Dragon Ball ‘Redux’ Interlude 3: Enter Jockey

This story takes place a few months after Torta and Regal were revived from the dead.

A ship raced through space towards a rapidly changing world. It was a small, unassuming cargo ship, registered to no one, and hurtling past multiple sets of security perimeters. Several scout ships chased it down, sending many warnings to stop. The planet the cargo ship was heading towards was vigilant, on guard against any signs of danger from the outside. The ship continued on its way, showing no signs of stopping, ignoring all hails. Satisfied that they followed all procedure, the scout ships fired on the cargo ship, destroying it with missiles as it entered the atmosphere. The ship’s remains and contents spilled down and burned up in the stratosphere.

All the contents, save for one item. Landing outside the capital was the occupant of the ship, an alien wearing a bulky, heat-resistant spacesuit. The area the occupant landed used to be a meadow, but was already coated in metal, as so much of this planet had been coated already. The scout ships took formation around the occupant, calling to headquarters as they began their investigation. A round, drum-shaped robot emerged through one ship and approached the occupant, flipping her over and removing her helmet. After a quick scan, the guard concluded that the alien was nothing more than a passing Zoon trader, who died on impact. Within half an hour, the investigation was called off, reported to the authorities as a successful neutralization.

Once the scout ships and guards were far enough away, this seeming Zoon trader roused, rising to a seated position and removing the uncomfortable mask. Wiping the smooth, jewel-like growth on her skull, she sighed. “I didn’t think I could pass for dead!” Jockey said. “Keeping my vitals undetected is seriously intense!” She got out of the spacesuit as fast as possible and removed the rest of her Zoon costume; she had considered only getting a mask, but figured it would be safer to have a full body costume, just in case they removed the spacesuit. She charged up some chi and destroyed these quickly. She had also considered stuffing the suit and leaving it behind to act as a decoy, but there was no fooling the Machine Mutants of M-2, who would be alerted by even a few microns change in position if they were to check again.

Ready for her mission, Jockey raced towards the capital. She was lucky enough to arrive a few days ahead of her brother. M-2, formerly Plant, was a growing military power, and Esky was looking to make an alliance. Originally built as a defense force for the Tuffles, the Machine Mutants became militant and aggressive, led by a supremacist leader named Admiral Remmha. After Daikon and Malacol were killed and Sadla destroyed, Remmha deposed the paranoid Tuffle king and began transforming Plant into the metal planet of M-2. Jockey had actually expected Esky to take over M-2 and get rid of a fast-growing rival, but whatever form the relationship between Esky and Remmha took, she had to intervene.

Moving into the city center would be a difficult task. It wouldn’t take long for her to be detected by the security sweeps, and with Machine Mutants able to swim through metal, enemies could literally pop up from anywhere in the metal metropolis. That said, Jockey was determined to stay out of sight as much as possible. Just causing trouble wouldn’t be enough to get Remmha’s attention, she figured, so she had to get in close and do something big. She had only one shot at realistically stopping the two from forming an alliance, and she was determined to take it.

The city was abuzz with the movements of Machine Mutant units of all sorts, going back and forth through the buildings to carry out the mundane tasks of keeping everything running. Jockey was amused that a society of living machines took the “living” part of their identity to mean they had to physically make things work, like organic lifeforms did with jobs. From where she stood at the outskirts of town, she had a few miles to go before reaching the administrative hub where Remmha ruled. Looking around, some Tuffles were visible, still going about their lives. Some looked adjusted to this new normal, perhaps welcoming or accepting this change in their technological society, while others looked beaten down and fearful. That latter group wore more layers, keeping their faces covered. This gave Jockey a way in, as long as she could find a change of clothes.

A guard phased through the floor behind her, a drum-shaped humanoid soldier with a single, glowing red eye. “I’m ready for target,” the soldier said. Jockey swiftly turned, and the two locked eyes. “You!” the soldier shouted, as a pair of comrades joined from the ground below. Without another thought, Jockey attacked, having hoped to make it farther into the city before facing resistance. The soldiers were powerful, but nothing that she couldn’t handle. With a few sharp strikes, she tore them to pieces. “We have another—!” said the last soldier, just before the fatal blow.

Jockey quickly ran out of sight, hearing the hubbub of the common units who witnessed the fight. The soldier’s last words were not lost on her, either. The guards were not looking for Jockey before. She wondered who else would have tried infiltrating M-2, especially at this important time; it was a notoriously difficult feat, and one Jockey did not undertake lightly. Seeing her options narrow, she started moving out towards the metal meadows again to regroup.

She ran headfirst into someone else as she rounded a corner, the two falling over. She looked up to see a powder blue, humanoid Machine Mutant soldier with a visor-type eye. The Machine Mutant looked at Jockey in shock, immediately getting up to take a fighting stance. “I’ll never hand them over to you!” he yelled angrily.

