Ch. 58: Dodoria's Downfall

"RAAH!" Dodoria was hot on our heels.

"Gohan!"

"Why did you do that, Piccolo! We just left him there to die!" Gohan wailed against Piccolo's shoulder.

"IT WAS HIS CHOICE! STOP WHINING AND FLY!" Piccolo shouted, tossing Gohan off of him like a pile of trash. 

Gohan had learned quite a bit from his time with Piccolo, but his greatest lesson? Don't argue with Piccolo after he starts shouting. All Gohan could do is silently reflect on the event that had transpired. 

Piccolo could sympathize with Gohan. He hadn't wanted to leave the Elder to die, either, but at the end of the day, there was a difference between carrying an adult and carrying a child. Had Gohan been a bit more levelheaded, he might have been able to carry Dende, while Piccolo carried the Elder, but that hadn't happened, so there was no point in regretting it now.

"He's on our tail!" I shouted. We were definitely faster now than Krillin and Gohan had been in the canon, and not by a little bit, either, but by a lot. Unfortunately, our head start was much smaller, as well. Though Dodoria's main strength was his power, he wasn't exactly slow, and he was twice as strong as Gohan. We wouldn't stand a chance of beating him in a fair race. 

"Gohan, take the boy from Hanna!" Piccolo shouted, "Hanna, they can't sense our energies! If we lead him for a bit longer, we can take him out as a group!"

Piccolo's plan was to kill Dodoria in a 2v1 fight while Krillin and Gohan took the younger Namekian to safety, huh? I'd expected that. I gave Dende to Gohan as per Piccolo's instructions. 

"You're fast! But that's not going to save you! You're gonna pay for embarrassing me in front of Lord Friezaa!" Dodoria was shouting behind us. 

"Hanna!" Piccolo shouted to me.

"Right!" We broke away from Gohan and Krillin. Naturally, the idiotic pink ball of spikes didn't even think for a moment that we'd actually be strong enough to beat him in a fight, and he wasn't entirely off base, either. After all, going by pure power levels, I was only at 12,500, while Piccolo was only 11,500. Dodoria's power level was somewhere between 20,000 and 22,000, give or take. According to what he understood, that meant that the gap was uncrossable. But we were able to concentrate our energies. If Piccolo hit the idiot with a Special Beam Cannon, it'd tear right through him. Also, if I went Grey, which was likely Piccolo's plan, Dodoria wouldn't stand a chance in hell of beating me. Luckily for me, Dodoria didn't have any special use. His entire purpose in the canon had been to tell Vegeta about what really happened to Planet Vegeta. In other words, I could kill him right now and it wouldn't really change much of anything.

Dodoria chased me and Piccolo for minutes. Hundreds of miles crossed in a blink. Finally, Piccolo gave me the nod. 

"Grey Mode!" I shouted, stopping on a dime and elbowing Dodoria's face as hard as I could. It took him by surprise, even more so than Krillin's Solar Flare had in the canon. I could feel the bones in his face crack under my elbow as my attack hit its mark. Naturally, the force of the attack completely reversed the spiky pink alien's momentum, sending him crashing right through a plateau behind him with a loud, girlish scream of pain.

"BOOM!!"

"Nice, Hanna!" Piccolo congratulated me, flinching a bit at the devastation that Dodoria's body had inflicted on the landscape. The plateau had completely crumbled under the force of my attack. Piccolo couldn't see himself surviving were he to take a hit that insanely powerful, and I'd had no windup. That was the power of Gray Mode.

"Piccolo!" I noticed Vegeta and Nappa's energies quickly moving this way. Piccolo had unconsciously led us closer to the spot where they were than Krillin and Gohan had during the canon, and we'd outputted quite a bit more power.

"You're right. We can't afford to be pinned down between Vegeta, Nappa, and this guy. Let's fall back for now. Hide your energy." Piccolo agreed with me. To be honest, with a power level of over 60,000 in Grey Mode, I could completely overpower like ten Vegetas all at once right now, but I wasn't willing to take that risk, nor did I want to deal with Vegeta at all until we were forced to work together.

Piccolo and I dropped down onto a nearby island to hide. Since we could both totally control our energies, the only real threat was if we were hit by stray energy blasts when Vegeta inevitably finished Dodoria off, but with how injured Dodoria was sure to be, I figured that there wouldn't be as much of a 'fight' as there'd been in the canon.

Dodoria hadn't even managed to fully pull himself out of the rubble before Vegeta and Nappa found him.

"Hahahaha. You seem a bit... down, Dodoria."

"Vasheeta!" Dodoria tried to exclaim through his broken jaw, trying desperately to hide the fact that he was trembling with terror.

"What could have caused this? Did you get blindsided by one of the Nameks or something, Dodoria? They seem to have fled, though. I guess punching your ugly face a couple of times would be enough to satisfy anyone."

"Vasheeta!" Dodoria shouted again, a bit of hysteria mixed in with his voice.

"Careful now, Dodoria. We're all alone. Nobody here to back you up. You might get into a... bigger accident than before."

"Jusht like shou, Vasheeta... shattackings sha man when she's downsh. Shif shou skill shme, shen Shrieza and Sharbon shill shake shou shown!"

"Down, at full power, it doesn't matter. You're going to die either way." Vegeta told the pink blob.

"Vegeta's not working with them?" Piccolo muttered, surprised.

"Shh." Our island was close enough that we could hear everything they said. If they caught us, I'd probably have to seriously injure Vegeta and Nappa. They'd probably end up dying, in fact.