Oddly enough, despite having to know I'd escaped by now, I didn't see any signs of the Preserver trying to stop me from running around his ship.
I knew he had robots that acted as some kind of maintenance/caretaker drone for the animals so I suspected he had some kind of security ones as well.
I had half expected to run into a handful of them once I started flying towards where I could sense Superman. Then again, the Preserver actually seemed to know a thing about Saiyans so maybe he just wasn't bothering because he knew they couldn't stop me.
It wasn't like I was damaging his ship or the animal exhibits at all, so I could understand why he was ignoring me for now.
It was also making me paranoid I was going to fly into another trap any minute now.
"Stupid kidnapping alien jerks, stupid deadly void, stupid easily BREAKABLE SHIPS!" I shouted out my last complaint as I tore through a closed door standing between me and Superman's Ki signature. He was moving around now so he must have escaped too, but I was still annoyed by the whole situation. The next time I got to fight something, I was dragging it out into a desert somewhere. Just so I could cut loose without worrying about the environment being an obstacle.
Which was exactly what the next area up ahead looked like it was going to be.
An obstacle.
Giant enclosures made of the same material I had been trapped in filled out the area in orderly rows, each one containing a different environment for the creature kept inside.
The good news was that I found Superman though.
He and Lobo were hiding around one of the enclosures for some reason while a bunch of robots shot lasers at them. I guess that was why the Preserver hadn't sent any of them after me. He sent them after Supes instead. And if the robots were forcing the two of them to hide, they had to be pretty heavy hitters!
With that in mind I raised a hand and shot a focused Ki beam at the attacking robots…which easily cut through three of them before the resulting explosions destroyed the rest.
…
What the heck?
I floated down to the two of them while giving them a closer look. From a distance the two looked basically the same as when we had been fighting on Earth, but as I got closer I could see some things stand out.
Superman, for one, was looking tired for the first time I had ever seen him.
Not the 'just finished fighting for hours' or 'mentally worn down' tired which I had seen once or twice in extremely rare occasions, but the bone-deep kind where it looked like lifting a coffee cup was more effort than it was worth.
And Lobo wasn't any better. The alien bounty hunter looked like he was dealing with a hangover after a week long drinking binge. Not something I would actually put past the guy from what I knew about him, but considering he was fine a few hours ago made it obvious something was up with him.
"You guys look awful." I said bluntly. "And why is the bounty hunter here? Are we not fighting him anymore?"
"And now the brat is here," Lobo complained instead of answering me. "This day is just getting better and better."
Superman ignored him and shot me a weary smile. "Califa, I'm glad you're okay. The Preserver mentioned you were, but it was hard to completely trust his word considering…" he motioned at our surroundings. "As for Lobo…we're calling a truce until we can get out of here."
Fair enough I guess.
The guy had put out a bounty for Superman to be kidnapped and then betrayed Lobo once the job was finished. That wasn't exactly a reputation that gave him a bunch of trust.
"Yeah, he locked me in a section of the ship by myself until I broke out. The one time we talked he said something about keeping me locked up until he found a planet that wouldn't mind having a Saiyan dumped on it."
"HA! Good luck with that!" Lobo barked with laughter. "Any place willing to take in one of you monkeys isn't going to be the kind of place that bald geekwad is going to come within lightyears of. He was probably hoping you either couldn't get out or just fragged yourself."
I frowned at that because my cell had been pretty close to the outer wall of the ship.
Whatever, I shook my head and decided it wasn't worth thinking about. I'd already escaped afterall. "And what about you two? Cause, like I said, you look awful."
"The Preserver had me under a Red Sun lamp since we were taken here," Superman admitted. "I've been feeling pretty drained since."
"Cueball had two fembots tracking my every move. Kept me so choked up on gas that I can still barely move." Lobo growled and I couldn't resist getting a jab in.
"You sure the air vents weren't just closed and you got a good smell of yourself?"
Because Lobo was really leaning into the 80's grunge biker look. I'd be the first to admit I wasn't exactly a clean freak, but even then I knew to bathe more than 'accidentally getting caught in the rain last week'.
"You're a funny monkey," He sneered back. "Wanna 'nanna?"
"You want a knuckle sandwich?"
"Enough, you two!" Superman moved in between us. "Instead of fighting among ourselves, we should be trying to find a way to escape."
"You two wimps wanna run? Fine, there's a bunch of ships in the south hangar you can take to scurry off to your little mudball planet. But the Main Man ain't running." Lobo jabbed a thumb into his chest. "I'm not getting off this ship until I feed the cueball thirty-one different flavors of pain."
