| Communication Breakdown Chapter 15 |
| Author: Valeyard Rating: R Disclaimer: She doesn't own, so don't even bother. |
| Bluebird By Buffalo Springfield Listen to my Bluebird laugh She can't tell you why Deep within her heart you see She knows only crying Just crying There she sits, a lofty perch Strangest color blue flying is forgotten now thinks only of you Just you So get all those blues must be a thousand hues And you're just differently used You just know You sit there mesmerized by the depth of her eyes And you can categorize she got soul She got soul She got soul She got soul Do you think she loves you? Do you think at all? Soon she is going to fly away Sadness is her own Rivers of a bath of tears and go home and go home Vegeta watched the son, he would never have, leave his presence, as he dismissed him completely from his mind. He now had only one goal and it was a fixed point that shown in his glistening, black eyes. The slender thread of Piccolo's ki beckoned him, as he flew over the very island where the androids appeared. He could sense Piccolo nowhere on the island, but he could sense something else. The scent! 'She's here! Somewhere!' Vegeta could smell her, ever so faint scent on the warm breezes blowing over the island. He inwardly thanked his Saiya-jin ancestors. Ancestor worship, had long, been abandoned on Bejita-sei, but Vegeta so reverenced everything Saiya-jin, he secretly embraced it. He had told no one--not even his father. This was another occasion where he felt his dead contemporaries were wrong for abandoning the honoring of one's ancestors. After all, only they could have sired an elite who could detect his mate's smell, even this faintly. Vegeta's eyes raked the island. 'She could be anywhere!' He thought desperately. 'If that Namek stashed her in a cave, or under a structure, it could take hours, or I might never find her!' Vegeta caught something out of the scant corner of his eye. A flash of white. His mind went back to the clothes she had on that morning when the Namek took her. 'White! She was dressed in white! And the scent it's stronger! The tree line!' There it was, he spied it, a broken branch. Her smell was stronger. He caught another broken branch lower in the trees. It was unmistakable! It was a small hole as if something tore through the trees. 'Oh fuck!' Vegeta gave into his worst fears. 'That fucking coward took one look at the androids, just dropped her and left. We need him for the Dragonballs, my ass! I'm going to take everyone one of those balls and stuff them down his fucking, cowardly throat!' He dropped through the trees, feeling the branches scrape and tear at this skin, imagining what that would do to an inferior human. His fear, of what he would find, increased with every prolonged second. The sight of her crushed all hopes inside him along with the last vestiges of his sanity. There she was, lying under the tree-his broken angel in white. He felt tears burning his eyes as they mixed with blood. He tried to rationalize she wasn't dead. He refused to believe it. She just couldn't be dead. He landed softly beside her, crouching beside her like a cat with prey. It was unmistakable. He felt his fists clench in grief and fury as her broken form forced him to face her reality. She was a marionette, whose strings were cut, with legs and arms sprawled in unnatural positions not made by the living. The pain he felt was only compounded by her unearthly beauty. Despite her awkward appearance, her face was one of peace. Leaves from the trees had settled on her and around her, truly looking like loose feathers. She was a fallen, broken, angel in white, and had never seen her more grotesque or more beautiful. "Shi . . . it!" He stuttered out with the disbelief and the pain. "Shit!" Vegeta screamed. "You survived my challenge and I survived yours, though you damn near drove me insane, and sometimes I think you tried to drive me insane. All that I wanted. All that I needed! That fucking Namek took from me and dumped under this tree like a heap of garbage!" "Garbage!" He shot his fist into the ground with all the force of the word. Vegeta gently put his arm under her head, lacing his fingers through that exotically blue hair of hers. The hair that had always fascinated him, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it or her. It had appalled him, when he first saw her, that another hair color besides the natural hair color of a Saiya-jin could attract him, as she did. Now he laced his fingers through it, watching filtering sunlight shimmer on it, with all the luster of life-and Vegeta knew now life was a lie. Vegeta lifted her up cradling her next to him, burying his face into her. Her smell hadn't diminished at all. Her death was so recent, she still smelled as if she were alive. He pushed his face into her, desperately trying to feel something. Her ki, her heartbeat, anything! Nothing! She was as still as stone. He held