“Wait—” Jockey implored, to no effect. The Machine Mutant attacked, opening with an aggressive, brute force barrage. His power was impressive, stronger than the guard units Jockey fought a moment ago. His body showed age, and from what she had seen of Machine Mutant warriors, Jockey surmised he had to be one of the first units built. She remained on the defensive, preferring not to hurt him.

As if to answer her suspicions, an entire squad of guards emerged from the ground and buildings around them. “Soz the traitor! Invading alien!” the lead soldier, green in color, shouted. “You will both stand down and surrender to the authority of Remmha! We will open fire if you do not comply!”

Jockey immediately attacked, using a series of Horror Beams to take out the soldiers around her. Soz attacked as well, using his hand-to-hand combat to get in close and then cutting his enemies down with lasers from his wrists. The green soldier attacked Soz, grabbing his hands to keep the lasers away. Jockey blew through the green soldier’s head with a final Horror Beam. She approached Soz and held out her hand.

Soz smacked it and backed away. “Of course you want to keep me alive, for now,” he said. “I’m not mistaking anything you do for kindness!” He attacked Jockey again, much to her annoyance. She was sure he was significant to her mission, with the serendipitous timing, but it was clear he wasn’t going to stop attacking her. With no other choice, she punched him hard, knocking him into a building.

Jockey was confused. “Why didn’t you phase through the building?” she asked. “It would have given you an undeniable advantage over me in your next attack.”

Soz was confused. “That voice…you’re not Esky. Are you Jockey?”

“I am.”

Soz shook his head. “I’ve heard tales of your exploits. Of course, with their meeting so close you’d come here. Look, I’m holding onto…certain intelligence, paper records. I can’t shift through buildings with my cargo. I don’t know what your play is, but I can’t be in the middle of it. I have to get this off world, no matter what. So, if you’ll excuse me.” Soz walked off, heading further out of the city.

Jockey grabbed his arm. “You can’t go that way. They know where you’re headed, if that wasn’t already clear. You have to change destination. We can go part of the way, keep each other safe.”

“Did you hear what I just said? You’re trouble I can’t afford!” Soz ripped his arm away from Jockey.

“And you won’t survive without my help. You just witnessed that. I promise to get you off world. Maybe if your cargo is important enough, I’ll prioritize that over my mission.”

Soz looked her up and down. “You’ll never survive the trip back through city center.”

Jockey turned and headed back into the city. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.” Though unsure, Soz cursed his aging specs and followed Jockey, knowing he needed her help to survive against the new model elites coming after him.

The two made their way through the city, running across rooftops to avoid the crowded streets. For a while, they made good progress, passing through the shopping district without seeing a guard, but that was expected. With the two of them teaming up, the security forces had to rethink their strategy and amass new forces. Jockey glanced back at Soz, wondering what he was really carrying. She knew the paper records had to be a lie, since he could easily have digitized such records and planned a safer mission to transmit the information off world, under the pretext of official duty. There were rumors of truly cutting edge weaponry, even by M-2’s standards, in development in recent times, rumors that drew Esky’s attention, and Jockey had to wonder if Soz carried a sample. “Do you have a plan for getting to a ship?” Soz asked. “The city has been watching your fights; they’ll be prepared for your attacks next time around.”

“Yes,” said Jockey. “We run. Our goal is escape for you, at the moment.”

Soz squinted. There was no inkling in her words or actions that she had the kind of intelligence needed to sabotage any of the facilities she’d need to in order to accomplish her goal. Their path turned to circle the city center, and Soz felt like bait.

As they passed into a residential district, several arms reached up through the roof of the next building, grabbing at their feet. Jockey repositioned in time, while Soz was caught. Jockey blasted the emerging arm with a chi blast and pulled Soz along with her, taking flight since it no longer seemed necessary to suppress her chi. Drum-shaped guard units appeared all over, swarming up through the buildings. Jockey led Soz through the swarm, peppering guards with chi blasts as necessary, flying hard towards the eastern side of the capitol. “This isn’t the main attack, you realize?” Soz asked.

“We’re being led into a kill zone,” Jockey acknowledged. “Not much we can do about it until we get there. They have all the advantage, in numbers, resources, and intelligence. I’m sure they’ve planned hundreds of possible routes to lead us through, no matter how we deviate from our current flight path.”

Soz scoffed. “Awful calm for a young’un. Smug, careless maybe.”

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but I’d be lying to say I’m not worried.”

