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DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Dragon Ball Z or any of its associated characters or intellectual properties. All hail Toriyama, creator of the same.WARNING: If you are under 18, go away!This fic contains violence, strong sexual themes and situations, strong language, and touches on the deep, emotional scars of molestation. If any of this creeps you out, don’t read this story. RED DRAGON By: Lisalu PART 1: Monster Cold, white hands gripped him, holding him immobile and helpless. Hot, rank breath on the back of his neck, the stink of charnel houses. Sibilant, whispering laughter mocking him, mocking his weakness—he who had always been so strong. Grief and blood rage choked him, erupting in a guttural howl, as he struggled at first to break free, and finally to deny what was happening to him.Pain was nothing to his kind. From the cradle he had been taught to welcome it as sharp affirmation that he was alive. He had cut his teeth on violence and death.But this…There had never been anything like this, never in the world!Denial was stripped away from him, rage was beaten down. In the end, there way only grief and stomach clenching shame and betrayal that this, this, was what his father had given him over to. Out of fear.Out of weakness.Dignity laid waste, pride gone, all sense of safety destroyed forever. The adoration and near-worship of his father shattered and already uncon-sciously souring into cold contempt."The wages of weakness, little prince," the voice chuckled in his ear.A sob caught in his throat—the first tears he had ever shed—the last he would shed for nearly 20 years.Black, talon-like nails sank into the bare flesh on his shoulders, piercing and tearing. "Don’t cry, Vegita-chan," Lord Frieza purred. "I have a special place in my heart for children." He jerked awake, bolting upright with a gasp, sweating and shaking.Movement caught his eye and he summoned ki, raising his open hand—and stopped.Wide eyes under a mop of blue bangs regarded him curiously. He relaxed slowly, lowered his hand. The child crawled onto the bed and into his lap."Bra?" His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. He’d come a hair’s breath from killing her by accident. The absolute trust in the girl’s sleepy smile as she looped her arms around his neck made something deep inside him constrict involuntarily."Poppa, you’re squishing me," Bra said, squirming. He loosened his hold on her. He glanced at the bedside clock. 1:00am. "Bra, what are you doing up?""I heard you having a bad dream and it woke me up," she replied.He frowned. At 3, his daughter’s ki was disappointingly lower than her brother’s had been at the same age, but her telepathic powers,unusually latent in both humans and Saiyans, seemed to be off the scale. The thought of Bra being subjected to the nightly horror show his dreams had become of late was not a pleasant one."Did you see my dream?" He asked carefully.She shook her head. "No, I just felt you being hurt and afraid." One tiny hand patted his shoulder. "Poor Poppa."He snorted. "It’ll be poor Bra if your mother comes back from her party and finds you out of bed." He was feeling more normal with every passing second. "Did you break the nanny-bot thing again?""Not bad," Bra said evasively.He carried her back down the hall to her bedroom, noting with a satisfied smirk the dozens of pieces of what had once been Bulma’s nanny-bot project strewn about the room. The smiling nannyhead and core processor was imbedded into one wall at the center of a smoking, black burn mark that still sang with the memory of his daughter’s ki.It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps Bra was like Kakarott’s first born, Gohan. The little bastard had shown only negligible ki at first. But when thrown into the mix of battle, when frightened or angered in any way, his power level had risen without precedent, seemingly with limit. Did that same potential sleep dormant inside his youngest child?He sat her down on her bed. "Get into bed, Brat," he said quietly."I’m not a brat," she said, crawling under the covers, one arm curled around a stuffed dinosaur. "I’m a princess.""That you are," he agreed, his face stony and expressionless. She smiled up at him, seeing effortlessly past the stoic warrior’s mask. He pulled the quilt up around her more securely. He wasn’t sure why; the room was perfectly warm.Let your power sleep, he said silently. I would not awaken it with fear and death and danger for all the wealth in creation. I will commend to Hell’s mercy anyone who tries."I had a bad dream last week," she murmured drowsily. She was almost asleep. "I dreamed about a monster.""So did I," he whispered. In his room, he washed his face and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror. He would not sleep again tonight.He was averaging less an hour a night, now. He needed 4--3 at the very least.Why now? he wondered. After 6, maybe 7 years of relatively peaceful sleep, why had these old, rotting corpses from his first life come back to haunt him? He closed his eyes tiredly, remembering…. Strong hands lifted him from the floor where he lay naked in a pool of blood, vomit and filth. There were voices around him, faint and indistinct. Dodoria’s booming laugh cut through the dim buzz, chuckling about his "initiation." In his half-conscious state, he didn’t remember when he was bathed, bandaged, and clothed. He did remember growling and lunging at the hand that slapped him back to full wakefulness. A big hand caught his small fist effortlessly."Easy, little soldier," Zarbon said.Memory came flooding back and his snarl tapered down into a wounded animal’s moan."How old are you?" The blue-skinned warrior asked. The man slapped his face again, pulling him back as reality began to slide away again."Nine standard years," he whispered."It is Lord Frieza’s common practice to break all the young ones who come unwillingly into his service," Zarbon told him conversationally.The man’s lack of pity or mockery was an unlooked-for mercy. "Your body will heal, but your heart and mind will never forget who is the Master and who is the slave.""I am no one’s slave!" He rapped out.Zarbon sighed. "Listen to me, little prince of Vegita-sei. I am not your friend. If my master lifts one finger, I will gut you without a moments hesitation. But I will give you some advice. Nothing amuses my master so much as defiance. And the harder you defy him, the worse he will use you—until he has broken your spirit or broken your mind. If you continue to howl and rage at him, you will always be his favorite catamite." The blue warrior’s lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "I was younger than you when he bought me from the slavers who destroyed my homeworld. Listen to the voice of experience, boy. Keep silent, obey, and grow strong. That is how you will survive.""Grow strong," he repeated softly."Zarbon?" He met the man’s eyes for the first time. "I am hostage, according to treaty. Held in trust against my father’s fealty to Lord Frieza…If I…" He swallowed, tasting bile. "If I obey and grow strong, my father and my people will be safe as well, yes?" Zarbon’s face was unreadable. He nodded solomly. "That’s the deal, boy."It was 4 years before they told about the "meteor storm" that had destroyed his father and his world. Grow strong, his mind whispered as his body shuddered with the shame and sick, helpless rage of the child he had been. Grow strong…Those two words had shaped the man the child would become, had driven him beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond any excepted definition of the word obsession. They had driven him to his own death not once, but twice."Why now?" He said aloud.You have never had so much to lose as you do now, a voice whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind.Grow strong…Heh.The only living being in the universe more powerful than himself was a blithering idiot who would no more harm those he held dear than…than he could carry on an intelligent conversation.He shook himself irritably and stilled the involuntary trembling. He was the mightiest warrior in this or any other world…Well…the mightiest with a full set of wits, anyway. And that was only for the moment, dammit! There had to be another level beyond SSJ3, and when he achieved it first, he would give Kakarott the beating of his miserable life!He was strong enough to protect all that he had built; this good life he had built in spite of himself. He raised his head and gazed into the mirror---and cried out, his voice cracking like an adolescent’s.Frieza gazed back at him out of the mirror, his blood-hued lips curled into a saccharine smile. The voice, so full of sweet, insinuating malice…He knew that voice so well! This was no dream! No hallucination!A wave of black energy rushed over his senses, so violent it bowled him over physically."Soon, Vegita-chan," the old monster chuckled softly in his head. "Soon…"With a hoarse cry, he smashed the mirror and launched himself out the window. The annual Capsule Corp profit share Gala was showing no sign of winding down. Research and Development had taken the lion’s share of the bonus’s this year and the entire department was rip-roaring drunk. Petr Smoliensk, the head of Moscow R&D, was leading a bunny hop line of nearly fifty people across the middle of the dance floor. Bonnie of CapCorp West’s L.A. offices was nearly in tears, watching the end of her one woman crusade to "streamline Capsule Corp’s maverick, unconversional image to more exemplify a world corporate power."Bulma Briefs snickered. "No company built on the shoulders of scientists and inventors should ever try to be chic and trendy," she said aloud. Her father, venerable creator and owner of Cap Corp, was near the head of the bunny line."Are you sure I look all right?" Chi-chi self-consciously pulled down on the hem of the dress Bulma had lent her for the occasion."I feel indecent."Bulma smiled sunnily. "Modern fashion, Chi-chi." She was not completely plastered herself, but she was definitely tipsy. It had been a hectic, exhausting month. In two days, the planet’s first line of non-military spaceships would be available of the open market, courtesy of Capsule Corp. Every government on Earth had fought them tooth and nail every inch of the way. "You’re wearing a bra and your ass is covered," she hiccuped. "You’re decent."The look of veiled disapproval on the other woman’s face brought her up short. She and Chi-chi had never been very close—they were as different as two women could be in most ways. They were bound together by mutual love for Son-kun and the close friendship of their sons, but Bulma never lost sight of the other woman’s disapproval of her and her family. She changed the subject."So, are you going into private practice, or are you still deciding?""I’m not sure," Chi-chi said frowning. "Clinical psychology seemed very appealing when Gokou-saa was…gone. I finished the degree because it was something I had started. But…I think the happier you are, the less interesting other people’s problems become. And I don’t take Gokou-saa’s presence for granted. I’m jealous of every moment we spend apart, because some part of me believes that our days together are numbered."Bulma stared at her. She hadn’t expected the other woman to pour out her own heart in answer to such a casual question. Chi-chi’s gaze had turned across the room to where her husband and her oldest son were wreaking devastation upon the food bar, engrossed in conversation with one another between mouthfuls. Gohan’s wife Videl had taken their new baby to visit her mother in Europe for a few weeks. Gohan, unable to leave university during mid-semester, had moved in with his parents until Videl’s return. "They could almost be brothers," Bulma murmured. Son-kun had not aged since the day he had shown up at Kame House with a 5 year old Gohan in tow."How long do Saiyans live, I wonder," Chi-chi said, echoing her thoughts."I made the mistake of asking Vegita that once," Bulma said wryly. "He said, ‘Until we’re killed.’"They locked gazes, sharing unvoiced, unspoken thoughts. And burst out laughing.A streak of lavender caught Bulma’s peripheral mother’s vision, and her hand snaked out and grabbed an ear. "Trunks, where are you going with that jar?"Her son looked at her, all innocence. "Nowhere.""We’re gonna wait til people start to pass out, and stick big gobs of peanut butter in their ears!" Goten said brightly. At 12, he was already a head taller than his mother, but he yelped sharply when Chi-chi’s hand clamped firmly down on his own ear.As Chi-chi dragged Goten away, reprimanding loudly, Trunks smiled sheepishly and handed over the peanut butter jar. "Sorry, Kassan."Bulma sighed. "Kassan’s very tired and plans to sleep for a week after this party’s over, Trunks. Kassan’s also ever-so-slightly drunk." The boy snickered. "I’ll think up some appropriately hideous and boring chore for your punishment after that.""’Kay.""I need one man in this family I can have at company functions who won’t inflict physical damage on my guests. Okay?"Trunks laughed outright. He seemed to have grown another inch while she wasn’t looking. Sweet Kami, was he really almost 13 years old?"Okay, Kassan." He looked sorrowfully at Goten. Chi-chi still hadn’t released his ear. "I got him in trouble again.""Yes, you did," she kissed him on the cheek. "He’ll live. Be good. I’ve got to check on some things upstairs. And possibly throw up."The room tilted pleasantly as she rode the elevator up to her suite in the office tower. Checking her laptop vidphone on her cluttered desk, she found no new messages. Good. No last minute hitches. She sank down into her chair and toyed with the bits of her last unofficial invention lying beside the vidphone like disgaurded jewelry. She twirled the two shiny metallic rings around her wrists like tine hoola-hoops, before encapsulating them and shoving them into her dress pocket. What should she call it? Transport? Telemat? Matterporter? Hmm. Better to think of a name when she was completely sober.She really should go over to the family wings of the compound and check on Bra. She was starting to think that market testing the Nanny-Bot proto-type on her daughter was a huge mistake. She had not spent enough time with her youngest child—with any of her family, for that matter—in the last few weeks, and Bra was voicing her displeasure in a very Saiyan fashion. Bulma wondered with a faint chill if the toddler would have torn the arms off of a human baby-sitter the way she’d done the Nanny-bot.She smiled in spite of herself.She had known her children would have some measure of inherent violent behavior—known it from the word go. She pulled the scarflette—one of a collection she’d taken to wearing habitually over the years—from her neck. Her fingers lightly touched a fading mark on her throat. The first time she had noticed such a mark on Bulma’s throat, her mother her had told her something in her airy, slightly unfocused way, which Bulma had never forgotten. If you lie down with wild things, Dear, expect to get bitten. She spun her chair around to look down from the office tower’s sparkling view of the city below, lost in memory. Vegita had definitely been a wild thing the first time he had come to her. Rough was not an adequate word to describe their first encounter.After weeks of her taunting, teasing sexual overtures, her had silently followed her back to her quarter of the compound. He had taken her without ceremony, without preamble, without a word. He turned her away from him with a low growl, bent her forward over the foot of her own bed, and brutally thrust into her. He pounded her nearly senseless for over an hour; she came four times, the last time screaming. She had pursued him looking for something hard core and rough and, by Kami, he had given it to her in spades. Afterwards, bruised, aching and bleeding, she turned and gently pushed him down on the bed while he was still shuddering in he wake of his own release. Her heart was still hammering in her chest with kinky excitement and the very real danger of this vicious, half-mad animal she had taken to her bed. This half-mad animal she meant to tame."Lie back and let me do the work this time," she whispered. "Let me show you another way.""Don’t tell me what to do, bitch," he rasped. Then she took him in her mouth and his snarl turned to a gasp. She teased and stroked him with gentle tongue and teeth and fingers, drawing out the sweet torture, reveling in the way he arched his back and bit back a cry when he came in her mouth. He was ready again almost instantly, and she straddled him, pulling him up into a sitting