her closer and closer, fighting against his acceptance that all hope was gone. Soon he was shaking her so violently, he felt his own power burst fourth, as the aura of a Super Saiya-jin exploded all around him. He shook her more violently as he screamed his rage and pain to the sky. Vegeta felt as if his rage would destroy the heavens itself, when his rage fell back to earth in insane peals of laughter. It suddenly seemed to Vegeta to be the most supreme and cosmic of jokes. All he had known was death and more death, his entire life. Why should it surprise him that his bride was of the dead? "Everything has been taken from me. Everything. Even my sanity." Vegeta welcomed madness with more insane laughter. "No more! I am going to do the taking." "We will do the taking." Vegeta gently lifted her up carrying Bulma away with his newfound madness. It suddenly made complete sense to Vegeta. Vegeta had heard of aliens who had prophetic trances under certain narcotic substances. Furiza had tried to conquer a race that had such an ability, but the rumor of a Saiya-jin acquiring the same ability, put an end to that. Furiza decided after that, such abilities were more dangerous than desirable. From then on, he condemned any race rumored to have such an ability, to death. His woman, under the poison of the berries had called him a demon. A great demon with black leathery wings, carrying them to hell. Vegeta understood now. It wasn't a hallucination. She had seen the truth of it. Of course, she had. There was never any hope of his redemption. Her death, his punishment for daring to hope he would ever enjoy life. He understood his destiny now. It was the only destiny he had ever known. He was death embodied, and with the dead was where he belonged. 'Of course I am!' He told himself grandly. 'Who knows death better, than Vegeta-sama? I was always destined for greatness. Now, begins the fulfillment of all prophecies in me!' As he carried Bulma, his own existence and destiny grew in his tortured mind. He was no longer Vegeta, vagabond and second to Kakarotto. Vegeta was a demon incarnate, enshrined in wing as black as a raven on the cusp of midnight. He was death itself, carrying his broken angel. He carried her gently, but his imagined wings enshrouded her, as if he feared she would be taken away by heaven itself. "We will have our revenge together, my best and brightest darling!" He darkly chuckled. "We will have our revenge on them all! Everyone! If you don't live, then no one lives! Everyone suffers for this!" "We go together, my mate!" His confusion cleared for a moment's remembrance. "No, not my mate, yet. Not yet. We were robbed of this weren't we? No more! We won't be robbed, any more." He buried his face in her neck. Feeling the warmth of her skin. 'She still feels warm!' The cruelty of death increased with every false sign of life about her. 'Why does she have to be so warm?' This should have been at the end of the chase. He would have met her challenge, proved his worthiness as a mate, culminated all vows with the bonding of blood. It would have been the most wonderful night of his life. Now he would never know its joys. His bride was dead, and he was bonding with a corpse. Of his entire life, this seemed the cruellest joke of all. He tried to force out the reality of the situation. Return to the comforting fantasy. He was death again, with large fangs, as he sank them into his prey. Death drank her blood. Then he pried open her mouth. There was no need to cut himself for her to drink his blood. He was so battered from his fight with Goku, there were plenty of open wounds. Vegeta pulled open a wound on his arm ignoring the pain as the blood dropped into her mouth. When he was satisfied he had fully bonded with his bride, Vegeta resumed his one-sided conversation with her. "Now we belong to each other, my brightest darling. My queen to be." Vegeta hugged her closer to him, in reassurance. "Now you truly belong to me and our revenge. You will not die alone. We go together. We all go, together!" Vegeta walked with determined steps. He knew full well where he was going and what he intended to do. Goku's death was no longer enough to satiate him. His bride was dead, his son would never be. Now all that breathed must join in the same fate. "Togther!" Vegeta told her calmly. "At least we will be together for our revenge. I will probably never see you again, after that. You will surely go to heaven, my angel. While I . . ." He laughed bitterly with the irony of the situation. Vegeta knew long ago, he was heading for hell, when most children were secure in their innocence. He knew it didn't matter that he never had a choice. Fate was a cruel judge and he had reaped what he had sowed more times than he bothered counting. It had never deterred him in anything he had ever done, and it wouldn't deter him now. He deserved hell and he knew it. There was never another destiny possible. So, why