, he was outmatched. Bojack lifted the Saiyan off the ground by his skull, his fingers digging into his temples. Turles kicked desperately at Bojack's chest, but the pirate ignored the blows, his eyes burning with murderous intent.
Suddenly, Bojack sensed a lethal chill from behind. He released Turles and leapt back just as Trunks's blade hissed through the space where his neck had been.
"Missed!"
"Hah!"
Piccolo didn't miss. He unleashed a point-blank ki wave that erupted against Bojack's chest, shrouding the battlefield in smoke. Piccolo dove into the haze, engaging Bojack in a blind melee.
Bojack ducked a straight punch and buried a knee in Piccolo's gut, but the Namekian gritted his teeth and countered. A spinning roundhouse kick caught Bojack in the ribs, sending him skidding across the dirt. Piccolo followed him down, hands joined for a double sledgehammer.
Bojack rolled with surprising agility and fired a retaliatory blast.
"Gah!" Piccolo caught it with both hands, but the momentum forced him back, carving deep furrows into the earth before the energy detonated, scorching his torso.
Trunks stepped in to cover the wounded Piccolo, his sword descending in a silver arc.
Clang!
The sound of steel hitting steel echoed across the valley—but Bojack had used his bare forearm to block the blade. Not a single drop of blood was drawn.
"HAAAAA!" Trunks pushed his Super Saiyan power to the limit, his blade becoming a blur of high-speed strikes.
But Bojack's hide was harder than Katchin steel. Trunks's slashes were being parried by raw muscle, leaving only shallow scratches on the pirate's skin.
Then, a sharp shock rippled through Bojack's spine as an unbearable, searing agony flooded his nervous system. Lisettehad appeared behind him, delivering a "Whip-Strike" palm directly to his back.
Bojack's reinforced body meant nothing to this technique. As long as he had skin, he had nerve endings. Lisette's strike was designed to stimulate the pain receptors directly, carving the sensation of a thousand lashes into his flesh. Against this, "defense" was a fantasy. Every inch of his body was a target.
As Bojack buckled, Lisette manifested a ki blade and thrust it toward his heart in a one-handed lunge. The blade pierced his skin but was halted by the dense wall of muscle surrounding his chest cavity.
(How dense is he? It feels like I'm hitting a solid block of diamond!)
"You... damn... BRAT!"
Bojack's massive arm swung around, his fist connecting with Lisette's cheek. She was sent spinning through the air like a top, only to land softly on her feet a dozen meters away.
Lisette rubbed her cheek, a faint sting remaining. She felt a flicker of genuine respect for the pirate. Even after her barriers and "Relaxation Defense" had mitigated the force, the blow was still heavy. Had she taken it head-on, she would have been unconscious.
Vegeta might be a tank for punishment, but Lisette was starting to realize her own durability was her Achilles' heel.
"What are you!?" Bojack wheezed, his face twisted in frustration. "I hit you dead-on... but there's no impact! It's like punching a handful of feathers!"
"Precisely," Lisette replied. "You are indeed punching feathers."
"Enough of your games!"
Bojack lunged at her again, but Turles intercepted him. He met Bojack's hands with his own, using a level of Saiyan strength Lisette couldn't match to hold the pirate in place. Following Lisette's example, Turles suddenly "softened" his posture.
The sudden lack of resistance caused Bojack to pitch forward. Turles arched his back, rolling with the momentum to deliver a double-footed kick to Bojack's gut.
The two separated. Turles took to the air, hammered a punch into Bojack's face, and then blurred behind him to lock the pirate in a full nelson.
"Hah!"
Turles delivered a back-breaking somersault kick, launching Bojack into the sky. He reappeared above the ascending pirate and hammered him back down with a double sledgehammer.
It was a perfect imitation of Bardock's signature combo, the Final Revenger.
Turles didn't stop there. He leveled his hands at the crater where Bojack lay and fired a massive ring of energy.
"Kill Driver!"
The explosion rocked the forest. Sensing the opportunity, Lisette, Trunks, and a recovered Piccolo took their stances.
"Rebellion Trigger!"
"Burning Attack!"
"Light Grenade!"
"Sparking!"