I blinked at him. "Thirty-one? Wow, I'm impressed."
"Heh, yeah, well when you're the Main Man, you pick up some things about bringing the pain." he boasted.
"Oh I wasn't talking about that," I smiled cheekily. "I was impressed you knew how to count that high."
The bounty hunter growled and took a step towards me, but once again Superman played peacemaker and moved between us. "We don't have time to be fighting between ourselves. It won't be long before the Preserver sends more robots after us, so let's move. And Califa? Stop instigating." I got a stern look before he turned and ran towards a ledge overlooking what looked like a giant jungle environment.
Jeeze this ship was huge…
Lobo and I exchanged a few quick glares before moving to follow after the hero.
-o-
Something that became obvious super quickly was that Superman and Lobo were definitely nowhere near their full strength.
Superman choosing to run instead of flying like normal was a big hint, but him and Lobo nearly getting caught by a pitfall trap of all things just confirmed it.
I was currently the strongest member of our 'team'. Something I might have been a little more proud about if it wasn't only literally because both other members had been weakened significantly by the Preserver.
Instead it felt like getting first place in a contest because everyone else dropped out. Hollow and unfulfilling.
The good news was that Lobo was now on board with the plan to escape the Preserver's ship. I guess nearly getting trapped in a literal hole in the ground was enough to convince him, since we were all running for the hangar he left his space motorcycle in. He even found the other bounty he had brought with him, a tiny rat-like alien with four eyes – three of them arranged like a face on top of his face, on the way.
According to him, it was just a sprint through the jungle and then we'd be home free.
So naturally we got ambushed about halfway through.
A handful of yellowish colored laser blasts peppered the ground in front of us as four more aliens stepped out of the trees. One of them was just a much larger version of the rat thing Lobo was carrying around, one was some kind of headless furry sloth wearing a breathing mask, and the last two were orange skinned saiyanoids. One with tied up black hair and a goatee and the other with short reddish hair and green eyes.
"Hey Lobo!" The giant rat yelled while all of them pointed their guns our way. "Remember us?!"
"Friends of yours?" Superman asked sarcastically while keeping his eye on the four newcomers.
"My bridge club."
"That's my brother Gnaww!" The tiny rat shrieked as he tried to squirm out of Lobo's grip. "He's here to rescue me!"
"In your dreams Sqweek." Lobo countered, squeezing the smaller alien like a… well… like a squeaky toy, and sneering at the others. "And what do you losers want, another beating? Because the Main Man is happy to deliver."
"Good luck with that. We know all about how weak you are right now. And even if you picked up a Saiyan from somewhere, we brought some backup of our own." Apparently the giant rat was the leader of their group, or at least the most talkative, as he gestured towards the red haired alien on his team. "In fact, I feel like we should thank you. We were only expecting to cash in on your and my little brother's bounties, but now we can cash in on Mogul's bounty for a Saiyan too! And it's all thanks to you."
I scowled at their inclusion of me on their list of targets because I had been kinda hoping we could just ditch Lobo with them. But now it looked like they weren't going to let me go anyway.
Fine then.
I raised my hand to blast them all–
"Run!"
–only for Superman to grab me by the wrist and pull me out of the way of a laser bolt fired by one of the new bounty hunters I had somehow missed.
Even drained, the Kryptonian was more than strong enough to pull me along if I didn't actively resist. So while we ran deeper into the jungle I had time to think that, yeah, I might have gotten a little cocky when I saw they relied on weaponry instead of some kind of natural ability. Because that shot? More than quick enough to put someone down if their weapons could hurt the target. And if they were after Lobo, I probably should have guessed their guns were more dangerous than anything I'd run into back on Earth.
Lesson learned, just because someone used weapons didn't mean I should instantly write them off as a lower threat.
Which meant time to take these guys more seriously.
"I'm going to see if I can't thin down their numbers a bit." I said as I pulled my arm out of Superman's grip. "I'll meet up with you once I'm done."
I could see that he didn't like the idea, but we didn't have the time to fight about it while getting shot at. He gave me a short nod and I flew off towards the saiyanoid with the red hair. He was the one with the best aim as far as I could tell so far, so he was the one I wanted to take down first.
My sudden reversal caught the bounty hunters by surprise and I caught the redhead in the jaw before they could react, but I could immediately tell a single serious punch wasn't enough to completely take him out and went to finish him off…only to freeze in shock when he caught my follow up attack with one hand and smiled bloodily at me.
"Surprised, Saiyan? You aren't the only warrior race in the galaxy, let me show you the might of a Tamaranean warrior!"
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