not meet fate instead of waiting for fate to meet him? Vegeta laughed at a new joke, he thought even more ironic and even more bitterly, funny. "Kakarotto, and that kid. They think they are so wise. All they thought about were the androids. But I saw far beyond them. They didn't even consider it, but I did. I noticed it, while these pathetic humans went on like well-ordered ants, never even considering the potential." "There it is, my mate!" Vegeta cradled Bulma's head in his hand and turned her head, so her dead eyes could see their goal. "The volcano. Everyone thinks it's extinct. No one even realizes how easy it is to wake up a dead thing, if you know how!" "You'd know how, wouldn't you, my darling." Vegeta laughed. "If you had ever wanted to. No, you were always too gentle, too caring to consider such potentials." He lifted them both into the air, his great wings unfurled to shadow the world with the portent of coming destruction. "But we will consider the potentials, won't we? Now you are mine and we consider them, together. Our life together will be short. Our revenge will last for all time!" "It's simple, my darling." Vegeta brought his face close to Bulma's ear to whisper the secrets of death. "We fly to the core of the volcano and I power up to my ultimate. It will cause the core to explode and set off a chain reaction that no one can stop. This planet will melt, then finally explode. And we will melt into each other for all time. The ultimate oneness and we will achieve it, together!" Vegeta dived into the volcano heedless of the heat, or the onrushing of death that beckoned at its core. Vegeta held his dead angel tighter. He would not lose her before he carried them to hell. He wanted them together to face oblivion. "The ultimate joke!" Vegeta screamed in triumph. "Kakarotto and the Green Namek think the threat to the Earth is those fucking androids! They cannot begin to know its really me! They will all die. The androids, Kakarotto, the Namek, everyone. My revenge is supreme! The highest revenge!" Vegeta's screams dissolved into insane laughter as he picked up speed. It all made so much sense. It was the right thing to do. Of course it was! No more suffering! No more taking! Everyone would be at peace when he ended it all. There was no other solution possible! The heat was unimaginable. It seared him like mad Icarus rushing headlong into the sun. Vegeta welcomed the blinding light and scorching heat. Vegeta stopped short, as a flash of ki ran through his head like a painful lance. It was a powerful ki! He quickly scanned for assailants! No one was going to stop him in his revenge 'That felt like that fucking purple hair kid. I'll be damned if he's going to stop me from doing what is right. This is my revenge. I warned him what would happen if he bothered me again!' Vegeta forced his overworked mind to concentrate on the source. "Where are you, you fucking brat?" Vegeta screamed in challenge. "Don't think that you being my kid will stop me. You're going to die just like everyone else. You won't stop me! I have the right of revenge. It's my birthright, do you hear!" There was no sign of him. Vegeta searched wildly. He wasn't going to let that brat stop him. Then he felt it. The source! A small candle in the blackness of his insanity, burning in the mind! Burning through the blood. Burning through the bond! Burning in the very woman, he believed dead. "HOW?" Vegeta screamed. "How can he be alive if she is dead." "Oh fuck!" Vegeta said out loud, as he cradled Bulma closer. She was alive! She had to be! Then he heard it faint, almost imperceptible. A small quiver, a rushing of quicksilver over blue. Blue like her hair! A small quiet voice, only it was inside his head! 'Vegeta? Vegeta? I'm alive, Vegeta. You've got to believe me, I'm alive.' "NO!" Vegeta screamed out with the horror of the last few hours. "Stop it! Vegeta took a free hand to clutch his head as he tried to exercise this new torture from his head. "You've already driven me insane, isn't that enough for you? Isn't the crime of tainting your innocence with my evil punished enough? Don't make me hope again! I know you're dead. This is just a lie. No more! I won't listen!" He wouldn't believe it! He refused to believe it. Hope was for fools, and his hope was dead, as his bride. 'Vegeta.' The voice got clearer. 'It's me, I'm alive. Look!' Vegeta starred at her, unbelieving, until he saw it. Her finger moved just slightly. "No!" Vegeta whispered out in horror. "It can't be! How can this be? I can't even feel your ki." Then everything came flooding into Vegeta's mind at once. All the mixed signals, all the misunderstandings. Too many feelings, far too many feelings. It horrified Vegeta. He never imagined humans could have so many feelings at once. He tried to close them down, as he always did to get through every difficulty. He found he could not. 'Oh fuck! The bond!' Vegeta cried out in his mind. 