The duo wound their way across the skylines of the capitol, explosions amassing in the sky like an impromptu fireworks show for the frightened citizens below. Above a park in the financial district, the guard units appeared in greater number overhead, and soon took a dome-shaped formation to drive Jockey and Soz down onto the metallic grass. Jockey cursed, much farther from the space port than she had wanted to be, but nevertheless she complied with the security forces’ wish to avoid unneeded effort.

Once on the ground, Jockey and Soz stood back to back and studied the defensive perimeter. There were hundreds of guard units in the sky, all keeping their glowing red, cyclopean eyes focused on the two. The park and surrounding area were fully evacuated, with the murmur of onlookers faintly audible a few blocks out. “I’m not seeing their firepower,” said Jockey.

From the west came a new guard unit carrying three Tuffle citizens, the sort that most felt their new position in society as oppression. Soz saw this and was shocked. “How dare they!” he said. “They’ll kill those Tuffles as soon as either of us moves! And if they’re bringing them over…” Jockey followed Soz’s eye towards the edge of the park, at a well-groomed semicircle of metalized trees. She was worried the Tuffles were the typical sort of hostages, and then a large figure rose through the ground. It was a large Machine Mutant, with the aesthetic of an old fetish doll, sitting cross-legged. The guard unit carrying the abducted Tuffles placed them in the large doll’s mouth, their cries for help disappearing as they were swallowed. The doll’s eyes started glowing, and then its entire body erupted in red light. With a guttural, mechanical scream, it rose to its feet. “This here’s Toy, and I don’t think there’s any way through this fight alive.”

“Won’t know till we try!” declared Jockey. Flaring her chi, she rushed in at Toy, striking it as hard as she could with an unrelenting barrage. Toy didn’t flinch, smacking Jockey away with one hand. Unleashing another tinned roar, Toy wildly assaulted Jockey, pummeling her intensely and driving her to the other side of the park. A final kick knocked her into a crater, and she hacked for breath.

“Told you,” said Soz, keeping his distance. “That thing’s just about indestructible when powered up. I can’t imagine what monstrous strength it would take to make a dent in its hide.”

Jockey cried out in anger, emerging from the crater in her transformed state, her overlarge muscles far exceeding her meager increase in height. “Monstrous strength, you say?” she asked rhetorically. “I was born with it!” She charged back in, refreshed in her new body. Her newfound power was in another league entirely, and with it she was able to strike Toy with as much force as the Machine Mutant idol could muster. Despite this more even trade, however, she was not able to scratch Toy’s armor. After taking a few hits to the stomach, Jockey kicked Toy up into the air, followed with a series of body blows to knock Toy further up, kicked it back down, and then charged up a small but densely powerful energy bomb. “Horror Bomb!” she yelled as she threw it. The resulting explosion rocked the capitol, sending debris high into the sky.

With a wave of her hand, Jockey dispelled the dust using a kiai and looked at the crater. The Horror Bomb was far from full power, but she still expected it to make a real impact on the indefatigable Toy. “Are you an idiot?!” Soz cried out, having been knocked off his feet in the blast. “You said you were helping me!” Toy slowly stood back up in the crater. Though visibly scratched, it still looked as tough and ready to go as ever.

Jockey started to feel panic. “Care to give me a hand?” she asked Soz.

“I can’t do nothing against it, anyway,” he said. “I know this thing’s specs. The longer I stay out of this fight, the better my chances are that I’ll find a way to slip out of this death trap. I only care about getting off world.”

Jockey flew back in at the angry Toy. “Neither of us is getting off world unless you help me!” she screamed, attacking Toy with everything she had. Toy took every lick without a hint of pain or hinderance, and returned the attack just as fiercely.

“Why should I?” Soz asked. “You’re just using me to lure out Remmha! I know your plan! You want to kill Remmha before he can align with your brother! It’s a fool’s errand all around, and you can’t even pull it off!”

Jockey was slammed hard in the gut, taking her breath. “Not if I get you off world!” she wheezed.  She retook the offensive with a Horror Beam to Toy’s face. “Whatever you’re really carrying, getting it out of here will be a bigger wrench in the works than I could ever pull off! Killing Remmha will be a safety net!”

Soz was surprised. He assumed Jockey thought their relationship transactional. He sighed, realizing how much he let Remmha’s propaganda about corrupting outsiders get in his head. He always knew her mission, and heard enough about her exploits to know she was capable of changing priorities. “It’s weak from the inside,” he said. “I can try keeping it busy if you wanna jump in there, but I’m not risking my cargo in Toy’s stomach.”

“Not necessary!” Jockey said. She charged up chi in her right hand and forced that hand into Toy’s mouth. She then charged up more chi in her left and punched Toy in the gut. “Horror Magnet!” she called out as the chi she deposited inside Toy was attracted to the chi on her hand, causing an explosion from both sides. Toy finally showed signs of damage and pain, bursting apart like scrap. The scared Tuffles cowered in fear in the remains of Toy’s stomach. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry for doubting you,” said Soz. “I’m just putting the mission first. It’s for the greater good.”