position. She eased him into her sore body with maddening slowness. His eyes, almost invisible pools of black in the dark room, bored into her, and for the first time, she thought she saw something unguarded in their depths. She moved slowly on him, touching every part of his body, always gently, always following the touch of her hand with her lips. She built him up, increasing her speed with agonizing slowness, and when they both crested together, he cried out like a man who’d just received a mortal wound, crushing her to him. She was wrapped around him just as tightly, shaken by a dawning realization that what she had played at this evening was no longer a game—should never have been a game with him.He still held her in a vise-like embrace, as though he thought she might be snatched from his arms at any moment. Years later, many years later, he would tell her in a horribly toneless voice about the first girl, the only other girl he had been with. She had been a year older than him, the daughter of one of the camp followers, mercenary whores who grew rich off of Frieza’s legions. Adolescent experementation had led to sex almost accidentally. Dodoria, the bloated orange sadist, Frieza’s second lieutenant, had indeed snatched the girl from the 14-year-old Vegita’s arms and torn her into two pieces before his eyes.But now his fingers traveled over the crimson, crescent-shaped wounds on her shoulders where his finger nails had gouged into her during their first time. The dull look of shock that flickered briefly behind his eyes told her he hadn’t even been aware he had been doing it.Her hand traced the almost identical set of scars of his shoulders. There was more than one set, marring the otherwise perfect, inhumanly smooth skin. She would have many years to ponder the meaning of those faded marks. They were old, but they were very, very deep. She touched her lips to his softly, then kissed his face. He frowned at her in confusion."It doesn’t have to hurt," she said softly. " It can be just pleasure.""Woman, you…" His voice was unsteady. He stoked her cheek with one finger. "Woman, you talk too much," he said finally. Then he pulled her down and lay her beside him as though she were made of glass.Wrapping his arms around her, gently this time, he had fallen asleep with the quick ease of a long time soldier who slept when he could.She lay for a long time gazing at his face, shaken to the bone by the unexpected emotion welling up inside of her. What the hell, she wondered, had she just gotten herself into?A long, rocky road to happiness, she thought, gazing at the city lights without really seeing them. A year of being his lover, wordlessly working compromises between his violent ferocity and her gentle skill, before he would speak more than a few words to her as they lay together in the darkness afterwards. Years before he would show her anything other than scorn and contempt in the light of day, unable to fathom that the men he had killed when he first came to Chikyuu—Piccalo and Tien in particular—would not kill her and Trunks if they knew he gave a damn about them. Unable to admit even to himself, that he did give a damn about them. Years more, until the Buu holocaust had stripped away all he had unwillingly come to cherish, leaving theman he had been shattered in a thousand subtle ways in its wake.She would like to think she had rebuilt him this time. But she knew that the man she now shared her life with was his own creation—perhaps for he first time in his life. Not of his father’s making, nor Frieza’s, not even hers.Vegita was not normal. He was not nice or sociable or friendly or remotely easy to get along with. But she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that her loved her and their children more than his own life, though he never said the words. He was---She bit back a shrill shriek.--He was right behind her."Vegita, you son of a bitch! You scared—""Do you trust me?" He said harshly."Yes," she said without hesitation. She took in his appearance. He was dressed only in the black cotton gi pants he wore for sleep, his face pale and drawn. His eyes were black pinpoints; they looked desperate. No, she amended. They looked terrified. "What—"He cut her off. "Trunks and Goten are watching Bra. They’re waiting in the Crane prototype in your mother’s garden. Let’s go!" He pulled her Toward the window."Where are we going?" She half-shouted in exasperation."We’re leaving.""Leaving the house?""Leaving this godless planet, woman!" He saw the look on her face and took a deep breath. Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her mouth softly. "Listen to me. A moment ago, I felt a surge of something.It was not ki. It was like the rush of power when Shen Long is summoned. Only greater. A power level so high I could not take the measure of it. And it was familiar. Come!" Before she could protest, he scooped her up and bulleted out the window, landing in the rose garden beside the Crane 1000, the first prototype of Cap Corp’s new starship line. He sat her on her feet, and checked the launch sequence timer on the forward landing strut. He cursed impatiently. "She still needs 5 more minutes to power up for launch. Get on board!""Vegita!" Gokou, with Gohan at his side, was striding across the grass toward them, all traces of the half-bright man-child she had known since her youth thrown off like well worn suit. Bulma felt a wave of dread rush over her. This was the man Son-kun might have been, the man Gokou would only force himself to become when things were at their most perilous. The sight of her old friend in full possession of his wits scared her more than the real fear in her husband’s face."I know!" Vegita said. "I felt it too.""You’re running away?" Gokou said in honest amazement. The lack of recrimination in his voice seemed to infuriate Vegita more. "Vegita, Chikyuu needs—""Fuck Chikyuu," Vegita said succinctly. "Fuck everyone on it, and fuck you too, Kakarott." Gokou blinked. "I’m taking my family off this mudball. If you are capable of remembering that far back, you’ll recall that they didn’t exactly survive Chikyuu’s last catastrophe intact!" He stopped, reigning himself in with great effort. "I’m taking Bulma and Bra some place safe. I know a dozen out of the way planets to hide them on. Trunks and I will be back to fight. We’ve got three minutes before the ship’s ready. Grab that screeching harpy you’re mated to, Kakarott, and we’ll take her with us as well.""You’re right, Vegita." Gokou smiled grimly and nodded. "He has no honor. He might come after our families to get at us. Don’t worry, though. We won’t defeat him until you get back!""Defeat who?!" Bulma almost screamed."Frieza," Vegita said after a brief silence. "Somehow he’s found a way out of Hell.""But…he should be nothing to you now. Any one of you could take him out almost instantly." Bulma looked at the bleak faces of the three Saiyans. "…couldn’t you?Gohan spoke up. "The old Frieza, yes. But something’s changed. His energy…it’s beyond imagining. It’s…""Infinite," Vegita finished.The world spun crazily and went black. "Wake up, Bulma! Wake up, we need you!" Someone was slapping her face hard enough to sting. Bulma opened her eyes to see Chi-Chi hovering over her anxiously. Somewhere close by, there was a low, rolling boom, followed closely by another. The ground beneath her shook violently with each detonation."What happened?" She asked shakily."It’s Vegita," Chi-Chi said hurriedly.Nearby, above the smoking crater where her mother’s cherry orchard had been, three small suns were revolving crazily in the air, illuminating the night around them."Power down!" Gokou’s voice came from the center of the inferno. "Dammit, Vegita! Power down! We’ll shake the planet apart if we keep this up much longer.!"In the eye of the firey maelstrom, Gokou and Gohan seemed to be barely restraining Vegita, who whirled and thrashed madly. All three were powered up beyond first level Super Saiyan and the world was indeed shuddering under the strain each time Vegita lashed out and the other two Saiyans countered."You don’t realized what’s happened!" Vegita screamed hoarsely. "You don’t—" There was another deafening boom. Bulma heard a musical tinkling as every window in the compound, perhaps in the city, shattered."Vegita-san!" Gohan’s voice. "Bulma-san’s less than 30 meters away! You’re putting her in danger! Power down!" The young man’s calm measured voice, so much older than his years, seemed to penetrate Vegita’s unthinking rage where Gokou’s had only inflamed it. The deadly golden light around the three men faded as they slowly levitated to the ground. Vegita stood motionless between the two Sons, who watched him warily. He looked like he was holding the madness that had gripped him a moment before by a thin frayed thread. Then his eyes found hers. He held her gaze for one brief second, then look away and sagged to his knees as though he’d been dealt some debilitating blow. Bulma fought down rising panic.What, oh sweet Kami, What had just happened?She stared at Chi-Chi’s tear-streaked face, and Gokou, Gohan, and Vegita, all grim and terrible as untimely death. Then she saw it.The Crane 1000 showpiece Vegita had been prepping for launch was gone. Gone…"The kids," she whispered. "Frieza’s taken them."* * * * *NOTES: Hee. Cruel spot for a cliffhanger, isn’t it? Questions? Comments? Mail me at [email protected]
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"The kids," Bulma whispered. "Frieza’s taken them."Chi-Chi sounded choked. "My little Goten as well."Gokou patted her awkwardly. "We’ll get them back, Chi-Chi," He said. "They can’t have gotten far."Bulma turned to Vegita. He stood beside her still and motionless as granite, his face blank and cold. Hold it together, girl, she told herself, because he’s very close to losing it completely."I have the Crane commercial passenger prototype decapsulated in in hanger three," she said steadily. "It’s bigger and faster than anything I’ve ever built."All the mens’ heads snapped up in unison. "Piccalo-san!" Gohan said. only Gokou didn’t look surprised."I’ve got some news about our old pal Frieza’s recent visit." The Namek’s telepathic voice echoed deep inside her head, making Bulma flinch with surprise. From the look on Chi-Chi’s face she was hearing him also. "It’s bad," he said bluntly. "Some of this you’ll have already figured out. Somewhere, somehow, some galaxy class intellect thought it would be a plan to wish Frieza back to life.""Did they use the Namekian dragon balls?" Gokou asked."I wish," Piccalo growled. "We think these dragon balls were made by a Namek named Daruma. He was a wanderer like me, but he would have been ancient by the time I was born. And when I say I, I mean Kami and myself, before we split. Which means he remembers craft secrets that were lost eons ago. So, forget all the rules for any set of dragon balls you’ve ever dealt with. He wrote his own rules for the Red Dragon Balls and we still don’t know what they are. He was also a real bastard. So was the dragon he conjured. Anything you wish for with these babys will turn to evil. Red Soraku decides how to fulfill the wish and he’ll find a way to twist it against you."Gohan frowned. "You mean like if you wish to be rich, for instance, someone you love would die and you’d collect a fortune in insurance?"Piccalo’s dry mental chuckle. "That sounds about right, kid.""Sound like this Soraku has a nasty sense of humor," Gokou said."Dende’s sources think Frieza was wished back by the last remnants of his own people, the Tsiru-jin."Vegita cursed visciously. "I knew I hadn’t gotten them all!" Everyone stared. "After Namek was destroyed, before Kakarott returned to Chikyuu, I paid a visit to Planet Frieza where the old lizard quartered most of his legions and a great many of his own folk. I did not leave so much as an insect alive, but I knew there were other Tsiru-jin out there. I should have hunted them down! They’re royal house is deity in their eyes. I should have known they would do something to try and resurrect him!" Bulma put a comforting hand on his arm, and he jerked away from her touch angrily. She swallowed hard, beating the tears down ruthlessly. In half an hour, her seemed to have regressed ten years."How did he get so strong?" She asked, tearing her eyes away from her husband."Daruma’s dragon balls come with five wishes," Piccalo replied. "We think his people used the first one to wish him back. Then he used the second one to wish for power—anything he wished for would be turn to evil, but I guess because he’s evil himelf, the dragon didn’t screw him. He wished for the power of a god, people. If we could quantify how strong he is now, it’d be something on the order of Super Saiyan 7 now, if there were such a thing. And the third wish to wish all his armies back.""There’s no time limit on how long the people you wish back with these dragon balls can have been dead?" Gohan sounded startled."You got it, kid. This new Frieza’s not the same pasty little bastard we all knew and loved. He has the almost limitless power of a Kai now, but is subject to none of the celestial laws that bar the Kais from excessive interferance in the physical plain. And he still has one more wish under his belt." Piccalo paused. Bulma had the sense that he was receiving information from a third party. "Okay, listen up people. Dende’s tied up right now in a fifty-way conference call. We’ve got a rogue Kai and an evil dragon on our hands, and this is one of the few exception where the gods get to throw down and personally take action.""The gods are going to war," Chi-Chi murmured."Not if we can help it," Piccalo said. "Dende and I are both of the opinion that there may not be very much left in the aftermath of such a battle." A pause. "I’ve got to go, soon. The hotheads are starting to gang up on Dende. "Gokou, Vegita—Daruma is the key. He’s the only one who knows how the Red Dragon Balls work and Frieza’s last wish and their power will be directly tied to his life. Dende won’t tell you this but I will. No Daruma, no dragon balls, no more wishes. It won’t solve all our problems, but it’ll pull a couple of his teeth. And it might keep the Kais out of this if Red Soraku’s out of the picture.""Daruma dies only after he’s told us all the secrets of his dragon balls," Vegita nodded, his eyes burning.Gokou shook his head. "I know what you’re saying Piccalo, but I won’t do it. Tracking down Daruma and killing him is still murder.""Fine by me," Vegita snapped."You two can argue about it on the way," Chi-Chi said sharply. "The first priority is getting our children back safely!"Something had been tickling the back of Bulma’s mind. Something That didn’t quite add up. "What happened to the forth wish?" She asked. everyone’s eyes turned to her. "The Tsiru-jin used the first one to wish Frieza back and Frieza used the second to wish for strength and the third to wish back all his soldiers. And Piccalo said he still has one more wish. So, what happened to the forth wish?"There was a long silence. Piccalo finally spoke again. "That’s the final thing I have to tell you. He took your kids and left you all alive for revenge. Because he wanted to hurt Gokou and Vegita, and leave them alive for a while to go on hurting.""Get on with it!" Vegita said harshly."He planned this out very carefully, I think. You know you’ll be walking into a trap.""We still have to go,"Gokou replied. "I don’t believe in traps, anyway. There’s always a way to win. We just have to find it."Piccolo was silent a moment longer. "Then I need to prepare you for what you’ll find. The blackout you all experienced was the forth wish. It was the result of a temporal shift. Frieza used his wish to take this entire solar system and everything in it outside of the temporal plane and set it down in another point in time. Frieza hasn’t had your kids for fifteen minutes or even fifteen hours. He’s had them for fifteen years." The two Saiyan warriors stood side by side watching the small, blue-green planet they called home slowly recede from sight. From the galley just the Crane passenger ship’s elaborate bridge, the soft burr of conversation between Chi-Chi and Gohan drifted toward them."…couldn’t catch them in, to tell Videl what’s going on," Gohan murmurred."