'She can hear me. She knows everything! This just cannot be happening.' 'How could I have fucked this up, this much?' The whole realization of how simple things could have been, just hit him with a perfect amount of dismay. 'We both messed it up, Vegeta.' He heard Bulma's voice resonate in his mind. 'That isn't what matters. What matters is that we tried. We were trying to love each other. Dammit, I love you Vegeta.' These words only doubled the burden of pain for Vegeta. 'Forgiveness! You humans disgust me with your capacity to forgive those who wouldn't forgive in return.' 'Even you, Vegeta?' 'Especially me!' Vegeta thundered back. 'We may have both fucked this thing up, but I fucked hardest. How can you say you love me, after what I tried to do? How can you forgive that?' 'How can you forgive me, after the pain I caused you?' Bulma returned gently. "Don't ask me to forgive you!" Vegeta screamed in the pain of rage. "I don't forgive! A Saiya-jin doesn't forgive!" 'Really Vegeta?' He heard Bulma gently reply. 'Even when you thought, I used you?' "Shit!" Vegeta stood in the middle of a volcano, stunned at the amount of pain he could endure. He'd never had his feelings open before his life, and he wasn't prepared for it. He had intended to shut these areas of himself off, even from the bond, before he bonded with Bulma. He simply hadn't been in the frame of mind to bother when he thought she was dead. 'I didn't know.' Vegeta replied stonily. 'Battle comes before everything in my world. When a woman offers food to a man and he offers it back, it is a token that they wish to become mates.' Vegeta wanted to scream at the whole world. 'You didn't even know I was coming that night!' 'I was surprised, and yeah it was a shock, and I was scared at first, but Vegeta I was glad.' He felt her sigh from within him. 'I just didn't understand your anger when you left. I thought.' Vegeta heard her thought trail off, but he understood well enough. 'I didn't know about your rituals of mating, Vegeta. I didn't know you expected me to run, to have set up some kind of challenge. I didn't know staying with you was considered an insult.' 'Even with the bond, I will never understand your humans.' Vegeta shook his head. 'How can you females give yourselves so easily? I was ready to kill everyone in the world for you!' 'I don't want anyone to die for me, Vegeta.' Bulma's gentleness only made him angrier. 'Least of all you. I'm sorry, we just aren't like that here. I wish I had known when I ran from you that you were trying to prove something to me. I really do. I was so wrong. Forgive me, Vegeta.' 'I hate this planet.' Vegeta screamed painfully. 'I hate, hate, hate, this fucking planet! I should have destroyed it, years ago. I can't even take a woman on this shithole without her running away. But not in challenge! Fuck no! She runs because she knows me for the monster I am. I hate this fucking planet!' He felt naked, angry, and vengeful. The answer was so close. There was still time to plunge them both and end all suffering. Yet could feel her vulnerability as well, and it didn't seem right to take her unwilling. She still wanted to live, he could feel it. 'Vegeta,' she spoke hesitatingly. 'I asked you not to kill me. To let our baby live. I now ask you not only to let our baby live, but I want my mate to live as well.' 'You win, woman.' He said stonily. He had cried so many tears, there were none left to shed. The blood was beginning to staunch near his eyes, and the pain beginning to numb. He rose slowly to take them away. He heard a voice up at the top of the volcano screaming, "Vegeta NO! She's alive! She's still alive." "Namek!" Vegeta screamed. "I better not see your ugly face when I get to the top of this fucking thing or I'm going to have the woman find all the Dragonballs so I can shove them one by one up your fucking ass!" He heard Bulma laugh weakly, and slightly shift in his arms. 'She is alive!' He thought to himself. With that a stern, bitter smile broke out on his face. He didn't know which was worse. Bulma knowing what he tried to do, or the fact she made him want to live, again. And then he found out the latter was worse. Much, much worse. Mr. Briefs watched as everyone flew away leaving him there to scream for his daughter over and over, again. 'It's all my fault!' He told himself. 'If I hadn't called Goku, he and Vegeta wouldn't have got into that fight, Bulma wouldn't have had to come out here, and that green thing, she calls Piccolo wouldn't have killed her!' He threw himself on the ground in his grief. 'He killed her and carried off my little girl. It's all my fault. Instead of protecting her, I let her be killed! How can I return to her mother and tell her that? How can I face her?' The pain was just too much. He lay on the ground stunned in disbelief and shock, for what seemed hours. It was all his fault. 