Ch. 167: Fighting Vegeta

"Fight me!" As soon as we landed in the wasteland behind Shay, Vegeta walked up to me and issued this declaration, fire in his eyes. From his repeated staring at me from behind while we'd been flying, I'd completely expected this, but it still wasn't something I wanted to deal with. He was twice as strong as me, after all. 

"Nope." That was an obvious answer.

"I'm not asking! Fight me, child!" In a flash, Vegeta was in front of me, throwing a punch at my face.

'Seriously?!' I telepathically yelled at Shay while dodging the rain of punches and kicks that Vegeta was throwing my way. 

'Meh.' Shay muttered back telepathically, looking my way with a slightly-disinterested stare. Clearly, she wasn't very invested in Vegeta's fit, which she'd probably predicted would happen beforehand.

"Hey!" Gohan shouted. For a moment, he looked like he was going to interfere, so I shot him a glare. Frankly, for me at least, Charcoal Gohan had been a far bigger threat than Vegeta currently was. As much as I disliked the idea of fighting Vegeta here, I knew that Vegeta wouldn't let this go until I pounded him into the ground. Then, he'd do everything that he could to get stronger and become a Super Saiyan himself before challenging me again. I opted to beat him down now, so that I wouldn't have to fight him again until after the Androids were dealt with. We had hours until my dad landed, anyways.

Vegeta's base strength and speed were definitively above mine, but I had far better perceptions, and reflexes due to all of my experience. He quickly realized that, after our clashes rocked the wasteland, he backed off.

"You're not even that strong!!!!?" He shouted at me as he charged me once more like a bullet. Naturally, since I couldn't take a charge like that head-on, so I dodged out of the way, then pulled his ki just a little bit to fling him into the side of a hill. He tried to stop himself before he actually hit the ground, but I'd planned for that.

"Gravity Pulse Bomb!" An energy orb about the size of a basketball flew out of my hand toward Vegeta while he was flying. By the time he'd managed to slow down, it was right on him. He attempted to swerve to the right to dodge it, but my Gravity Pulse worked by exploding and using the force from the explosion to accelerate someone in whatever direction they were already going, so he was just blasted into the ground just slightly to the right of the hill that he'd been headed to before. 

"How did your raw power help you there!?" I taunted as Vegeta pulled himself out of the ground with a scowl.

"I'm not done yet! I refuse to acknowledge that a child has managed to become a Super Saiyan while I haven't!" He shouted, rushing at me with a barrage of energy-infused attacks.

"Thanks for the energy, but I'm good. I'm not really tired yet." I joked, bending the ki extending from his fists. The idea behind his energy-infusion had been to make his attack seem as unpredictable as possible, but to me it was honestly just a snack. Vegeta's energy control was nowhere near Gohan's, and it wasn't tainted by that stupid Black Water Mist either, so stealing it was incredibly easy. It was a unique approach to battle, though. Nobody'd ever used that trick in the original canon.

As soon as Vegeta realized that I was stealing his energy, he immediately changed tactics. 

'Energy attacks are worse than useless, and she's faster than me, with more control, too, much as I hate to admit it.' Vegeta thought to himself, 'I'll just have to be careful... I can still overpower her with pure physical power.' 

"So, I'd say I win..." I took my foot off of Vegeta's back and clapped my hands together. Vegeta was stronger than me, that much was definitely true, but with my superior control and skills, as well as the fact that I had most of his skills sealed, the fight between Vegeta and I had been the one-sided beatdown that Shay'd clearly expected it to be. Strength was a great boon in a fight, but even before I'd gotten experience with absolute power, I had a natural affinity for energy control, an incredibly rare trait in Saiyans. Even my dad was slow to learn compared to how fast I'd managed to figure advanced skills out during my time in the Core.

"I see... It's all in control." Vegeta muttered to himself, struggling to his feet, "I think I just figured out the secret of the Super Saiyan form. Once I figure it out, I'll once again be the strongest Saiyan in the universe..." 

"Wow... I could never stand against Hanna's power like that." Pigero muttered to himself.

"The way she did that... Her skills are incredible! I've never seen her fight all-out before!" Tien agreed with Pigero, awestruck. 

"Hey, Pigero." I turned away from Vegeta back toward the rest of the Z-Fighters in order to address Pigero, my interest on Vegeta over now that I'd proven my strength to him. It may have seemed to him that I was taking him lightly, but the fact was that if that had been the case, I would have demolished him with Silver Mode and not bothered to prove anything to him. Instead, I'd shown him that my energy control was light years more advanced than his, by staying in my base form. 

Honestly, now that I'd defeated him, there was nothing else that I could possibly do to make him feel like less of a loser by comparison. That was just how Vegeta was, so I opted to ignore him and ask Pigero to fly off and get Cargo, who'd been shuttled to the Tertiary facility like the rest of the main Legacy staff, so that he could heal the battered Vegeta.