…know she’d understand…" Chi-Chi’s subdued voice."Chi-Chi’s cooking something special," Gokou said after a long silence. "She says it’s one of her ‘coping mechanisms’."Vegita grunted. Behind them at the navigation console, Bulma’s presence on the edges of his consciousness was a bright spark of pain. She had won her fight to come with them, beating down his angry refusals with stony logic. Her technical genius might give them a needed edge at some vital moment. That and the fact that nowhere in the galaxy would she be safe from Frieza, now. The others had watched the argument escalate, waiting for the explosion that never came. In the end, he had simply turned his back on her coldly and said in an icy, disinterested voice, "Do whatever you want,Woman." He wrenched his thoughts away from the memory of the hurt in her face. He backed away from it. He could feel his mind methodically shutting down his emotions one by one, going cold. A part of him was relieved. There was no comfort in the numbness, but at least he could function. Maybe that was his ‘coping mechanism.’"I’ve found her," Bulma said quietly. A year ago, Bulma had planted a microscopic tracking device in one of Bra’s first molars (Saiyan children never lost there milk teeth.) She had done this in a fit of frustration and worry after losing the highly mobile baby in the enormous Capsule compound for the third time in one day. "A bit of tweaking," Bulma had said, was all that was needed to trace the girl half-way across the galaxy. "I made a couple of course corrections over the last hour so I could cross-reference the readouts from the tracer," she said. She glanced up at Gokou blank face. "Bra’s right here," she pointed to the X on the nav computer’s star chart.Vegita checked the coordinates. "Mardran," he murmurred."Do you know it?" Bulma did not look up from the read out."I’ve been there," he said shortly. "Low population, but very rich. The Madrani design, manufacture and broker weapons.""They don’t sound very nice," Kakarott said."They did their work and kept to themselves," Vegita replied. "That’s all I know about them.""I’ve laid in the course," Bulma said. "We should be there in 12 hours. I’m going to try to get some rest." She stood and left the bridge without a backward look."Supper should almost be ready. Are you hungry?" Kakarott’s voice sounded so normal and calm Vegita fought the urge to strike him."No."The big idiot eyed him doubtfully as the concept were utterly alien to him. "Vegita, you’ll need to keep your strenth up for this fight. Frieza will have some pretty nasty tricks up his sleeve, if I know him.""You don’t know a damn thing about Frieza, Kakarott!" Vegita rasped. "You never did!""I know everything you know." Vegita’s head snapped around. Kakarott met his eyes guilelessly. "From when we fused, remember? You had all my thoughts and I had all of yours. You told me afterwards that you thought you might have nightmares about Chi-Chi for the rest of your life, and I said I didn’t blame you because Chi-Chi can be really scary sometimes when she gets angry—""I was talking about your wedding night, you brainless, lowclass imbecile!" Kakarott frowned slightly, but regaurded him without anger. "If you know everything…" He turned away from the other Saiyan, his whole body trembling with conflicting rushes of emotion."I remember when you first came to Chikyuu," Kararott went on. "You seemed to really enjoy being evil, but when my mind touched yours a couple of time while we were fighting, it was like…" He paused, searching for words that were beyond his vocabulary. "….Like you’d swallowed a bunch of razors and they were cutting you to pieces on the inside. I know it’ll be bad, Vegita, but maybe not as bad as you think. They’re not alone, like you were. They have each other and the memory of our love. You can survive almost anything if you have love.""Kakarott, Bra was three years old," he began. He choked the words off and the anger rose up, burning down the pain as it always seemed to. He rounded on the bigger Saiyan, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "How can you stand there so calmly, Kakarott?! Blithering about love and togetherness when your child has been in the hands of a monster for fifteen years! When you know—" He stopped, shaking the fool until his teeth rattled. "Where is your anger, Kakarott? Where is your hate?!"Kakorott laid a hand on his own heart.. His brows drew down and together. "In here," he tapped his chest gently. His voice, that irritating adolescent-sounding alto, had dropped a full octave. "I’m saving it all for Frieza," Kakarott told him in a deathly quiet voice. Vegita stared into the bigger man’s eyes, chilled. For an instant, something burning and terrible had flickered there. "I’ve never felt hate before, Vegita." Kakarott told him. "It hurts.""Gokou-sa!" Chi-Chi’s voice came faintly from the galley. Kakarott seemed to shake himself, though he didn’t move. He gazed at Vegita politely until the Saiyan prince realized he was still gripping the other man’s arms tightly. He let go and stepped back."Cooking for me makes Chi-Chi feel better when she’s upset," Kakarott said in his normal voice. "That must be what "coping mechanism" means." He looked inordinately pleased that he had puzzled this out. "Are you sure you’re not hungry, Vegita?"Vegita shook his head mutely. It never failed to stun him, how the man could change like that. Kakarott was already moving away, being pulled irresistibly by his stomach. "Chi-Chi always gives me a hug after she’s yelled at me," he said almost absently as he walked away. "After that, everything’s all right again. It’s nice to have someone to love, isn’t it, Vegita?" Vegita opened the door to their cabin and undressed quietly in the dark. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Bulma lay turned away from him, tears drying on her face. She wasn’t asleep. He reached down and turned her gently, pulling her up into his arms. One finger traced the faint streaks her tears had made, brushing them away."I need you, Vegita," she whispered. "Please don’t shut me out."He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her softly. He hadn’t known what a kiss was until she’d taught him. She returned the embrace, hesitantly at first, then with growing intensity. His hands found their way under the white cotton top she wore, touching soft skin. She shrugged out of her underwear and he pulled the tank over her head. Wrapping both arms and legs around him, she pulled him down onto her with surprising strength. "I need you, Vegita," she said again.He had meant to take a long time, to make love to her slowly and gently, the way she liked it. But the feverish, almost desperate look on her face changed his mind. He threaded each of his hands through hers and thrust fully into her in one smooth motion. She gasped and bowed her back, shuddering as he filled her up completely, banishing thought and pain for both of them, if only for now. He moved inside her, hard and fast, giving her what she demanded, exhausting release and the deep, irrefutable reassurance of his presence throughout every inch of her. Something seemed to break fatally inside him at the end. The old comfortable wall he’d been resurrecting around himself, that he’d never demolished completely, shattered into a million sharp fragments. Feeling came rushing back over him in a crushing wave and all that he had shut down and shut out rose up and struck him with the force of a hammer, leaving him naked and defenseless in her arms.Bulma lay quietly spent beneath him, her heart already slowing. One hand gently disengaged his and caressed the back of his neck. His head was resting in the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. He made no move to draw away, simply lay silent and still above and within her. He didn’t seem to be breathing until she felt a faint tremor run through his body, and he took a short sharp hitch of breath. She swallowed the sob that rose in her throat when she felt the wetness on her shoulder where his face lay buried. She said nothing. There were no words of comfort that would not shame him, and none that were sufficient. So, she held him silently in the darkness. They held each other against the grief the next twenty-four hours might bring. Sleep never came, but whatever horrors or battles lay before them, neither of them would face it alone.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The ship set down in the charred blasted remains of what had once been Madran’s capital city."My goodness!" Chi-Chi exclaimed, surveying the wreckage around them. Gohan hung anxiously close to his mother, scanning the burned-out buildings for danger. Vegita snorted. The boy’s strength would be an asset in this suicide rescue mission of theirs, but his fear for the fool woman’s safety might paralyze him at some critical moment.Bulma adjusted the tracer and turned due east. Her strained, tired face looked hopeful. "She’s less than 10 kilometers from here, somewhere in these ruins.""I wondered what happened here?" Gohan muttered. "Whatever is was it was recent.""Who gives a damn!" Vegita demanded. "Let’s go get her!" He scooped Bulma up, tracer and all, and shot upward. The others followed suit, all flying low to the ground. The signal grew steadily stronger as they neared the center of the city. Bulma recalibrated one more time."There," she pointed the instrument directly at the husk of what had once been a temple or maybe a school. It was more intact than any of the other structures around it. Vegita sat her on her feet in the arched doorway. He ripped the melted slag of the door off its hinges and stepped inside first.It had been a temple. Young and old, entire families, had crammed inside hoping for some divine protection from the attack they must have known was coming. It hadn’t saved them. A huge circular section of the roof was caved in and shafts of bright sunshine illuminated what lay around them all too well. Everyone who had not taken refuge below ground when the blast hit had been roasted alive. Bulma drew in a sharp breath. Then she set her jaw firmly and began picking her way through the still smoking remains.Kakarott, looming behind him in the doorway, glanced back and caught his son’s eye. The younger Son said something in a hushed voice to his mother, blocking her view of what lay past the temple door.The tracer’s signal had risen to a shrill shriek as it closed in on its target. Bulma knelt down and Vegita watched, frozen, as she pulled a white, crimson-tipped tooth out of the ashes. He caught her just before she sagged to the floor. She made no sound, only beat against his chest with one clenched fist as he held her against him. When she did finally make some sort of noise, it was an angry, full-throated howl of rage. Vegita closed his eyes, and the image came to him, unbidden, of Bra lying safe and snug in her bed, smiling up at him.I dreamed about a monster, Poppa.A shadow fell across his face."Sounds like someone strangling a cat," a rough voice snickered. Ringed around the edge of the hole in the ceiling, a dozen hulking silhouettes peered down at them.Vegita uttered an incoherent roar and hurled himself up at them. He was beyond all thought, beyond all reason, beyond recognizing the too-familiar armor worn by all of Frieza’a soldiers. There was nothing but the mindless, burning need to kill. He didn’t bother with ki blasts, he simply began pounding and slashing with his bare hands. His hand seared through a living chest, seizing the fluttering heart within, smashing it to pulp. He whirled and gripped another enemy’s head, ripping it off and hurling it like a missile through the stomach of a third. Somewhere on the ground, Kakarott and his son were beating down another knot of warriors with short, controlled bursts, firing with just enough power to stun, not kill. Good, Vegita thought, All the more for me! He spun wildly in the air, rending and pummeling everything in sight. All sense of time ceased to exist, until he realized, through the red din of the killing rage, that he was alone. They were all dead. With a cheated snarl, he dove toward the clump of figures on the ground. Kakarott and his brat were hunched over one last survivor, and Bulma and Chi-Chi were approaching the scene of the fight hesitantly. Vegita landed hard and stared into the prisoner’s battered face."Zarbon," he rasped. He raised one finger, and a tiny witchlight of energy pooled on the tip. "I will thank Frieza before I kill him, for giving me the chance to kill you twice.""Vegita-san, wait!" Gohan cried. "He may know how to find Goten and Trunks!""Oh, he will tell us where they are," Vegita agreed softly. He released the dot of ki, searing the flesh on Zarbon’s left foot below the ankle. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream."Vegita, listen to me!" Zarbon hissed through clenched teeth."Stop it, Vegita!" Kakarott stepped between him and the blue-skinned warrior. "He wasn’t with Frieza’s men. I think he was their prisoner.""I know what he is," Vegita said balefully. "Get out of my way, Kakarott!"Something hard slammed into him from behind, bowling him over. He righted himself, seeing Kakarott and Gohan picking themselves up off the ground as well. Beside him now, Bulma gasped, and he followed her gaze to the armored figure who now stood between them and Zarbon. He stared frozen in shock at the young woman whose face was very nearly a mirror of Bulma’s, surrounded in the glow of her own Super Saiyan aura."Don’t you touch my father, you son of a bitch!" Bra said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vegita stared into the angry blue eyes of his youngest child, and the madness that infused him moments before seemed to drain out of him. The look he leveled at Zarbon was still murderous, but he seemed to have regained control. Bulma suppressed a shudder. No matter what the circumstances, It was terrifying to watch Vegita kill so ruthlessly.She laid a gentle hand on his arm and stepped between him and Bra. "No one’s going to hurt Zarbon, Bra. I promise I won’t let them." She kept her voice even with effort. She eyed the energy cuffs that bound the blue-skinned man’s hands and feet together. "I can take those off of him." She reached slowly toward the tool belt around her waist. "I’ve also got a medical kit. Someone should see to his wounds."Bra eyed her with open suspicion."You can trust her, love," Zarbon told the girl quietly.Bulma moved past her daughter, who was still powered up, blocking the men’s access to her "father". She knelt beside the injured warrior, and after a quick examination, popped the cuffs with a negative pulse wrench. "You," she told him as she set about treating the burn on His foot, "Need to start explaining yourself right now."The flawless, beautiful face that had made her blush like a school girl so many years ago, smiled ruefully up at her. "I suppose so.Where to begin? Bra-chan?" His voice softened noticeably. "Come sit down beside me and this pretty lady."Bra backed up cautiously and knelt beside him, never taking her eyes off Vegita. "He hurt you, Father," she said.Vegita cursed viscously at the girl’s use of the word "father"."Vegita, stop it," Bulma said quietly. Her eyes never left Zarbon’s. "I think we may have a great deal to thank him for. You rescued her, didn’t you? Why?"Zarbon stared at her in surprise. Then he sighed. "I’d already made up my mind to bolt before they ever took the kids. One lifetime in Frieza’s service was enough for me. When they brought the children on board Frieza’s cruiser, the boys nearly tore the ship apart. They almost got away three or four times during the first few hours. By the time we put in at the hub space port on Skilda, the ship was in pandemonium. Everything was on fire or being blown apart, Frieza was laughing his ass off watching the boys kill his own men, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. My Madrani contact had just signaled me it was now or never if I was going to jump ship. And in the midst of this unbelievable shit storm, I looked down and saw Bra. No one was paying any attention to her in all the chaos. She looked up at me and raised her arms for me to pick her up, and I just…I just grabbed her and ran." He glanced at Bra. "I still don’t really know why. She’s been nothing but a pain in the ass from day one." Bra made a face at him. "Put it down to a gesture to childhood. I was a child in Frieza’s court, just like Vegita." He and Vegita exchanged an unreadable look and Vegita nodded grimly in silent thanks to the other man. "Anyway," Zarbon went on, "while Frieza began gobbling up system after system of free worlds, we managed to hook up with a kind of underground. The Madrani were part of the network. They had developed a mechanism that allows us to hide in from our enemies in plain sight. Bra and I set down a couple of hours ago and found this. We split up to look for the Mastertech, sort of the planet’s head scientist. I found him and his team, or what was left of them. Someone had spent a lot of time getting info out them.""Do you think it was the SPE specs they were after?" Bra