'Vegeta is probably dead right now.' He thought numbly. That also lay on him with a double weight of shock and grief. It wasn't until that moment he realized he had grown quite fond of Vegeta, despite his rude and surly ways. Mr. Briefs hadn't been sure why, up until that moment. He realized, deep down, he had always wanted a son. Despite Vegeta's rudeness, he realized Vegeta was probably a lot like the kind of son he would have had-rude, given to fits of temper, far too proud of himself, and downright childish at times. 'He's just like Bulma, in a lot of ways!' He thought, as a tear came to his eye. 'They argued so much, because they were so much like each other! Yes, he could have been my son.' "And I thought all those awful things about him, and I killed him!" He screamed out in pain. "I killed my baby, Bulma! And she was pregnant. What a grandchild they could have had together and I killed him, too!" It was all too much. He looked up at the mountain. How far away was it? Perhaps a quarter of a mile? Mr. Briefs, knew he could trek to that easy. His decision set on his face in grim determination. The mountain turned out to be farther away than it looked, but he had committed himself to this course of action and he wouldn't turn back, even if he had to trek 100 miles. After a good half hour's trek he found he was scrambling up its sides, thankful in his age and condition that it wasn't a very tall mountain. It was barely larger than a good sized hill, but it would be enough for his purposes. Mr. Briefs climbed high enough and then kneeled down at a cleft. He's seen warriors do this in movies, but he had never considered himself a warrior. He was, after all, a scientist. Still, he wanted to do this right. It was an act of atonement, and it didn't seem right without the proper ritual. He tore off a bit of his coat and offered it up before the heavens, before tying it around his head. He said a small prayer asking forgiveness. Then, without ever opening his eyes, he jumped off, feeling the sudden, dizzying weight of gravity as he hurled himself to the ground below. The ki lanced through Vegeta's head with such violence, it was pain, itself. It hadn't been there a moment before. It froze the very blood in his veins. Furiza! He felt Furiza's ki, and other kis with it as well! Vegeta looked wildly about the rising fortress of rock that was the interior of the volcano. 'Can it truly be him? Was this something else that damn kid, fucked up?' 'Oh shit!' Vegeta said, calling his words into remembrance. 'That kid!' He looked down at Bulma's stomach, as it hit him. 'That fucking kid is my son!' Vegeta thought wildly. 'That's why I felt the kid's ki. Why his ki burned so brightly so suddenly. He felt it too and tried to warn me! Our son, felt this ki in the womb when I couldn't and tried to warn me!' 'A warrior from the womb!' Vegeta said pride swelling. 'Truly the son of an elite.' 'Wha?' Vegeta heard Bulma's voice in his head. 'Our son? What are you talking about?' Bulma's voice, along with another surge of ki brought him back to the present, fast. 'Quiet woman!' Vegeta thundered in return to her mind. 'I think we're in trouble!' "Come out!" Vegeta screamed above the roaring lava, holding his bright angel against this new threat. 'I know you're here. I can feel you. You can't hide forever.' "Who says I'm hiding?" Returned a sinister voice, and Vegeta caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Vegeta reacted in an instant, just as a blast passed his line of vision, barely missing both of them. Vegeta wheeled around, confronting his attacker. He expected it to be an android, but what met his eyes, was something that looked like a cross between an insect and some grotesque earth lizard. It was green, with appendages that stuck up at odd angles from his head. It was spotted with a huge coiling tail that narrowed down to a very nasty looking spike. "What the fuck are you?" Vegeta screamed, angry that he hadn't been prepared for this attack. "What I am, is not your affair." Vegeta's monster, replied coolly. "Why I am here, is my goal of perfection, and you are only getting in my way." Vegeta's eyes narrowed, and his smile was the hard flint of cruelty. "Looks like we were thinking along the same lines." "Oh no!" Vegeta's monster replied. "I heard you. Your intention was to destroy us all. I wouldn't have permitted that. My intention is merely to create a distraction. I need to absorb two artificial humans to become complete. I hoped to keep you insignificant beings busy saving even less significant beings. I can't have you meddlers forcing Dr. Gero back to the laboratory before I am done there." Vegeta's eyes narrowed. "Dr. Gero, you say?" He shifted to put himself between Bulma and this monster. "So! You're one of the artificial humans the brat warned us about." Vegeta watched as the monster's eyes narrowed down to mere slits. "Oh you must mean the child from the future. He has been most helpful to me." "What's that you say?" Vegeta accused. "He was