A/N: Okay, so I haven't written anything for DBZ pretty much ever but this story has been developing in my head over several years to the tune of a massively epic DBZ fanfiction, hopefully. Please read and review! Primary characters will be Bulma and Vegeta, but plan for plenty of secondary relationships as well as original characters.

Zarbon frowned at the blood pooling in his hands, dripping from neatly manicured fingertips to collect at his feet, gushing from the torn throat of the Ice-jin gurgling at his feet.

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Slaves were not supposed to murder their masters.

And now, Garesh was dead, arterial spray splattered across Zarbon's immaculate armor, gore dripping steadily downward, while the dark purple pool beneath his scuffed white boots spread steadily further outward, staining the pristine tiles underfoot.

Grimacing, Zarbon barely raised his power level, wincing as the ki-dampener strapped around his neck howled to life, unsure if he was preparing to defy its iron bent will. A tiny ball of ki erupted at his fingertip, pointed at the glazed eyes of the horned beast below him. He ignored the agonizing pain that shot up his spine, causing fireworks to erupt behind his eyes.

And fired.

Garesh and his blood evaporated into thin air, as if he had never been, and never would be again. As he powered down, the ki-dampener quieted, now humming with electricity instead of snapping like an enraged Driftworm from the Northlands. Zarbon looked nonchalantly from left to right. He would be able to say, truthfully, if questioned, that Garesh had escorted him to the slave quarter's lift. The cameras weren't trained to focus on the alcove in which the lift rested, or the hallway leading away from it to the pleasure quarters. Slaves were slaves, and what their masters ordered them to do in the privacy of the Corridor was none of the surveillance crew's business.

Don't ask, don't tell.

If he was lucky, the cameras wouldn't have picked up the blood splattering against the walls as his teeth went for the pervert's jugular, sinking in with canines and fingertips to rend flesh from bone.

If he was unlucky…

His hands shook. His bloody hands. Zarbon tore his cape off, using it to clean away the gore, the bits of flesh that remained as a testament to the bloody deed. The lift dinged quietly and opened, revealing a six-armed janitor wheeling a collapsible barrow. He recoiled visibly when Zarbon stepped forward.

Collared or not, the reptilian alien had once been a reluctant member of Frieza's purging squads. Now, he was disgraced and enslaved.

But still immensely powerful.

Several floors down, the lift opened again, the overpowering stench of death, decay, and despair wafting through the grill as it dematerialized, the laser beams evaporating. Zarbon understood now why the heavy-armed janitor was needed. The barrow he carried was for retrieving bodies.

He wished now that the collar was gone, that he could levitate over the prone forms laid across the filthy dirt floors. Instead, Zarbon picked carefully over his comrades-in-arms, careful to avoid tails and other slithering appendages of the most wounded, the most depraved. Broken women sat silently in narrow doorways, shrinking away from anyone who approached. Many of them had once been beautiful. Now, their formerly perfumed hair fell in dank clumps around their faces. One girl that he had seen on the auction block some weeks before lay catatonic on a resting place made of discarded clothing. She turned to glance at him as he approached, empty holes weeping puss where her raven-black eyes had been.

Zarbon swallowed back his gorge.

The hallway twisted and turned, narrow passageways branching off that slaves had created over the many millennia of Ice-jin rule. When he had been above, cavorting in the sickening playground of elitist Ice-jins, prized pet of their ruler for his unique coloring, he had heard many an Ice-jin remark that the slave passages were impossible to navigate. One would be lost in an instant, and dead soon after.

But Zarbon knew what he was looking for.

Up ahead, bone long picked clean of flesh caught his eye, even in the darkness. The soldier's broken armor had been scavenged, but this was it.

Glancing behind him surreptitiously, he slipped into a narrow chasm hidden behind the remains of the fallen warrior. His shoulders, broadened by his armor, scraped loudly along the rock walls, trailing pebbles behind him. The light from his ki-dampener, that eerie blue glow accompanying those punished as such, lit the passageway ahead. A large opening, more like a round room, greeted him. In each direction, a passageway led off into another part of the slave town.

Breathing deeply, Zarbon caught barely a whiff of scent from the passage directly to his left. But it was enough.

This passage sloped upwards, well worn and used. Bare foot prints had left step like indentations at one steep, downward sloping point. The stone was cool, and he wished he could use his ki to warm himself. Finally, the end of the passageway loomed, deep beneath the earth. Light peered from beneath a salvaged pod-ship door, embedded into the rock by crudely, ki-soddered hinges.

He lifted his hands.

And knocked.

A/N: Interested? What could Zarbon be up to?