asked anxiously."I hope not, love. Whoever tortured the Mastertech to death got what they wanted and left. The ones who jumped us were just Frieza’s standard clean up crew. None of them were powerful enough to fry a huge city like this in seconds." He smiled without any humor. "You can all come back to Haven, our base world , with as. I think we might be able to help each other. But if Frieza has the plans to our camouflage engine, we may all simply die together." He scanned their faces. "Now that I’ve answered a couple of your questions, maybe you wouldn’t mind answering one for me. What the hell are the lot of you still doing alive? I thought Frieza had atomized you and Chikyuu’s entire system a few seconds after the Ginyu returned from their little kidnapping expedition."""You’re from Chikyuu?" Bra sounded startled. "That was my home planet! Father’s right, Frieza blew it up 15 years ago…" She broke off, staring at Bulma."No," her mother shook her head. "Frieza used one of his wishes to diplace the entire solar system temporally. Your 15 years ago was yesterday to us.""I know you, don’t I?" Bra said in a small voice."Oh baby," Bulma reached out and tried to embrace the girl, but Bra drew back in confusion.Vegita turned away from the dull look of hurt on his wife’s face, to Zarbon. "Tell her," he said coldly.Zarbon took Bra’s hand and pulled her gently back toward Bulma. "Look at her, Bra. You were right. You do know her." Bra gazed intently at her mother, and one hand crept up the older woman’s face hesitantly as she processed all the information she had received in the last few minutes."Ka-kassan…" the girl asked, trembling. "Mama…You’re my Mama!""Baby," Bulma took the sobbing girl in her arms. "Oh, Bra-chan, shhh.""I remember," Bra told her. "I was afraid you’d be mad at me when you got back from your party, because I murdered Nanny-Bot!" Bulma burst out laughing through tears. "I remember that night…" Bra repeated. She trailed off again, her eyes finding Vegita. "Poppa."Vegita knelt beside her, and regarded his daughter. His features shifted minutely, softening into a look he only ever directed at his wife and daughter. Her left cheek was swollen and bruised. He touched it lightly with one gloved finger."One of them got in a lucky swing," she told him. "I think I lost a couple of teeth."Vegita chuckled. "At least one. It’s how we were tracking you." The girl looked confused, but he didn’t bother to explain. He frowned at the blast-scored, dented, much-used armor she wore. "I would not have taught you to fight unless you wished it.""Nessecity wished it," Zarbon interjected. He stood shakily. "We need to have this family reunion elsewhere. "Is the ship still cloaked?" He asked Bra."They blew it to pieces," Bra said."We have a ship," Bulma said firmly. "We can take you to your resistance base."Zarbon laughed, shaking his head. "I ‘d like to think we were a resistance, but mostly it’s about hiding as many people and worlds as quickly as we can."In spite of herself, Bulma was very nearly salivating with scientific curiosity. "Hiding whole worlds! How—""Later," Vegita said. "Let’s get back to the ship and out of this system first." Bulma laid in the coordinates Zarbon had give her, watching her daughter anxiously hover over the blue warrior’s wounds. Vegita stood a little removed from everyone else, but she sensed the conflicting emotions inside him roiling just beneath the surface. Thankfulness that the man had saved Bra from Frieza and the dull glower of hatred that he had taught her to call him "father". There was some other tension between the two men as well. She had the sense that it was in some way related to the years they had spent in Frieza’s service, the part of his past Vegita never spoke of. It occurred to her that, in some ways, Zarbon knew more about her husband than she did herself.Finally, Chi-Chi voiced the question they had all been thinking."What about the boys? What do you know about my Goten and Trunks?"Bra stiffened and Zarbon’s face went carefully blank. Bulma tried to steel herself for the worst. "When they were first brought on board," Zarbon said slowly, "Frieza told them that you had all used Chikyuu’s dragon balls to wish yourselves and Chikyuu to safety. That their parents had abandoned them because their lives weren’t worth the lives of everyone on Chikyuu." The silence from the earth Saiyans was deathly still and cold. "I thought it was a load of green Namek shit myself, something he told the boys to demoralized them, and that he’d actually blow you all to the far side of Hell. But a kid might believe it---like a kid might believe a "meteor storm" had destroyed his homeworld by ill chance." Vegita looked sick.Gohan finally spoke. "What kind of mind would make up a story like that?""Frieza’s," Vegita hissed."Are they alive?" Gokou asked softly. Chi-Chi glanced at him and then away quickly. There was enough anger in that calm question to crack worlds in half, to snuff out suns like a flame blown out at a candle’s wick"They are Frieza’s destroyers," Zarbon said finally. "His two-headed angel of death. We’ve met them only once, when our last base world was discovered 3 years ago. They led the attack—no one was spared. We survived because, at the last second, Trunks recognized Bra. He sort of froze for a moment.""I’d like to think nissan let us go," Bra said. "But it may have just been surprise that made him hesitate—just long enough for me to knock him cold.""We only know what little we’ve seen and what we’ve heard from other survivors of conquered worlds," Zarbon continued. "Goten fights like a machine, he’s completely controlled and merciless in battle and cold and rational off the field. Trunks…The day our base on Arbatsu fell, he was gentle and kind to one set of captives, then tore them limb from limb a few moments later for no discernible reason. He was erratic and unpredictable and horribly, horribly powerful. And his own men feared him. Goten was the only one who seemed to be able to get through to him or bridle him in any way. Trunks is…""Nissan is mad." Bra said flatly. "Whether is was Frieza’s doing or thinking he’d been left to his fate by all of you, Trunks is completely crazy." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The young man approached the glimmering white throne and knelt in calm obeisance. The spikes of his short-cropped, jet black hair were smoking slightly from the warning blast that had just sung past his left ear. The Tsiru-jin courtiers and guards circled like piranha, hissing with outrage that the warrior had come unannounced and unsummoned into their master’s presence. A pale hand motioned minutely, staying his execution, and they went still.For all the reaction the dark warrior showed, he might have been praying alone in some tranquil temple grove. A metallic eye-patch covered the blasted socket where his left eye had been and the red lens of his scouter covered the right, making it difficult to discern his expression. His deceptively light, youthful voice was calm and measured."I live to serve you, Lord."The White Hall within the royal palace of Tsiru-sei was a pristine sculpture of exquisite beauty, wrought in ivory, ice, and the intricately carved bones of ancient enemies. Every whisper of a sound carried and echoed in the hollow emptiness around him. A soft snicker reached his ears, a bare wisp of sound. He raised his head slowly, his breath hanging ghostlike in the frozen air. His gaze was respectfully lowered, not meeting the eyes of the creature who sat on the ice throne."A world to burn? A rack to turn?" The one-eyed warrior sing-songed. One corner of his mouth curled up impishly. "I’ve a song or two I’ll wager you’ve not heard, Lord. An off-color love ballad involving a Tsiru-jin and a fire demon?"A breath of a chuckle drifted toward him. "What would you call such a ditty, boy? ‘Roasted Love’? ‘Frozen Passions’?"The kneeling man casually removed his scouter and raised his head a little further. The boyish beauty of his features was strangely accented by the angry scar and eye-patch. "’The Melted Heart’, Lord."The sighing voice of his master seemed intrigued. "Do you hope to melt my heart, child? I know you have come to beg for your friend’s life.""He will be needed if the Kais move against us, Lord." He thought he saw a flicker of fear on the alabaster face before him. Steeling himself for what might be his last action this side of hell, he reached out and ran one finger coaxingly down the three-pronged foot. Behind him, the Tsiru-jin courtiers hummed in jealous fury at such audacity."Give me Trunks to safe guard, Lord Frieza. He only becomes…unmanageable when we are separated. I will pledge my life on his good behavior." He smiled into the monster’s face, his own face automatically taking on its most appealing expression. "What can I do to sway your heart, Lord?"One bone white hand stroked his thick black hair as though her were a much-loved, favorite dog. "Sing that foolish song for me, Goten-chan." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time had begun to have some meaning again. He hung suspended on the western spire of the Tsiru-sei palace, icicles and frost on his long hair and numb wind-burned face. The sun was going down. The nights on Tsiru-sei dropped to 80 below in the summers. He would not survive the night, and was somehow able to summon up a bit of pleasure at the thought. An end to pain. Even the nothingness of separation of body and spirit that Hell offered seemed inviting He closed his eyes, ready to surrender consciousness as he hadn’t since he was a small child. A harsh sob and a spike of familiar ki jerked him back to awareness. A "snick", and the ki-dampening slave collar Frieza used on the most powerful of his prisoners was pulled off."Oh, Trunks-kun," Goten’s hands were gently tugging at the steel spikes they had pounded through his wrists at dawn."Leave it, Goten," he tried to say. He couldn’t move his mouth. Goten seemed to hear the thought anyway, because he was growling in angry refusal."No way," Goten said. "You’re not allowed to die on me, Trunks. Do you hear me, you crazy son of a bitch? You’re not allowed!"Goten wrapped one hand around each of the spikes they’d used to crucify him to the tower spire and tore them out in one movement. Trunks had time to draw in one sharp gulp of air before the pain rose up and turned the world black. He awoke to burning pain and an odd, soothing warmth. Goten’s face blurred slowly into view."I’ve packed you down in med patches. The frosty bitch wouldn’t let me use the regen tank. He said he wants the scars to help you ‘reflect on your sins’. Just don’t try to move yet.""My sins…" Trunks chest caught in a hitch. Goten had been told what had happened. Frieza had ordered a seventy- percent casualty rate on the world Trunks had taken two days ago. The indigenous population were reported to be intelligent and highly malleable, and Frieza had meant the remaining thirty- percent to be used as technical support slaves. Trunks had not left so much as a microbe alive on the planet’s surface."I started thinking about how their lives as slaves would be worse than a good clean death," Trunks told him. "Then I guess I just stopped thinking all together. I started killing and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop!""So you lost your shit in the heat of battle," Goten said uncomfortably. "It happens.""They are better off aren’t they, Goten?" Trunks voice had begun to take on a vague, disconnected, almost childlike tone that was becoming more and more frequent of late. It was somehow more frightening to Goten than any of his friend’s insane bouts of rage"Oh, Kami, Goten," Trunks sobs had tapered down into jagged breaths. "Do you think our parents can see us in Heaven?"Goten looked away. "I hope not.""They’d be so ashamed…I dreamed last night that they were all alive, Goten. That Frieza told the truth when he told us they were in hiding. I dreamed they finally decided to come rescue us." Trunks laughed unevenly. "What do you think they’d make of us now?""They wouldn’t make anything of us, because they’re all dead!" Goten said harshly. "Don’t talk nonsense,Trunks.""You went to him and asked him for my life, didn’t you?" Trunks murmured.Goten shrugged, inwardly relieved at the change of subject. The grey fog behind Trunks eyes seemed to recede for the moment. "Ask, beg, cajole—a bit of groveling here, a bit of judicious flirting there. He was in a good mood."Trunks closed his eyes. He could imagine what the price of his life had been. "Oh, Goten-kun…"Goten shrugged again as though it were nothing. "He was…Well, he was a she.""What?""His time is almost on him." Goten said. "He’s completely into his female cycle—and I mean to the point where someone ought to tell him to put on a bra!" Trunks uttered a weak cackle. "Can you imagine waking up one morning to find you’re slowly turning into a girl? Creepy, ne?""The Tsiru-jin change gender to female when they are bearing their young," Trunks murmured. "It’s natural for them. I would rather have died than see you go to him, Nissan.""And I would rather have died than see you dead," Goten said flatly. "Anyway, it was no big deal. He was feeling all hormonal and motherly. All I did was sing for him and make him laugh." He didn’t meet the other man’s eyes, knowing his friend saw through the lie. "The Tsiru-jin Empire should have a bouncing baby heir—or eel , or whatever—any day now. It’s my fault you got into deep shit anyway. I shouldn’t have left you to do that job by yourself.""Where did you go?" Trunks voice was slightly slurred. The trank in the med patches was finally kicking in."I followed that rumor we heard to Madran and had a talk with the Mastertech," Goten replied. "I’ve found Daruma, Trunks!""Where?!" Trunks tried to rise weakly and Goten pushed him gently back down."Sleep, Trunks-kun," Goten said fiercely. "Rest and grow well. All of this long nightmare is almost over." He pushed the long lavender hair out of the other man’s closed eyes. The one living thing in the universe he still loved. "I swear to you, Onissan," he told Trunks sleeping form,"Frieza will not live to see his firstborn draw breath!" * * * * *Questions? Comments? Mail me at [email protected]