most helpful to me. He returned to his own time, where he met me. Then I used his time machine to return here. That was after I killed him." "You lie!" Vegeta screamed. "I just spoke with the brat this morning. He's alive!" The monster laughed at Vegeta's outrage. "This is the past! He will return to the future only to find me there. He's a dead man, already, and he doesn't even know it." The monster's laughter rang in Vegeta's ears with the bell toll of doom. He felt insanity return like an old friend. To be bereaved of his family once in a day, only to be bereaved, again, was just too much. The lust for blood returned, with the sound of Bulma screaming inside his head, 'No! That boy is my son? No, I want my baby to live!' Her anguish only inflamed his rage, but now it only had a single-fixed point in the entire universe. "Namek!" Vegeta screamed, trying to keep control of himself. "Get your ugly ass down here!" "Vegeta!" Piccolo hoarsely screamed. "What's wrong?" "Just get your ass down here now!" Vegeta thundered. "The woman and I have company!" "Just now, you called me an artificial human." Vegeta's crawling abomination coiled itself into a dark recess out of Vegeta's sight. "I'm not human. I am the evolution of perfection. No human, artificial or otherwise could come close." Vegeta huffed. "I didn't come down here to make small talk. Don't think hiding in any corner will save you. I can feel your ki without needing to see you." "Can you?" The voice echoed out of the shadows ominously, only adding to Vegeta's consternation as he felt the ki, like a candle in the dark, go out. Vegeta spun wildly looking from side to side. 'Where can he be?' "You can't tell where I am now can you?" The voice in the dark gloated. "My voice just naturally echoes off these walls, making me sound as if I could be anywhere." This ended in a very ugly laugh. Vegeta closed his eyes concentrating on the darkness for any sign of ki. He felt nothing. 'Bastard! You can't hide from me long!' He tried to concentrate for his monster, but all he could hear was Bulma screaming in his mind. Instead, of ordering her to be quiet he let her anguish feed into his rage until they were one mind. One single-bereaved monster, raging over the loss of its young. Then he felt it! Through the rage of loss he felt it, the ki, burning in the darkness. 'The kid!' Vegeta screamed out mentally. 'I can't feel the ki, the kid can feel it! Find him, my son. Find that bastard for me!' Vegeta squeezed Bulma closer as if closer physical contact could make the sensation clearer. "There!" Vegeta screamed as he spun, just as a needle like tail, whipped out and almost impaled him. Vegeta grabbed it, pulling the hideous abomination out of the darkness. "What the fuck is it?" Vegeta turned to the sound to see the Namek staring at the monster in horror. "I didn't even feel the fucking thing!" Vegeta didn't answer. He let go of the tail with one hand as he screamed out with all the force of his anger, "Namek, think fast!" In one motion he flung Bulma toward Piccolo, then slammed his now free fist into his son's killer. Bulma screamed out with all the force of her terror, but Vegeta felt a small instant of relief when he heard her scream suddenly stop as she impacted against the Namek. "I got her!" He heard Piccolo cry in triumph. Vegeta didn't look at him once. "You answer for anything that happens to her! Now leave!" Piccolo watched in shock as Vegeta flung Bulma like she was nothing but a rag doll. Bulma screamed out with all the force of her terror, but Piccolo caught her all too easily. 'He must have known I could catch her,' Piccolo tried to reassure himself, but he was never too sure no matter how many times he thought back to it, in times to come. "I got her!" He screamed to Vegeta. "You answer for anything that happens to her! Now leave!" Piccolo felt torn between too many crisis. "Vegeta! I'll take her away, then I'm coming back. You can't take that monstrosity alone." Piccolo watched as Vegeta turned his head for one brief instant before he kicked the hideous monstrosity in the head. Vegeta now had both hands on a whip like tail and he seemed to be in the fight of his life to keep from being stabbed by it. The look in Vegeta's eyes went beyond even the madness Goku described to him. This wasn't just pain, just rage. Vegeta was far past that. What Piccolo saw in Vegeta, frightened him more than anything, he had ever seen in those murderous eyes. Piccolo saw joy. A frenzied, insane joy driven by the lust for blood and revenge. "You come back here, and I'll kill you too!" Vegeta screamed in his newfound joy. "Don't forget, I still owe you for what you did to my woman. But this bastard says he killed my son. This bastard is mine and mine alone! I'll kill anyone that interferes. Now leave!" Piccolo believed every word of it and was in no mood to argue. He rose quickly with a weakly protesting Bulma. "No, Piccolo, No!" Bulma protested. "Please don't take me away. You can't leave Vegeta alone down there." "You want to help him?" Piccolo cut her off sternly. "Then you will let me take you out of here. All you will be is a distraction to him. Vegeta can handle himself in battle. If you want to help all of us, then you need to go home and take care of that child of yours." "Trunks?" Bulma said. 