Four high-yield energy blasts converged on the crater, triggering a chain reaction of light and heat. Bojack's ki signature plummeted, but he wasn't finished. He tore through the smoke, firing a desperate counter-blast—only for the energy to vanish into a rift in space.
The blast reappeared a second later, striking Bojack in the back.
"It's no use," Lisette stated calmly. "Ranged attacks don't work on me."
"Hah! If we stay back, she reflects it; if we get close, she pummels us with weird arts," Turles laughed, looking at Piccolo. "The Goddess is terrifying. How do we even kill something like her?"
"Her physical defense is low," Piccolo analyzed seriously. "We'd have to land one massive, unavoidable blow. Assuming we could catch her."
"Um... why are we talking about how to kill me?" Lisette asked, sweat-dropping. "The enemy is right there."
Bojack, losing his patience, charged one last time. Lisette parried his overhead strike and delivered a palm strike to his philtrum (the space above the upper lip). She followed up with a strike to his jaw and a knife-hand to his throat.
As he staggered, she jammed her thumbs into his mastoid processes (behind the ears), shattering his sense of balance. To finish the sequence, she carved a ki blade across his eyes and blasted him away with a Kiai Cannon.
"Nice setup! My turn!"
Turles pursued the blinded Bojack. He had no refined martial arts, but he had the savage instincts of a warrior.
Kick! Elbow! Knee to the face!
His Saiyan blood sang as he pummeled Bojack's entire body. He finished with a heavy kick, sending the pirate toward the next man in the line.
"Next! Don't let him breathe!" Turles barked.
Piccolo answered the call. His fists were a blur of motion—a relentless, machine-gun barrage of punches that hammered Bojack's chest. He caught Bojack's arm during a weak counter and pulled him in.
"Die!"
A gut punch, followed by a throw and a point-blank mouth cannon. The explosion sent Bojack spiraling toward Trunks.
"Trunks! Now!"
"Right!"
Trunks met the falling pirate with a vertical slash. A line of crimson erupted from Bojack's forehead down to his torso. The silver-haired youth followed up with a high-speed sword dance—the same one intended for Frieza—dicing Bojack's skin in a dozen places before finishing with a ki wave that launched the pirate into the air.
Lisette saw the opening. She tore a hole in space beside her, and simultaneously, dozens of Gates opened around the floating Bojack.
"Everyone! Aim for the rifts!"
"Got it!"
"Let's end this!"
The team unleashed a coordinated barrage.
"Seeker Blades—manifest!"
"Die, you bastard!"
"Hellzone Grenade!"
"DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA!"
A 360-degree storm of energy saturated the space around Bojack. Ordinarily, he might have tanked a barrage, but he was weakened, blinded, and broken. The explosions pelted him from every angle.
As the smoke cleared, the team prepared their final moves.
"Raging Blast!"
"Finish Buster!"
"Special Beam Cannon!"
"Calamity Blaster!"
Four pillars of destructive light merged into a single, overwhelming torrent of energy. Bojack, his eyes ruined, could only sense his impending doom. He let out one final, desperate scream.
"DAMN YOU ALL TO HELLLLLL!!"
Detonation.
A supernova-level explosion filled the sky, completely erasing Bojack's physical form. His ki signature vanished instantly.
"Did... did we do it?" Trunks panted.
"Trunks, that's a classic 'failure' flag," Lisette joked, though she looked relieved. "But yes. His ki is gone. He's dust."
The Hera Clan was finished. The battle for Earth was won.
Turles and Piccolo shared a rare, respectful nod, while Trunks offered a wide grin. They had faced a threat that would have ended the future, and they had won—not just because of their power, but because of their teamwork.
More importantly, they had won without Goku. They had proven that the Earth could stand on its own.
"So," Turles asked, turning to Lisette. "Is it your turn for the Time Chamber?"
"I think so," Lisette replied. "The enemies are only getting stronger. It's time I used it properly. I'll have Korin accompany me, and then once Goku is healthy, he and Gohan can take their turn."
Lisette had avoided the chamber until now. She was worried that if she stayed past the time limit, she would be locked in a dimension she couldn't escape. While she suspected her spatial powers could bridge the gap, she hadn't wanted to risk it.
But with Broly on the horizon, she didn't have a choice. She needed to reach a realm of power that was currently beyond her. She needed to become a wall that not even the Legendary Super Saiyan could break.
***
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