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Haven was a lush, green world. They made landfall at dawn, the yellow sun was just peeking over the horizon, illuminating the sparkling, pre-fab new city outside. Zarbon had placed the travelers from Chikyuu in a large, comfortable waiting room in one of the makeshift city’s main admin buildings. He was currently involved in a heated debate with the under-ground’s other elders. They were more than a little leery of trusting Saiyans of any description.Bulma leaned forward studying the technical schematics on the console before her in rapt wonder. Some subdued voice of propriety told her she should not be finding any sort of joy in anything when her life had justcome unraveled overnight. But the perfect mathematical beauty and scale of the mechanism before her was almost unimaginable."It’s wonderful, isn’t it?" Bra said shyly. The girl had edged nearer to her mother by slow degrees as though she thought Bulma might object to her closeness."Zarbon said something about hiding whole worlds," Bulma said breathlessly, "but…Kami! The crazy thing is, I’ve been working on something just like this." Her hand strayed to the encapsulated silver rings of her transport invention on the capsule tool belt around her waist. "I wasn’t quite able to work out the kinks. I would put things in the entrance ring port and sometimes it would come out the other ring, and then sometimes it would just be…gone. But looking at your SPE specs, I can see now where I went wrong.""I helped configure the Spatial Phase Engine for this planet," Bra said proudly. "And I developed this as well." She held up a hand-sized replica of the massive engine displayed on the view screen before them. "It’s a personal SPE. We use them for espionage. You activate it while wearing it and, just like this planet, you are neither here nor there. You’re halfway teleported between one point in space and another. Keep it, Mama," another shy smile. "You’re not as strong as the rest of us, not physically. It’ll help keep you safe—invisible and untouchable.""Not quite invisible," Zarbon said from the doorway. He looked liked he’d developed a serious headache in the last few hours. "The SPE’s give off a faint ripple of energy from source and destination coordinates, and once every 2 hours, we must fully materialize at the destination coordinates and rephase. It’s only 3/100’s of a second that we’re visible and solid, but that would be all Frieza would need if he knew our secret." He eyed the men. "The elders have agreed to let you stay, but they’d ask you to keep out of sight as much as possible. Most of the refugees are terrified of Saiyans, either from old stories, or…" He stopped awkwardly."Or from having their planets demolished by Trunks and Goten," Vegita finished tonelessly. He stood gazing out the window at nothing in particular. Chi-Chi looked him in the eye, something she couldn’t remember ever having done. She had been uncharacteristically subdued since leaving Chikyuu. Now she held the gaze of this man she’d never thought to have anything more than a flat dislike for, and asked the question she had told herself she would not."How did he do it, Vegita? They were good boys. They loved to fight, but they weren’t killers, and they knew right from wrong. My Goten…What did he do to them to change them so much?"Vegita stared at her a long moment before answering. "Everything," he said quietly. If he expected the satisfaction of seeing her crumple into a sobbing mess, he was disappointed. She set her jaw. "They’re still the same boys we raised.""They are men," he said flatly. "They have slain the population of Chikyuu a hundred times over by now. Don’t expect your baby boy to come running into your arms when he sees you, because that boy is dead. Frieza killed him 15 years ago.""Your own people, the Saiyans, taught you to be a killer long before Frieza ever did!" Chi-Chi heard her own voice rising in anger. "If you can manage to live a halfway normal life, they can be completely normal and happy! So don’t you tell me there’s no hope, you cold-hearted asshole!""Chi-Chi!" Gokou took her in his arms and pulled away from Vegita, afraid she might attack him physically. "I’m all right!" She said fiercely, burying herself in her husband’s embrace. "I’m all right," she said,softer.After a moment, Gohan spoke in a quiet, shocked voice. "Kassan just said ‘asshole’." And they all, except a scowling Vegita, erupted into near-hysterical laughter.Zarbon was also frowning in confusion. "Chikyuu-jin are mad," Vegita muttered. "Don’t ask me to explain it."Zarbon nodded. "I told you before I thought we could help each other. Time is a factor now that our secrecy has been compromised, so I’m taking you to see our prisoner now. Follow me."As they traversed the huge complex of the base world’s central offices, Bulma was amazed at the variety of different life forms gathered together on one planet. She lost count at some point of the number of species she saw. A low roar of space ship engines shook the building. "We’re evacuating the families first," Zarbon explained."Could they attack so soon after getting the information from Madran?" Gohan asked. Zarbon nodded grimly.Bulma hung the personal SPE Bra had given her from her tool belt and began to lose herself again in the blueprints she’d downloaded into her own minicomp as they walked along. Bra hovered close to her, offering bits of information and answering her questions on this and that.Zarbon grinned as he strode beside Vegita. "I knew Bra hadn’t gotten her brains from you."Vegita glanced back at his wife and daughter. "Thank you," he said quietly.The blue-skinned man eyed him. "Where is Prince Vegita of Vegita-sei and what have you done with him?""Smartass," Vegita snorted."You’re welcome," Zarbon said seriously. "She changed me, you know. Wormed her way right into my cold, reptilian heart in the first day. It’s amazing how one thing in the universe you actually give a damn about can open you up to giving a damn about everything and everybody else." Vegita grunted something that might have been an agreement.They arrived at their destination after an almost endless elevator ride downward. The oppressive feeling of being miles beneath the surface of the planet was all around them. And something else as well."Evil," Gokou hissed. Vegita glanced at the other Saiyan curiously as they stepped out of the elevator car into the dimly lit lab beyond. Kakarott was tensed like a cat with its back arched, every nerve on edge. "There’s something terrible in here, Vegita," he said. "Can’t you feel it? It’s so strong!""What is it, Zarbon?" Vegita asked.Zarbon’s face was a study in the artfully blank mask of the courtier and whore who had survived fifty years in Frieza’s service. He did not answer, only turned and strode toward the dull red glow at the center of the great bunker-like room. There was no choice but to follow him.Bulma felt her hand go numb as Bra seized it in her own. The girl’s frightened face didn’t reassure her. "Bra, you’re breaking Kassan’s hand," she said gently.The younger woman looked sheepish. "Sorry, Mama."Hand in hand, they followed the others to the center on the room, where a hunched figure sat surrounded by the laboratory’s single light source. He was old beyond Bulma’s previous understanding of the word, frail and almost skeletal. He emanated a pervading sense of bad, of wrongness, so strong even Bulma’s weak human senses could detect it."Daruma," Vegita said softly."We thought he would be able to tell us the secrets of his dragon balls," Zarbon said. "Then we might have some kind of an edge against Frieza. No such luck.""He’s told you nothing?"Zarbon shook his head. "Just ravings and nonsense. He’s mad. We tracked him down few weeks ago and imprisoned him here. He’s pretty docile—just sits there like a lump most of the time. Then two days ago, he became coherent for a few minutes. He asked to speak to the "blue machine wright from Chikyuu." I thought it was meaningless until you showed up," he told Bulma. "I think he meant you, Mistress." She started. "If there’s any chance he could tell us anything that might be of use—""She’s not going anywhere near that thing!" Vegita said sharply."He can’t get out, Poppa." Bra said. "I have two SPE’s rigged to loop back on each other. If he tries to move out of the circle of red light, he’s instantly teleported back inside." She checked the readouts on the small control console that sat just outside the light cell. "It’s working. He can’t go anywhere."Vegita regarded her and his angry scowl softened slightly. "All right," he said finally.Bulma carefully approached the edge of the prison of red light. Vegita moved to stand beside her, tensed like a spring. Gokou stepped up on her left as well, hovering protectively. She didn’t resent it. The waves of… of blackness issuing from the emaciated Namek were almost overwhelming."Daruma?" Her voice sounded too loud into the hollow room. The thing in the cell twitched at the sound of her voice, and scuttled slowly to the edge of the circle."The craftmistress from Chikyuu." The voice was like the rustle of dead leaves. "Blue is my favorite color…""Did you want to speak to me?" She asked."Your son…the fair haired Saiyan warrior with the sword…visited me in my tomb years ago…I was sealed in stasis in the bowls of the caverns beneath the Royal Palace of Tsiru-sei by Frieza. To keep me from any misfortune, you understand. Should harm come to me, the Red Dragon Balls would be useless.""You saw Trunks—" Bulma began."Years and years ago, I think it was…time is not as is was to me before I wrought Red Soraku’s dragon balls. I was greedy, and impatient and very, very stupid. Dragon Balls take a measure of the craftsman’s soul, essence, and ki in their forging. The mightier the dragon conjured, the more they require. Five wishes…." He cackled softly. "Half my soul is gone, Lady. And still I live on. Hell will seem a mercy to me, for there at least, I will be whole." He raised his head and met her eyes. She would not have thought that anything this side of Hell could look so damned."Trunks," she prodded gently."He found my tomb—how, I do not know—and awakened me. He asked me for my secrets as you do now. He wept, and spoke of all that he had loved and lost, and asked how he might regain it. He spoke of his father, the great Saiyan warrior prince, and of his mother. Is it true what he said, Lady? Can you craft and build any mechanism within the scope of your imagination?""I…""She can," Vegita said firmly."So then…" Daruma bared his sharp, yellowed teeth in a death’s head smile. "The boy was discovered in his pilfery, and in the confusion, I escaped. I imagine it went rather ill for him. The Lord of Tsiru-sei is most inventive in his punishments." Dry, hacking laughter."You rotting, green fuck!" Vegita snarled.This only seemed to amused the Namek more. "I owe the boy my freedom. So, I will tell you what I did not have time to tell him."A seismic rumble rolled through the room, knocking Bulma to the floor. A sound like depth charges detonated underwater shook the bunker’s foundation a second time."Tell me," Bulma said.The others were looking up as though they could see through the ceiling.Gohan gasped. "Is that---?""Yes," Vegita’s bleak voice."Unmake them, Chikyuu woman," the green rictus head grinned at her. "Unmake the Red Dragon Balls and all of Red Soraku’s wishes will unravel."Another depth charge, this time closer. "Destroy them?" Bulma asked, desperately. Whatever was going on above ground, this little interview was about to end abruptly."Get ready," Gokou told the others."What is it?" Chi-Chi cried. "What’s happening?"The ceiling began to buckle above their heads as though it were being bored through with a giant jackhammer."My death is coming," Daruma smiled. "Unmake them, craftmistress. Devise a way to make them be not. Do you understand my meaning? Then all the wishes and all the events that resulted will unravel as though they never happened. Including Frieza’s resurrection and and his theft of your young.""Toussan," Gohan was saying, "We can’t fight them!""We may not have a choice," Bra said angrily. "Right now they’re butchering all those refugees you just saw above ground!""Here they come," Vegita hissed. He grabbed Bulma and threw her to the floor, covering her body with his an instant before the ceiling dissolved into a shower of molten shrapnel. On the floor beside her, Bulma saw that Gohan had done the same to his startled mother. A huge chunk of glowing steel struck the console that held Daruma’s cell intact, smashing it to pieces, and the red light surrounding the Namek winked out. He did not flinch or make any move to run. Through the pall of heat and smoke, two luminous figures emerged and strode toward the ancient Namek, both burning inside halos of Super Saiyan light."I’ve come to hear the rest of your story, old man," Trunks told Daruma."Trunks," Bulma gasped.Both young men’s head snapped around in unison, and Bulma found herself staring into the eyes of the stranger that was her son.And everything seemed to stop.No one moved or spoke, they simply stared at each other in shock.Then Goten broke the silence as his eyes fell on his mother. "Kassan." He took one hesitant step forward. "Kassan?" He said disbelieving."Goten," she said softly. He was beside her so quickly she couldn’t follow the motion, shaking his head slowly as though he did not believe his eyes. His eyes… "Oh, Goten-chan," Chi-Chi whispered sadly. "Your poor little eye…" Her finger traced the scar that ran from under the eyepatch."How, Kassan?" He glanced around, seeing the others, suddenly. Something like a smile was beginning to tug on the corner of his mouth."It was all true," Trunks voice was low. It was so much like his father’s Bulma shivered."What’s true?" She reached out trying to place one hand on his face. It had suddenly begun to twist horribly.Goten was already turning apprehensively, recognizing the note in Trunks voice."Trunks, don’t---"The air around Bulma seemed to ignite, and she had a brief sense of vertigo as Vegita snatched her up like a rag doll and threw her out of the path of the oncoming blast. Then nothing.Vegita deflected a second burst, this one aimed with deadly accuracy at himself. The energy pod ricocheted off his clenched fist and struck the ancient Namek where he had sat patiently awaiting his own death.Frieza felt the death stroke sing through the dragon balls, and turned his mind outward, tracing the thread of the link back to its source.And he saw them. The ruby lips bowed daintily and Frieza began to chuckle delightedly."You left us!" Trunks screamed, and launched himself at his father, who met him midway with a hoarse cry of anger. "You all saved yourselves and left us to Frieza!!" Trunks began shrieking, writhing in Vegita’s stronger grip. He held onto the younger man grimly, thanking all the powers that were that the boy had not yet achieved Super Saiyan 3.Slowly, methodically he began sending bursts of ki into his son’s body, just strong enough to disrupt his power and wear him down. This unthinking rage couldn’t last for long. If he could deplete enough of Trunks ki, they could all hold him down and tell him---Without warning, Trunks seemed to collapse in his arms. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened. In the micro-second before the last restraining blow Vegita had dealt him, Trunks had suddenly powered down completely. Vegita stared in numb horror at the scorched whole he had just put through his son’s heart."Poppa, why?" Trunks whispered. And died.Vegita sank to the floor, holding his son’s lifeless body in his arms, and wailed like a broken-hearted child. * * * * *QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? MAIL ME AT [email protected]
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In the white peace of his bleached throne room, Frieza smiled it was all falling out even better than he had hoped. The only random factor in the entirety of the little drama he had just watched unfold was the Namek. And his ‘secrets’ had proved to be worse than useless."Is it time, Holy Lord?" A voice whispered shyly.Frieza turned his eyes to the slight form of the young thing that sat at his feet gazing up at the Tsiru-jin monarch in rapt adoration. The white armor of the Tsiru-jin priesthood who had raised her from infancy emersed her slim, fragile-looking body, making her appear even smaller. "It is time, little thing," he said affectionately. "I’m pleased your tutors have taught you such piety and obedience to your god.""My god," the girl sighed."All your life has moved toward this moment. Now, serve me in this one small errand and you will be ordained, a full priest of my order—the first ever of non-Tsiru-jin blood." Frieza smiled again and the girl nearly sobbed with love. An endearing little creature. Perhaps he would keep her as bodyguard and caretaker for his child."My life and my soul are yours, Holy Lord," she intoned. She bent and kissed his feet reverently."Bring me my bait," said Frieza.The girl touched two fingers to her forehead and blinked out of sight. From high above, the cries of the wounded and the grieving drifted down through the long shaft Trunk and Goten had driven through earth and metal."He did it on purpose," Goten said to no one in particular. He was sitting on the floor, his expression betrayed no emotion whatsoever, except for the tears running unchecked down his scarred face. "He powered down deliberately at the last second." Goten seemed not to see or feel the presence of his family encircling him, touching him comfortingly. "He wanted to die…"Across the room, Bra was hunched anxiously over her mother. Bulma moaned faintly. "Trunks…Vegita…" Gohan’s stomach lurched sickly when he saw her clothing was smoking.Zarbon turned her gently in Bra’s arms, examining her carefully. "She’s all right, love," he told the girl. "The edge of the blast just singed her before Vegita tossed her out of the way."A few feet to his left, Vegita knelt motionless, Trunks body still cradled in his arms. After one initial heart-rending cry, he had bowed his head over his son’s and turned still as stone. Gohan felt a stab of shame that he had ever thought the man incapable of love."After Frieza first kidnapped us," Goten said, absently wiping the tears from his face, "He told us you’d wished yourselves and all of Chikyuu to safety and left us, because our lives didn’t weigh out against the lives of everyone on Chikyuu. Then he and his men began laughing. We both called him a liar and we fought them all—We fought so hard! Then Frieza stepped in and just beat us down with one blow." Goten’s voice had taken on a controlled, offhand quality, seemingly devoid of emotion. For some reason, this worried Gohan more than the tears. This was the face his brother had shown the hundreds of non-combatants on Haven’s surface moments before---the people Goten had killed with as much thought as Gohan would give to stepping on an insect. The look on his father’s face told Gohan he was thinking the same thing."We always told each other it was a lie," Goten went on, sounding more detached with each second. "That you were all dead. But the lie…haunted Trunks." He gently disengaged himself from his mother’s embrace, holding her at arm’s length. "It was always worse for Trunks, whatever went down. Frieza never forgot it was Trunks who killed him in the end. Even if it wasn’t the same Trunks. I think the belief that you had all died before you could come rescue us was all that was keeping him together." He laughed softly. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. "And he wasn’t that together anyway. I think he’s been trying to die for a while now. To goad Frieza into killing him. I wish he hadn’t lived long enough to see you all come out of hiding."He touched his mother’s face with an unnerving smile. The smile turned quickly to a grimace as Gokou seized his arms, pinning them, and threw him to the floor. Then he sat on him."Chi-Chi, stand back!" His father said sharply. "Goten-chan, can you hear me?" He asked the younger man squirming under him."Y—ess," Goten managed."Good," said Gokou amicably. "Frieza wished us and Chikyuu fifteen years into the future, then told you and Trunks that awful lie about us running away and leaving both of you, so that when we finally caught up with you, you’d think it was true and try to kill us. Did you get all that?""…yes.""Good then." Gokou let him up. "And Goten," he locked eyes with his youngest son. It was a stare that Gohan fervently hoped he would never earn from their father as long as he lived. "If you hurt any more innocent people ever again, I’m going to beat you senseless.""Y-yes, Toussan," Goten said faintly. He looked dazed. Then his father drew him into a crushing bear hug. Goten stiffened at first, then seemed to slowly melt into the older man’s broad chest.Gohan swallowed hard. Words like pride and love seemed pathetically insufficient to express what he felt for his father. He forced himself to turn away and moved to where Bulma lay.Gohan fingered the pouch of senzu his father had entrusted him with before they’d left. He had a feeling they would need the senzu desperately soon. He should not use even one for something little more serious than a bump on the head. "Are you sure she’s all right?" he asked Bra and Zarbon.As if in response, Bulma opened her eyes."Trunks…" Somewhere, something had gone horribly wrong."Vegita-san needs you right now," was all Gohan could think of to say. Some sixth sense made him turn just in time to see Zarbon tense, then fall slowly forward onto his face with a sigh. Gohan stared in shock at the gaping hole through the blueskinned warrior’s midsection—and up at the shining figure who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She wore snow white armor that seemed almost silver beneath the blaze of her Super Saiyan aura. Her young face—she looked like little more than a child—wore the serene expression of a monk in meditation. Her face…The girl looked like Videl.Gohan began shaking his head as though it would take away the truth he already knew. "Pan.?" No one moved.That instant of surprise was all the girl needed. In one smooth movement, she struck the stunned Bra aside and grabbed Bulma by the throat.Nothing else would have torn Vegita out of the deep shock he had been submerged in. Now he and Gohan’s father were instantly on either side of the girl."Don’t hurt her!" Gohan begged them, "Please don’t hurt her!""Another centimeter and I’ll pull off her head," the girl told them. Bulma gagged as Pan squeezed her neck for emphasis. She focused on Vegita, who stood snarling on her right."My Lord bids you come alone to Tsiru-sei and she will be set free," Pan told him. She placed two fingers to her forehead, and Gohan, driven by insight quicker than rational thought, clamped one hand firmly around his daughter’s ankle. In the same instant, he, Pan and Bulma were gone. "Father!" Bra said brokenly. "No…."Vegita looked away, then, burning with shame at his sudden surge of hateful jealousy toward the dead man, he took the sobbing girl in his arms and stroked her head. "Oh, Poppa," she said."Sleep, Bra-chan," he murmured. He struck her once, a short, sharp blow to the side of the head, and she sagged against him. He set the unconscious girl in Chi-Chi’s arms. "Find a way to keep her from following me," he said shortly."He will kill you both, Vegita," Kakarott told him.He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand the other Saiyan. "He will kill us all regardless. If I do not go now, he will kill her slowly, Kakarott. He will do things to her you cannot even begin to imagine. Gohan as well, and his brat." He gripped the other man’s arms. "You said before there is always a way to win. Find it, Kakarott! If—" Pride almost choked the words off before he could utter them. "If anyone can find a way to win against Frieza, it is you! I will buy you all the time I can." With that, he was gone, launching himself upward through the tunnel in the ceiling. Moments later, they heard the low roar of the Crane vaulting into the sky.Gokou took Goten’s hand in his. He kissed Chi-Chi weeping face."I have to think for a while," he said. He sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes. Bulma woke cold.She sat up sluggishly. Beside her, on the glittering sheet of ice that was the floor, Gohan lay on his back, bleeding from a blow to the head."Naughty boy," a voice remarked.She turned her head this way and that. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her face before vision faded into uniform snow-blind whiteness. Slowly, her eyes began to adjust, and she saw the tiny figure, scarcely bigger than a child in his present form. Bulma blinked."You’re—""Female?" Frieza stroked his—her?—swollen belly lovingly with one white hand. "Not as you understand it. We change when we are carrying our young." He smiled. "My baby. My heir."Bulma shook her head to clear it and took in a little more of her surroundings. At the foot of Frieza’s throne sat the girl who had abducted her with shunkan idou.Pan! Oh, poor Gohan-chan. He thought she was safe all this time.To either side of her she caught dim flashes of others, white-armored Tsiru-jin and hulking human-looking warriors in the mercenary Ginyu armor of Frieza’a legions."You took our children," Bulma said. "How could you do something like that, however much you hate their fathers, when you know what it is to carry a child inside of you?"Frieza cocked his head mockingly. "Goodness me, I don’t know. It must be because I’m evil. Don’t you think?" He began laughing softly. From all sides Bulma heard the echoing chuckles of his soldiers and the lighter, airy laughter of the Tsiru-jin guards. Pan smiled and leaned her head lovingly against the monster’s leg. The rotting, decrepit stench of evil steeped upon evil struck her. It was more than the aura of an evil corporeal being. It was more than the aftertaste of damnation Frieza must have brought with him out of Hell. Then she saw it. Around Frieza’s neck, strung like golfball-sized rubies on a silver chain, hung the seven dragon balls of Red Soraku. They were still active.Frieza touched the necklace lightly. "Daruma put too much of himself into his work, I fear," he snickered. "The dragon balls were unaffected by his death."Bulma had never been so afraid in her life."Your monkey prince is on his way to trade his life for yours," Frieza told her. "He should arrive in perhaps six hours in that speedy little ship of yours. Oh I do so hate waiting! Let’s see…How shall we pass the time until our beloved Vegita-chan comes to your rescue? I know. When Son Gokou’s half-breed brat wakes up, we’ll see just how strong he’s become. He was very promising as a tot. I seem to remember his power being tied to his anger." He stroked Pan’s dark hair lightly. "We’ll have to think of something special to enrage him when he wakes.""Vegita and Son-kun are going to kill you," Bulma said coldly. "They’ll put you down like the rabid animal you are and send your soul screaming back to Hell where it belongs!"Frieza stopped laughing. A black wave of anger rolled off the throne like a gust of dark wind. Bulma stared the beast in the eye and readied herself. She was about to die."Stupid bitch," Frieza hissed. "I will kill these two whelps to amuse myself while we wait for the bigger game to arrive. And when I have taken everything from him that a man can lose, I will kill Vegita in as slow and creative a manner as I can devise. And then—always saving the best for last—I will kill Son Gokou!" He licked his rose-colored lips. "I will tear out his heart while he still lives and feed it to my firstborn!" His bow-shaped lips curled maliciously. "And you, Chikyuu woman, for your insolence, will come to envy them their deaths. Jeiyce!""My Lord?" The red-skinned Ginyu stepped out of the blinding white."Today is a day for settling all accounts, yours as well as mine. Entertain Vegita’s Chikyuu whore as best you can while we wait for Son Gohan to finish his nap."One red hand grabbed her by the hair, and others, looming up out of the pale fog, surrounded her. Jeiyce chuckled, running his eyes over her appreciatively. "And it’s not even my birthday." He pulled her to him.And in the echoing, ivory stillness if the Tsiru-jin throne room, Bulma learned what it meant to envy the dead. Chi-Chi sat with Bra in her arms, watching her husband. He sat motionless, barely breathing. Chi-Chi waited and worried. Sometimes it seemed her entire married life had been comprised of nothing but waiting and worry. She banished the irrational surge of anger that thought always seemed to generate. She glanced at Goten. He had edged over to where Trunks body lay, and bent over the other young man’s still form, speaking softly to him. He heart constricted at the expression of wrenching sorrow on her son’s face."Goten-chan, we can wish him back," she said gently."It won’t heal his mind or heart, Kassan," Goten sighed. "Or mine either, for that matter. Kassan, if you knew all the things I’ve done, so many terrible things—""Hush, Goten," she said in a voice he still knew not to contradict. "I love you. Toussan loves you. And Gohan…We all love you no matter what." She kissed his face, an almost perfect copy of his father’s in manhood. "It will be all right, Goten-chan. Somehow it will."As if in answer to her words, Gokou’s eyes popped open. He turned and smiled at them both grimly. "I have an idea."* * * * *QUESTION? COMMENTS? MAIL ME AT [email protected]
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"Toussan?" Goten said anxiously."Piccalo? Dende?" Gokou said aloud. His eyes were open, but Goten could tell his father’s mind was ranging billions—trillions—of miles away."They’re not answering," he told them. "I think they’re discussing my idea with the other Kais."Bra had recovered consciousness moments before. Now her eyes grew slightly unfocused. "Is that what I hear in my head? It sounds like dozens of voices arguing." She took both Chi-Chi an Goten’s hands, pulling them into the tenuous mental tap she’d established through Gokou on the council of the gods. Goten started as his mind was suddenly filled with the din of a hundred anxious, angry voices, all speaking at once. They winced slightly as one voice rose above all the others, clear and strident.Everybody, shut up!A dry mental chuckle Goten couldn’t quite place rippled through the sudden silence. Dende’s finally ready to kick some ass.Piccalo-san? Goten realized belatedly.Good to have you back, Goten.You can all sit here and debate etiquette and celestial legalism until our one best chance to end this has passed us by! Dende’s voice rang out. Frieza will continue to annihilate and conquer system after system, then galaxy after galaxy until he holds everything in the corporeal plane under his sway. And then he will come after us. Is that what you want? What will your fine points of law matter when we are destroyed and the entire universe lies enslaved by the Tsiru-jin Empire? I call for a vote, now! The time has come to take action, and frankly, I’m sick of the sound of your bitching!‘Bitching?’ Gokou sent uncertainly.I’m a bad influence on the kid, Piccalo’s mental voice smirked.They waited as the Kais, one by one, began to cast their votes. Wake up, Gohan.Gohan stirred and moaned. He had been dreaming that something terrible was happening very close by, but he had been powerless to fight his way up through the deep waters of unconsciousness to prevent it. He opened his eyes and stared into the sweet face of his daughter. She had grown up beautiful, with her mother’s dainty, tom-boyish grace. Now, when he examined her features closer, he decided she more resembled his mother than his wife. He tried to sit and a wave of dizziness held him down. His hand groped for the senzu pouch and found it. Pan smiled and gently took it from his fumbling fingers and placed one of the beans in his mouth. He lay, gazing up at her heart-shaped face, feeling life and health return to his body. He glanced around. Of Bulma-san there was no sign. He closed his eyes, praying she was still alive.We’ve got a plan, Kid.Piccalo-san? Gohan kept his face carefully blank.We need time, Gohan. Understand? Do whatever it takes to keep Frieza’s attention on you and off your father. If he turns his mind towards us before Gokou’s ready, we’re screwed.Got it.Good luck, Kid The sense of a roughly affectionate touch on the shoulder, and the voice in Gohan’s mind was gone."Pan?" He said, sitting up. He took her small hand in his, studying her. She silently allowed this. "Where did you learn shunkan idou? He couldn’t think of anything else to ask."The Yardatsei-jin taught me," she said. "They were very kind. I was sad to destroy them, but my Lord commanded it. Their mental powers were dangerous."The Yardatsei-jin. Gohan’s heart sank. His father’s old friends, the shy, good-hearted little intellectuals. And Pan had killed them all."You’ve grown up so pretty," he said sadly. "I wish your mother could see you.""They told me she fought very hard when they came to take me," Pan told him. "She must have loved me very much. They said she killed nearly half of the soldiers my Lord sent to take me before she died.""…died?" Gohan began to shake uncontrollably. "Videl’s—Videl is—""They have strong fighting spirits, these Chikyuu women," Frieza said idly. "Amusing in such a weak race."He was standing directly behind Pan. Gohan could not believe he had blurred into view so fast. But then he couldn’t see more than a few feet in the foggy, icy air of this great, hollow room."I’m taking my daughter back," Gohan said."Oh my, such bravado!" Frieza smiled, delighted. "Very well, then." The white hands shot out like a snake striking and gave the girl’s head one vicious twist. The sound her neck snapping was like a gunshot fired inside Gohan’s head."No!" Gohan heard himself shriek as Pan’s small body fell to the cold floor."Take her," Frieza snickered. "You are free to go if you wish, Son Gohan. Unless—" He laughed softly. "Unless, of course, you’d rather stay and fight.""Damn you to Hell, Frieza!" Gohan screamed in a voice he barely recognized as his own. He flared up to Super Saiyan 3 in an instant, and grabbed the Tsiru-jin by the throat, throwing him upward through the ceiling as though it were rice paper. Ready?I think so, Gokou replied.This may have quite a kick. Piccalo warned.Okay.A ‘kick’ was an understatement The others watched in wonder and concern as the energy that began to pour into Gokou’s body through his link with the Kais shook the Saiyan as though he’s grabbed a live current. The white light that burned around him was blinding."What’s happening to him?" Chi-Chi cried."The Kais are giving him their energy," Bra’s voice sounded awed. "So he can fight on Frieza’s level.""How long will it take?" Goten asked."I don’t know," Bra replied. Gohan shattered the spire of the mountain peak and crashed head-first into the frozen tundra. Above him , a speck of white on the steel-gray sky, Frieza laughed delightedly. "My physician tells me an expectant parent should always take regular exercise." He dove downward and drove one foot into Gohan’s back as he tried to rise. The young warrior went flying, rolling to a painful stop several miles away. He tried to stand, lost his balance. He craned his head around and looked down in shock. As in childhood, whenever his body and emotions had been traumatized beyond the point of bearing, his primal Saiyan nature had reasserted itself.His tail had grown back.The blinding, agonizing blood rage of his father’s people, the source of power he had first tapped into completely during the Cell Game, that he had not touched on in the years since the fight with Majin Buu, had sustained him thus far.And still he was being