'Fuck!' Piccolo said in his mind, safe in the knowledge she could no longer hear him mentally. 'How the fuck did she know?' Piccolo put on every ounce of speed he could, knowing the sooner he got Bulma back to her father, the sooner he could take her leave and return to help Goku. Trunks flew toward where he felt Goku in battle, the words of his father, still burning in his mind. He tried to shut it off, but it hurt, and he knew it would hurt for a long time. He had so wanted to meet his father, for such a long time. His mother had often regaled him with tales of her proud father. Told him he did evil things, but had a soft side, too. Trunks didn't know what to believe about him, but he knew that his own father hated him and that was a hurt that would never go away, even with time. Then his mind came back to his mother. 'Could she really be dead?' Trunks shook his head with disbelief. He knew his mother was alive, in his future, but if she was dead in this future, what did it mean? Would he return to his own future to find he had no existence? Would there be no Trunks to come back and kill Furiza? Was his mother's death why the androids came back too early? How had time gone so entirely wrong? He shook his head more violently as the dizzying array of questions assaulted his mind in time with his father's last words of hatred, "I have no son, you stray upon my presence again and I will kill you!" Then he felt it. It hit him like a wall of pain. It lanced through his head like a thousand kis. 'What the fuck is it?' Trunks spun around in open fear. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. 'How could this ki be so strong?' Trunks was too stunned with pain and dismay to do anything but hang in midair trying to take in what he had just felt. Understanding filtered in with confusion then joy. He understood now why it had assaulted him so strongly. 'It's my own ki!' Trunks looked around wildly for the direction. 'I'm feeling my own ki! I'm feeling it from another body. There's only one explanation. She's alive! She has to be alive!' 'Forgive me Son kun.' He thought with all the force of his sincerity. 'I feel you in battle and I will be there as soon as I can, but I must find my mother first. If I am to understand how every thing went so wrong, I have to start with my own existence and there is only one way to do that.' Trunks flew off in the determination of his new decision. He had to find his mother, and if his father was there as well, perhaps to meet their destiny. Goku knew long ago a price was paid for going Super Saiya-jin. It increased one's power, but the stresses on the body were beyond even what elite Saiya-jin could endure. That was why it had been so long before a new Super Saiya-jin had been born. The strength one needed to endure the stress was just beyond what most Saiya-jin could have survived. Yet, it was a price Goku long ago paid and paid again. Now, he began to understand there were other prices, especially when one ascended. He clutched his chest as he fought to take in another breath. 'The medicine!' Goku thought desperately. 'I must not have taken it early enough. 'Damn you Vegeta. If only you hadn't got in the way!' Goku tried to keep his mind focused as he felt Android 20 punish his body over and over with hits to the upper body and head. 'Or it could be I simply got out of bed too early. Maybe I hadn't recovered as much as I thought. Chi Chi was right! I should have listened to her. She told me not to get out of bed, yet!' Goku staggered against the force of another blow, before he fell to the ground, feeling the power drain away from his body. Fear froze in his veins as the fleeting power of a Super Saiya-jin abandoned him, in his creeping, returning sickness. 'Oh shit!' Goku thought. 'There's no more medicine, and no one can help me! I'm fucked for sure!' His body twitched helplessly as he heard the gloating laughter of Android 19 and 20 standing over him. 'May I have the honor Android 20?' Goku didn't hear an answer, but suddenly he felt a vicelike grip on his throat, and a sickening pull from the hand as power leached from his body. Goku screamed out in frustration and helplessness, as he felt his dying energy leave him. He thought of his son, of his friends Kurillin, Yamcha, and Tienshinnin. Even if they were there, couldn't have helped him. His only hopes were Piccolo, whom he'd sent away, and Vegeta who would probably, just let him die. As he slowly lost consciousness, his mind raced back to all the training he had endured and how with all his hopes he had still failed. |