“You never have to apologize for that to me. Just for doing it like a jerk.”

“Good speech,” said a booming voice from overhead. Jockey and Soz turned with shock to see a muscular blue man in a red vest floating down in front of them. His crosshair eyes and metal shoulder pads made his identity clear. “Hello, Jockey. I’m not expecting your brother for a few more days, so I’m sure he’ll be thrilled if I gave him your head. Quartered, of course; I’m not handing over a still-living head!”

“Remmha…” Jockey seethed.

“But you can wait, interloper. I’m here to crush you, Soz! How dare you defy me?! You’re holding onto something far more sacred than you can ever know and defiling it with your traitorous ideology!”

“You’re the traitor!” Soz called out defiantly. “We were built to bring peace and prosperity to the Tuffles and the universe, not rule it with an iron fist! I know far better than you how sacred this vessel is!”

Soz was crushed under Remmha’s foot, deep into the ground, before Jockey could even see. “Enough of your preaching, you old fart!” Remmha yelled. “Give it here so I don’t have to worry about destroying the prototype!”

Raising a limp wrist, Soz fired a laser into Remmha’s face. “I’d rather us both die than hand them over.”

Remmha scowled and raised a hand to strike Soz. Jockey caught it in time and struck Remmha as hard as she could in his face. He looked out over her fist from the corner of his eye. “That all you got?” He kicked Jockey away and turned his attention back to Soz. Seeing her abilities run short again, Jockey cursed and focused her power once more. Her form changed again, increasing in height and growing two additional arms. Her crown of horns grew thicker and fanned more vertically, while a longer horn grew from the front of her head, curving backwards in an arc behind her back. Remmha looked at her again. “That’s better, I suppose,” he said.

Jockey lunged at Remmha once more, this time able to knock him backwards and away from Soz. The two clashed, their power and speed rocking the city more powerfully than the Horror Bomb from earlier. Soz looked up in wonder, trying to wrap his head around the scale of the fight. He knew what Remmha was capable of in theory, but he hadn’t seen the admiral’s full power in action before. Jockey was clearly pushing herself to her limits, as well, though it also appeared her technique was getting wilder, less precise and more bloodthirsty with each passing second. He remembered rumors about Frost Demons, that several in history would hide their power with limiting transformations, to rein in their violent impulses. Soz was touched with how hard she fought for him, but growing more fearful at the sight of her unable to use her own strength properly.

He turned away from the fight. By now, the surrounding guards had been forced to retreat several times for their own safety, and many had already been taken out as collateral damage from the previous battles. There were ships a few miles out. Soz considered his chances of slipping out to a ship while Remmha fought, and then considered the far higher value Remmha placed on securing the prototype he carried than killing Jockey. He looked down at his chest, and placed a hand on the middle. In that compartment was the hope for the future of his people, of Machine Mutants defined by honor, courage, and responsibility, the very values he was programmed to uphold. No matter what, this new life would be in opposition to the tyranny of Remmha, and that was enough for Soz to stake his life.

“It’s about time I end this!” said Remmha, charging up even more power. He kneed Jockey in the back and then chopped her neck with a knife hand, slinging her into the ground. Remmha charged up chi over his hand and made it spin like a drill. “I’m known for my ground and pound, but that’s not enough for your kind!” He flew down and aimed his drill fist for Jockey’s head.

Instead, it struck and tore through Soz, who stepped in the way. “You know what you have to do,” Soz said.

“Why?” Remmha asked, laughing. “You just saved me the trouble!”

“I’m sorry to ask you to do this yourself, but go, now,” Soz said. “Remember to stand up for what you believe.”

Remmha realized what was happening and threw Soz aside. Jockey’s eyes were open, crosshairs over her pupils. She rose into the air and flew off as fast as possible. “No!” Remmha screamed. “Stop her!” The guard units started chasing after Jockey, but none were capable of matching her speed in that form.

Before Remmha could take to the air himself, Soz jumped on his back. “For Plant,” he said. In a powerful blast, he self-destructed, blanketing the capitol in debris and dust. Remmha used a kiai to dispel the dust as fast as possible, but by the time it was clear, Jockey was no longer in sight. He cursed and rushed to the space port.

Out in space, Jockey awoke, her eyes her own again. She felt a presence inside herself and remembered what just occurred. She shed a tear into the void for Soz and her own helplessness. Shaking her head, she prioritized safety and looked for a course that would get her off M-2’s radar. Jockey thought she was used to fighting an impossible battle, but carrying on Soz’s wish filled her with even more dread. She had bitten off so much more than she could chew.