beaten. Too quickly.Frieza landed beside him and rammed a fist into his stomach. Then he grabbed the half-Saiyan by the hair and tossed him upwards. Gohan felt cold air rushing all around him, freezing and biting his skin and sweat-soaked hair. He could neither move nor do anything to stop his ascent. It had gotten noticeably colder in the last half hour. To the west, he saw the Tsiru-sei sun slowly beginning to sink below the horizon.He felt rather than saw Frieza rushing at him and somehow know that this would be the death blow. The sound of his own heart had become painfully loud to his own ears.I’m sorry, Toussan. I did my best. Videl…oh, Pan-chan…He opened his eyes one last time, determined to spit in the monster's eye as he died. Above him, Tsiru-sei’s three moons had bloomed in the evening sky, luminous and full.Gohan began to chuckle through bared fangs, the warm brown of his eyes bleeding into red. And for the first time in his life, he welcomed the Oozaru change with a glad heart. !!!!!What?! Said Goten and Bra simultaneously.Gohan just found a level beyond Super Saiyan 3. Piccalo murmured. I knew he was strong, but damn!Is he winning? Chi-Chi asked.He’s…back in the game. Piccalo said.Gokou was burning like a candle as the power of the gods poured into his mortal body. Piccalo had explained that it had to be done slowly or the Saiyan would simply ignite from the onslaught.Hang on, Gohan! They heard Piccalo whisper. Just a little longer. The clean, perfect madness of the Oozaru rage was merciful in its forgetfulness. There was only the earth and the sky and the need to kill the enemy before him. Sweet in its simplicity, blessed in its absence of pain and human grief. He lunged and caught the hateful white thing a glancing blow, driving it into the sheer face of a stone cliffside. He roared and stomped forward to strike again and again and again. It was not enough to strike the white thing once—a million times would not be enough. He would burn down whole worlds if they stood between him and this enemy.No pain, no sorrow, no loss.He snarled, his golden fur arching up on his hackles in something like a shiver. It seemed he had forgotten something important.Videl…Pan…Thought and memory came rushing back and he screamed, beginning to change again, shrinking, power concentrated and compacting into a humanoid form.The haze cleared from his eyes, and Gohan faced Frieza, red fur lining his human torso, tail lashing. The Saiyan killing rage rang in his ears like a song forgotten since childhood, the crimson aura of Super Saiyan 4 burning blood red in the darkening sky. Vegita felt the tidal swell of Gohan’s ki as he set the Crane down in the deadly cold Tsiru-sei night. He shook his head in grudging admiration. The brat had surpassed even Kakarott, now. The potential had always been there, the boy had just been to gentle-natured to bring it out of himself. He flared ki around himself in a shield of heat as he stepped out of the ship into the night air. He would have frozen to death in minutes otherwise. The dark weightless feeling he remembered so well from the end of the Majin Buu disaster, that free-falling sense of having lost everything there was to lose, had left him. He still had a great deal left to lose. He had been given the exquisite torture of having several hours in which to imagine every conceivable thing that might happen to Bulma if he was too late—if she was even still alive.He caught the dim spark of her ki, so blurred and indistinct he knew she must be unconscious or nearly so. But she was alive!Hope returned, and with it terrible fear.He gazed into the night sky, where balloon bursts of incandescent thunder claps marked the movements of the two combatants. The man he had been several years ago---no, he amended—several days ago, would have been bitterly jealous of the younger man’s new power, now so much greater than his own. Now, Vegita felt only a wild, desperate hope that Gohan might actually keep Frieza’s attention long enough for him to get Bulma safely away. Another black surge of ki as Frieza effortlessly powered up a notch to keep pace with Gohan. Frieza was toying with the boy. He had to hurry.He strode into the White Hall of the Tsiru-sei palace, remembering almost too late to watch his footing on the ice floor. He had not stood in this hellish place in sixteen years, except in his nightmares.It seemed deserted, but he knew without sensing even the faintest wisp of ki that this was not so. The white ice breathed a vapor that limited the vision of any race not of Tsiru-sei, and there was a device, Zarbon had once told him, wrought inside the foundation of the ancient palace that masked ki readings of any kind. Anyone entering could be surrounded by literally hundreds of guards without sensing them until it was too late. They were there, he knew, just outside the edge of his sight, lying inside the white fog like Chikyuu sharks beneath the water’s surface.He stumbled, lost his footing, and fell to one knee. When he saw what he had tripped over, he realized sickly what had triggered Gohan’s rise to Super Saiyan 4. The tiny girl who had once been Son Gohan’s infant daughter lay on her back like a broken doll, frost already forming on her cold face. She had grown into a pretty child. He reached down and closed her eyes.The flash of Bulma’s presence, a little stronger this time, and he bolted to his feet. He skidded to a halt when he caught the dim outline of fair skin and blue. He knelt down beside her broken body. They had beaten the hell out of her, but she was alive! His hand was already groping for the one senzu he habitually wore inside his armor."Ve-veg—""Shh. Senzu, Bulma. Eat."He put both arms around her and gently sat her up, watching as the senzu did its work. Her skin was ice to the touch, almost as blue as her hair with the cold. Her arms tightened around him convulsively as her strength returned. She was trembling uncontrollably. Then his mind finally registered what it must have refused to acknowledge at first. She was completely naked, her clothes lying in tattered, bloody shreds around her."Oh no," he whispered. "Nonononono…" He was rocking her like a child.Her soft, fragile hand touched his mouth, his face, brushing away tears. He hadn’t even realized he was weeping. "Hush," she said gently. She was comforting him? Gods, to think he had ever been fool enough to think her weak."I’m taking you out of here," he said, his voice breaking.They were surrounded. He knew it before he even moved. He bared his teeth and snarled as the circle of familiar faces closed in around them."I’ll say one thing for you, Vegita," Jeiyce chuckled. "You sure know how to pick a great piece of ass!"Vegita screamed and powered up. He had the brief satisfaction of seeing the smug look on his enemy’s face turn to horror. Then he blasted the White Hall and the palace into a million pieces, incinerating everything and everyone inside except for himself and Bulma. Just a few minutes more! Gokou gasped. Hold on, Gohan! Hold on! Vegita gazed up from where he knelt holding his wife in the burning rubble of metal and bone that had been Frieza’s ancestral fortress. They had run out of time. Above, Gohan fell out of the sky like a shooting Star, and the ground buckled as he struck the earth."It’s too late to run, isn’t it?" Bulma asked. Her shaking fingers were locked around the smashed wreck of her tool belt. She decapsulated two pellets, and he snatched up the heavy coat that had suddenly appeared and wrapped it around her."We’ve got a few seconds before he arrives," he told her truthfully. "If we take the ship, he’ll just shoot us out of the sky.She grabbed the two silver rings and laser drill that had emerged from the second capsule, and began pecking at the tiny control devices on the sides. Her jaw was clenched, dark circles under her eyes stood out starkly in her blanched face. He recognized the look of someone fighting off the onset of deep shock by sheer force of will and held her a little tighter. His gut twisted again with the sick knowledge that there was nothing he could do to make it any better.There came one last resounding boom from far to the west. Then nothing. It was over."He’s coming," he breathed.Bulma twisted in his arms and pulled back a little, facing him. "Vegita, do you trust me?"He bowed his head, placing his forehead against hers. "Yes.""I know a way to make this all end," she whispered. "I need you to bring me the Red Dragon Balls. Frieza’s wearing them around his neck." Then she kissed him."I will bring them," he said.She watched as he shot into the sky to meet the oncoming bullet of Frieza’s energy signature. Then she turned away, teeth gritted, and focused the full force of her mind on the task at hand. He stood in the air, facing the father of every agony and evil in his life from childhood to this moment, and for the first time, he felt no fear."Vegita-chan," Frieza purred. "You blew up my house! Dear me, did you find something there that upset you?"Vegita was silent, taking in the Tsiru-jin’s altered appearance."Jeiyce and his men enjoyed your woman greatly, I think," the mocking voice went on. "Again and again and again. I’d have taken a turn myself but, as you can see, I’m indisposed at the moment. Though I am toying with the idea of keeping her alive for later."Vegita clenched both fists, digging his nails deep into both palms in an effort to beat down the blood din ringing in his ears. She could end this, Bulma had said. In all the years he had known her, she had never once conceived of or set her hand to and engineering feat she could not accomplish. She did not know it, he wasn’t sure he could say the words aloud even now, but everything he was he had built on the touchstone of his faith in her. He would trust. And he would do as she asked. He must fight stone cold and rational in the face of Frieza’s taunts, or he would fail her—and everyone and everything.Frieza’s white face twisted irritably. His words had not had the effect he had hoped for—that of driving the little ape into one of his trademark blind rages the Tsiru-jin had always found so amusing. He pursed his lips spitefully. "How did it feel, Vegita, to kill your son?"Again that unnerving silence from the Saiyan prince. And something else equally new and disturbing—a complete lack of fear."Stupid monkey!" Frieza screamed suddenly. "What’s wrong with you?! Say something!""You forgot your own lesson, old monster." Vegita’s voice was soft and deadly calm. "One of the first things you ever taught me." He would get one blow—and that only if he was very quick."Oh? And what would that be, monkey?""Never make yourself vulnerable with caring." Vegita clenched his fist and did the one thing Son Gohan, for all his greater power, could never have imagined doing. He drove his fist into the monster’s swollen belly. "Done!" Cried Gokou. The light burning inside him was too bright to look at directly.You’re going to have a battle on two fronts if Frieza raises the dragon, Piccalo said grimly. Daruma’s death didn’t destroy his dragon balls like it should have. Probably because there was more of Daruma in the Red Dragon Balls than there was left in Daruma himself. You’re going to need more backup than you have now.Far away, on the green world Bra could barely remember, she saw a mental vision of a small, kind-faced man with odd dotted tattoos on his forehead standing at the feet of a great, green dragon. The dragon balls of Chikyuu chimed inside her head as the little man’s wish was granted.In the dark room behind them there was a soft glow and Trunks body suddenly arched and gasped, filling his empty lungs with air. Goten rushed to the other young man with a glad cry.Gokou took Chi-Chi’s hand. She squinted, trying to look into his shining face. He kissed her, something she couldn’t ever remember him having done when there were other eyes to see. Not since their wedding day. She gasped as she felt the rush of power flowing out of his body and into hers through the kiss. "Gokou-saa…" She said breathlessly."Give me your hands," he told the others. They gathered around him, Bra, Goten, and a still dazed-looking Trunks, and laid theirs hands on his arms and shoulders.The musty dark room faded away and winked into the bitter cold of Tsiru-sei night. Frieza doubled over with a shriek of horror. In the same instant, Vegita tore the silver chain that held the dragon balls from around Frieza’s neck."My baby!" Frieza cried."Are you bleating to me about your brat’s life?" Vegita grated. "To me?! " He raised his fist. "Another lesson from your primer, Frieza: Always kick your enemy when he’s down!"The blow never fell. Faster than thought, Frieza spun, still hunched protectively over his mid-section, and lashed out with his tail. Vegita flew backward and crashed into the ground with bone-shattering force. He still held the dragon balls clasped tightly in one bloody hand. He hadn’t even lasted one round. A thousand new stars had suddenly winked on overhead."Dodoria has brought the fleet from the second moon, I see." Frieza landed beside him, his posture no longer distressed. "He must have seen the fireworks. He so hates to miss a party." He slammed his fist into Vegita’s chest, shattering the breastbone. "Did you think you would use my last wish against me? Fool. Red Soraku’s dragon balls become keyed to whoever uses them the first time—unless one willingly concedes the right, as my priests did to me. No one can use them now but me!" He sighed in mock regret. "You were always my favorite, darling boy. I would have laid entire galaxies at your feet if you had only given me your loyalty."Vegita drew a painful slow breath and spat blood in the Tsiru-jin’s face. So much power. So crushingly strong. He had never stood a chance, not then, not now.Bulma, Trunks, Bra…I am sorry.Frieza raised his open hand. "Poor, stupid animal."The blast streaked toward him---and rebounded off madly into the night. Vegita somehow found the strength to laugh. "Show off," he murmured to the man who now stood between him and Frieza’s pale, shocked face."Frieza," Son Gokou said quietly. "I’ve come to kill you." * * * * *QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? MAIL ME AT lisalu@ peoplepc.com
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Bulma decapsulated another micro-sauter only to find the contents pulverized. With a soft curse, she tried another back-up pellet, and scooped up the working tool. The guts of the personal SPE Bra had given her and the shiny silver rings of her own half-perfected transport device lay strewn around her as she squinted to see in the flickering shadows. The only light she had was from the fires of he burning remnants of the Tsiru-sei palace that lay smoldering around her. She shivered. Her only source of heat as well. The sauter she was using fell apart in her hands without warning, and she threw it away with an angry sob. The spatial transport protocols in her software and the SPE’s were incompatible and she couldn’t configure a gateway with no fucking tools! Nearly all the encapsulated instruments from her tool belt were smashed to bits. In the first terrifying seconds, after they had grabbed her, she had remembered Bra’s tiny SPE hanging from her belt. It would have phased her out of danger, rendering her ‘invisible and intangible’ Bra had said.She hadn’t been fast enough.One of them had seen her groping for the device and, thinking it might be a weapon of some kind, had crushed her hand, the tool belt, and a couple of her ribs in one casual blow.Then Hell had ascended around her.Their hands were all over her, laughing as she screamed and cursed them and finally sobbed for mercy. The red one had gone first, grinning down at her as he rammed himself into her over and over."Hurry up and finish, Jeiyce! Damn!""Wait your turn, asshole!"He spasmed against her, clutching one of her thighs so hard the bone snapped. When she shrieked, her eyes rolling back in her head, beginning to lose consciousness, he bent down and bit one of her nipples brutally, jerking her back to awareness."Don’t fade out one us yet, lovey," he said cheerfully. "Who’s next, boys?" A hulking form loomed up eagerly beside him.They had all taken a turn. They had all--She put her hands on either side of her head and screamed, trying to block out the images.Unmake them, Daruma had said, forming the seeds of an idea. She bit her own tongue, drawing blood. She had to concentrate! She popped one of the last capsule pellets and prayed. The pulse wrench, undented and unscathed gleamed on the ground beside her. Whispering silent thanks, she grabbed the instrument and turned back to her work. In the sky, the stars began to explode, but she did not look up. The stars were exploding. Chi-Chi hovered in mid air, the excess energy Gokou had breathed into her in his kiss thrumming through her body. She aimed another blast at the bright specks of light that were Frieza’s battle cruisers, and something inside her began to sing in spite of herself. This was what she had trained for as a girl, what she had been born and bred to. This was what she had lost for the lack of super human fighting strength, and given up for the love of a rockingcradle.The cruisers began dropping down into the upper atmosphere and ejecting fighters from dozens of exit ports. "Here they come!" She said.Beside her, Bra grinned at the fierce, almost happy note in the other woman’s voice. She flared up to Super Saiyan, watching the retreating sparks of light that were her bother and Son Goten. They had a lot to atone for, they had said. They were going to start now."Here we go!" Chi-Chi cried, as the enemy poured down on them like angry fireflies. The planet must be burning down, he decided. He lay on his back gazing up at the night sky glowing bright as mid-day, feeling the life slowly ebbing out of his body."Poppa!" His own face under a shock of lavender hair frowned anxiously down at him."…Sorry," he tried to tell his son’s ghost. Sorry for more things than he could count. For his cowardly desertion of the boy’s mother while she carried their son, fearing his growing attachment and the loss it must inevitably lead to. For his coldness to the tiny boy who had trailed behind him, mimicking his every move adoringly. For his knee-jerk complete inability to show the young man Trunks had been growing into any emotion more affectionate than his fierce pride in the boy’s strength. Goten had not gone mad. He had never felt unwanted, had never been given any reason to think his father would abandon him to save his own skin."They wished me back, Poppa," Trunks explained softly.Another face bent over him, examining him grimly, brows drawn together in an angry frown. He looks like Bardock, Vegita thought vaguely."I think he’s had it," Goten said bluntly.Trunks shook his head in angry refusal. "Senzu!""Gone," Vegita coughed. His mouth was full of blood.The light in the sky, already bright as day, flared blinding white. Gokou and Frieza…The planet seemed to tilt off its axis as the shockwave from the clash struck the ground."How the hell did he manage to get the dragon balls off of Frieza?" Goten said in astonishment when he saw what Vegita still clutched tightly in one broken hand."Sucker punch," Vegita tried to sound smug, but the words came out in a shallow rasp. "Trunks…need to tell you…""Don’t try to talk, Poppa," Trunks said softly. He put one hand on his father’s shattered chest, directing a slow stream of ki inward. "I’m giving you enough energy to stay alive until we can get you healed."Vegita weakly placed one hand over his son’s and felt Trunks mind touch his through the link. He pulled down the barriers that separated their thoughts and all that he had left unshown and unsaid rushed back up the link into the younger man’s mind. Trunks gripped his hand silently in response, tears forming in his eyes. He was no more capable of voicing his feelings than his father, and for that also, Vegita silently grieved. Every hellish thing in his life, everything he had thought Trunks would never have to endure, had found the boy anyway."We have to destroy the dragon balls, Trunks!" Goten cut in harshly. "Before Frieza tries to use the last wish!"He raised his fist to smash the Red Dragon Balls to pieces, and cried out in horror. The tiny string of red orbs, still lying untouched in Vegita’s hand, had begun to glow dully. "No! No! No!" Frieza shrieked. It would not be so! Could not be so! The stinking primate batted him backward through the sky. Before he recovered, another dizzying blow to the head landed and he flew foreward. How had the monkey grown so strong?! He hissed in fury through bleeding lips. His hand strayed instinctively to his abdomen. It didn’t matter how. What should have been sport was now a contest of equals, and for the first time in his life, Frieza had more to think about than his own well being. Time for the trump card."Red Soraku!" Frieza screamed. "Arise and come to me now!" The Red Dragon Balls ignited in Vegita’s hand. Goten watched as they flared to life and he had a brief instant to see his own horror reflected in Trunks’ face before the dragon surged up beneath them. Then he was spinning wildly through the air. He slammed into something hard and saw Trunks holding him in a steadying grip. His friend was scanning the ground and sky frantically."Poppa! I can’t see him!"The monstrous thing towering above them roared angrily and the two young men watched paralyzed as it slowly pulled its insubstantial tail free of the dragon balls’ invisible tether. It began to move inexorably to the west where Gokou and Frieza were locked in combat."We’ve got to stop it!" Goten cried."We can do it!" Trunks face had lit with a wild joy. He grasped his friend’s hands, then moved back several feet, his body arched in a long forgotten pose. "For our sins, Goten," he said softly.Goten’s eyes were burning. He raised his arms, mirroring Trunks posture. "For our sins," he repeated grimly."Fu-Sion-Ha!"Red Soraku paused as a tiny glowing object arrogantly blocked his path. "I am neither Trunks nor Goten, Soraku." He drew Trunks sword. "I am Gotenks. I am the one created to fuck you up!"On the ground, Vegita tore his eyes away from the battle and began to crawl in weazing, painful inches to the Red Dragon’s abandoned dragon balls. The fleet was scrap. Panicked warriors darted here and there. They had tried to overwhelm the two women with numbers at first. Now, they were simply trying to escape."They should have remembered the first law of the forest," Chi-Chi said without sympathy."What’s that?" Bra called. She hurled another blast."Never get between a mother and her cubs!" Chi-Chi snarled. The dragon swatted at the madly dodging warrior. Gotenks slashed again and crowed with delight as another gash opened in the creature’s body, spewing boiling lava-like blood. Somehow, when Red Soraku had detached from the dragon balls, he had taken on physical corporeal form. Which meant he could be hurt—which meant he could be killed. He had to be quick, Gotenks knew. His time was nearly up and the fusion would fray and burst apart any minute now. He wheeled around for one more pass, and dove downward like a missile, sword extended forward. If he could drive the weapon into the dragon’s eye, he might pierce through into the thing’s brain.Without warning, the giant head turned on the approaching warrior, teeth bared, ready to rend and tear. It was far too late for Gotenks to turn or stop the momentum of his attack. Something streaked in from an odd angle and kicked the monster’s head back around with one brutal roundhouse. Gotenks caught a glimpse of Gohan’s battered face and a feral grin under a sweep of wild black hair. Onissan!Then he speared through the dragon’s ruby eye, driving out the other side of the monstrous head. Both hands clutching the Red Dragon Balls, Vegita rose weakly into the air, weazing with the effort. Trunks had given him enough energy to keep his heart beating, but his lungs were rapidly filling with his own blood. He cursed as he dipped down, almost falling. The outline of the burning palace came slowly into view. He ground his teeth and reached deep into the last reserves of power for one final burst of motion. He shot forward, covering the gap of the last few miles in a few seconds. Then he was hovering over the smoking heap of the White Hall. There was no more energy left; he had spent it all. With a sigh, he fell like a stone. Gokou had done the only thing he could think of to do when he heard Frieza summon the dragon. Now, he was desperately holding onto Frieza with one arm, the other hand clamped firmly over the Tsiru-jin’s mouth. If he couldn’t speak, Gokou reasoned, he couldn’t very well make a wish. This course of action didn’t have a lot to recommend in long term planning.Frieza’s body bucked in desperation as Gokou watched Gotenks hurl himself like a javelin through the Red Dragon’s brain. The snake-like titan seemed to sway and list to one side. The boys had somehow managed to deal it a nearly mortal blow. It began to swipe drunkenly at Gohan, Goten and Trunks as the three warriors moved in for the kill. Frieza had caught sight of the dragon’s distress as well and began to writhe hysterically, trying to free himself."You’re going to lose, Frieza," Gokou told him, with just a hint of maliciousness creeping into his voice. "Again."Frieza growled and spat like a cat. Even if I die now, the Tsiru-jin’s spiteful words hissed in his mind, I have still had my revenge. I have hurt you, all of you, beyond repair! Trunks and Goten are my creatures, for all that they battle against me now. I broke them apart and rebuilt them in my own image. The child Pan is my devout, loving disciple. Raise her from the dead if you will. She will curse you all to Hell and follow me to the ends of the universe. I gave Vegita’s woman to my men as a plaything, and they were most enthusiastic in their attentions. Our little prince will never again touch her without seeing her cringe and remember. Wish them all health and long life, Son Gokou! Frieza chuckled. Dragon balls cannot erase memories or heal minds and hearts!Gokou’s arm tightened around the Tsiru-jin’s neck and began to squeeze. "It will all be made right, Frieza," he said softly. Frieza tensed against him in real fear; he could hear his death in that gentle voice. "But you won’t be around to see it." She saw him fall and pulled herself stiffly to her feet. The fires were dying out around her and the icy death of the Tsiru-sei night was beginning to close in. She clambered over heaps of crushed stone and ice, the small engine she’d cobbled together clutched tightly to her breast.He lay on his back, eyes fixed and unseeing. She sobbed with relief when he gasped weakly and focused on her face."Bul…"She kissed him softly. His face was dead white. He shifted against her, his lips trying to frame words. He pressed something cold and hard into her hand. The Red Dragon Balls."…make it end?" His shallow breath rattled wetly in his chest."Yes," she said, taking the silver chain from his hand. "Yes, I can."He was struggling so hard just to speak. She leaned down, her cheek touching his, his failing breath in her ear."…love you…"She heaved a convulsive, wracking sob as she felt the life leave his body. Gokou’s grip tightened around Frieza’s throat. His other hand was still clamped firmly over his enemy’s mouth like a vise.Let me goooooo! The telepathic voice sobbed. The Chikyuu Saiyan, always so squeamish when it came to dealing the deathblow, was not hesitating. He was going to finish the kill. Please! Frieza whimpered. Terror was laced in to the fabric of each word now. Terror and something else. My baby…my baby doesn’t deserve to die! The hand on his throat loosened in shock and concern. Frieza struck, driving his elbow into his enemy’s stomach. He sped, a white streak of lightening, toward the foundering dragon, with the Saiyan shouting in anger at his heels."Soraku!" Frieza screamed, as he reached the crest of the massive red head. "Make me immortal!"Red Soraku howled his dying assent, and an unholy glow surrounded the Tsiru-jin monarch. The wish was granted."I win!" Frieza shrieked madly at the four Saiyan’s who now encircled him. "I win! I win! I win!" Red Soraku screamed one final time and pitched forward, stone dead.And his fall broke the world. Bulma kissed her husband’s cold lips and raised her head to see the Red Dragon begin to fall. She held her transport rings, now merged with the more advanced components of the SPE. Three second propagation delay from source to destination coordinates… "Here we go," she said aloud.She dropped the dragon balls, chain and all, through the source ring. They winked through the transport field and were on their way. Three seconds until they emerged through the destination ring.3…Red Soraku struck the earth, and the planet began to break up beneath him.2…Bulma lay the two silver rings down and grabbed two large rocks, one in each shaking hand. Oh, sweet Kami, let this work!1…She smashed both rings to pieces. No exit from eternal teleportation. The Read Dragon Balls were NOT.White light filled the world. White light filled the world.He opened his eyes with a start to bright morning sunshine. Something warm and soft touched his lips."Good morning," his wife said. She was leaning over him, smiling tiredly. His sleep had been so sound, he had not even roused when she entered the bedroom. "You finally slept the night through." She said. "How do you feel?"One corner of his mouth curled up. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her down. "Were you out all night carousing at the fool party of yours, Woman?" He murmured, burying his face in her hair. She smelled of wine and cherry blossoms."I was up with Bra," she said. "She caught your insomnia, at least for one night. I finally got her to sleep a little while ago." She frowned. "She had a funny dream. She said a pretty blue man came to see her. He said he had been in Hell, but now he was in Heaven. He told her to be good, and that he would watch over her. Deep stuff for a three-year-old, huh?"Vegita felt a chill run down his spine. She sensed the tension in his body and drew back a little."Vegita, I’ve got some terrible news," she said solemnly. "About 3 am this morning, Son-kun took it into his head to pop over to France and invite Videl, the baby, and Videl’s mother on a tropical weekend at Kame House. The old perv is having some kind of cookout and everyone should be there—even Tien and Chao-tzu, and they haven’t left Nepal in years."Vegita snorted. "So?""So, Sok-kun won’t be sparring with you all day today. And we’re invited.""That welching bastard!" He began angrily. "He promised he’d fight me today!""Did he say yes?" Trunks stuck his head in the door shyly."Yes to what?" Vegita said suspiciously."If you come with us," Bulma said slyly, "Gokou might spar with you after supper." She laughed at the expression on his face and kissed him."Will you, Poppa?" Trunks fair cheeks reddened at the sight of his parents' kiss.Vegita opened his mouth to say no—and closed it, staring at the boy thoughtfully. Trunks was getting bigger every time he looked at him, it seemed. He would be a man in a few short years; a man Vegita barely knew, if he was not careful.You left us, Poppa? Why?Another faint tremor ran through him. Bulma was gazing down at him quizzically. Trunks was shifting from foot to foot, waiting. Maybe…he and the boy could…talk or something. Vegita suddenly smiled at his son for no reason he himself could fathom. "Why not," he heard himself say. "Go get ready, Trunks. We’ll leave in a couple of hours."Trunks beamed with delight. He ran out, slamming the door behind him. A second later they heard Goten’s answering whoop as the two boys thundered off down the hall. "Does any of them remember anything?"The smell of roses and marigolds drifted within the green peace of the air around them, side by side with Popo’s dreamy off-key humming as he tended the eternal flower gardens.Piccalo hesitated, then shook his head firmly. "Not a damn thing, as far as I can tell." He replied. "But then, it never happened, did it?" The perpetually grim set of his mouth softened minutely as he shifted his gaze gaze to the sun swept island where Son Gohan stood surrounded by his friends and family, holding his new daughter in his arms."It did," Dende said solemnly. "Then the wishes unraveled, and it unhappened.""Best thing for our friends down there, all the way around. No casualties." the older Namek’s gruff voice said quietly. "We take that kind of victory any way we can get it, Kid." Vegita pulled his wife down onto the bed with him. She grinned up at him mischievously. "And what are we going to do for the next two hours?"He ran one finger along the edge of her jawline, caressed her face. He had dreamed of death and loss, he was sure. Had she died, or had he been the one who was lost? The last dark thread of memory slipped away, leaving him with only the overwhelming sense of how precious and fragile the woman he now held really was. He pushed her short blue hair back from her face and took a deep breath."I love you, Bulma," he said. For the first time.Tears began pooling I her eyes. She tried to speak, but he kissed her instead. No more words now. He had said all there was to say. END QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? MAIL ME AT [email protected]