Nyotei'Suki
Preface
- . - . -
A female Saiyan warrior should not have existed after the destruction of the planet Vegetasai, one full blooded female Saiyan certainly should not have been idlly curled on top of a rock dozing after having consumed a large meaty carnivore. Truly, there were few Saiyan soldiers left alive. The tailless Serufey Meioukahad renounced her allegiance to Vegetasai and her blood relatives so thoroughly that she no longer considered herself a Saiyan. She had immediately sworn her loyalty to the royal family of Nyotei'suki, specifically the Princess Noralena. Serufey wandered space doing good where she could with her strength and training, as she had done for more than thirty years. She had long ago disregarded her old armor and wore instead only the hides and shells of creatures she had hunted and killed herself. The red-brown landscape around Serufey today was barren rock with a large moon distant in the sky and a white alien sun glaring down on her. Serufey's dark purple eyes glared back.
Suddenly a call ran through her body, like the pull of a giant sun on the planets surrounding it. Immeasurably strong, the call ran up her body like a current and pulled her consciousness from herself and into another woman light years away- on the planet Chikyuu, in West City. A wave of pain pulsed through Serufey and it took her by surprise; the look showed on her face, though there was no one near her to see it. Serufey knew many coping techniques for pain and she shared that information with the Princess whose mind she currently occupied; she felt other personalities doing the same.
The waves of pain weren't sharp pains; Serufey realized with a distant sense of joy that these waves were contractions. The Princess clutched at something and Serufey felt it as if she were the one holding the hard, warm hand. The next contraction took Serufey's breath away. She pushed a picture into the mind of the pregnant woman.
Serufey's mind breathed into hers, "Picture the reflection of your mother's great palace over the top of the still lake waters. Remember a quiet day, a relaxing day, when the power of your mother's monarchy was still strong and we feared nothing and no one."
Serufey's memories and imagery were influenced and taken over by the Princess and what she pictured as a quiet relaxing day. The royal mother lay on her side in her own mind with the round swell of her breasts and her pregnant belly encircled by a buff, dark haired man. He lay facing her with black eyes. Serufey recognized the dark eyes that watched her Princess. She saw his hands trace her majesty's belly. A chill swept over Serufey that was drowned out by the next contraction.
It couldn't be happening, but it was happening. The Princess kept visualizing and the shocked Serufey felt others helping her. The soft, gentle touch of Kurazon's mind supplied the soft twilight air and the blue glow of a familiar planet in the sky to the meditation. Suddenly it was time. Someone Serufey didn't recognize yelled for her majesty to push harder. All of the visiting minds crowded around the bed, Serufey, Kurazon, Mirin, Arame, and Lavenori, bore down with every bit of energy they could muster. Serufey could tell that to the Princess it felt as if her royal guard surrounded her once again, each one with a hand on the royal belly that carried the next Princess. The mother cried and screamed, squeezing the rock hard hand she held so hard that any human man would have broken or bled. Serufey knew with a dreadful horror that the hand her Princess held was not the hand of a human.
Finally, what should have been more impossible than a living female Saiyan had happened. The Princess Noralena had given birth to a royal daughter, an heir to the throne of the scattered kingdom of Nyotei'suki. The rules that governed the line of the Moon Empress had been met, mysteriously, in such a way that there was once again hope.
After the birth of the girl-child Serufey was spurred into action, riding a rush of adreneline that was as much an after effect of the labor and delivery as it was an effect of one awful realization. Her majesty was in the hands of a Saiyan warrior, and not just any Saiyan warrior but the Prince of Vegetasai. Her majesty and the new royal infant were in the hands of the ruthless and merciless Prince Vegeta.
- . - . -
Mirin Kinsui was traveling through space in her small, round space craft puzzling out how she could have been called to her home solar system and the planet Chikyuu. She had felt the call just as Serufey had felt it, just as they had all felt it. Mirin's white-gold hair was loose and fell around her in a smooth, straight curtain and her ice-blue eyes were thoughtful. The fact that the Nyotei'suki soul-star had allowed Princess Noralena to have a daughter meant that it had to have first recognized the Princess as the Queen. The ability to create a daughter depended solely on the soul-star. It was possible to have a child without the soul-star's blessing, although no one had thought a hundred years ago that a Princess could have a boy-child, either. It had been little more than a myth until 'Lena had birthed a son. Mirin thought very hard on her trip back to Chikyuu, her smooth round face marred by her furrowed brow which narrowed her large eyes.
The Queen always had one child, one daughter to carry on the Nyotei'suki soul-star and the line of Queens. Every so often a Queen would succeed in re-uniting the Empire as it had been under the original Moon Empress and she would be titled Empress. That had not happened in a very, very long time. Then again, the line of the Moon Empress had not had a son in so long that it had previously been thought impossible. The concept that the Queen could have two daughters was rare, but it had happened. In fact, it had happened when rather recently in the grand scheme of things. Princess Noralena had an Aunt, in fact.
Mirin was wondering at the twists fate took when her console made a quiet "ding" noise. It was letting her know that she was in range of one of her comrades, another one of the royal guards to the Princess. It was Lady Kurazon.
"Did you recognize that man?" Kurazon said, as soon as her face appeared on the screen. Kurazon's green eyes were ablaze and she appeared as if already in the midst of a tirade. She is very upset, Mirin thought.
"Hello, Lady Kurazon. I didn't recognize that man, why should I?"
"Too young to have met him," Kurazon said under her breath and Mirin tried not to be annoyed. Lady Lavenori was the youngest of the Queen's Guard, she's been a small child when the palace had been destroyed and had not been a Guard at the time. She was six years younger than Lady Kurazon, Lady Serufey, and Lady Arame and they had often commented on it, "King Vegeta, from Vegetasai, visited the late Queen. He's dead now, too. Their planet was destroyed shortly after the Queen's palace was destroyed."
"That man looked very much like the Saiyan King, only a bit younger. That means he is probably Prince Vegeta, the dead King of Vegetasai's son," Kurazon said it like it was a bad thing. Mirin could only be pleased.
"That explains what I have been wondering then," she said happily, "In order to be give birth to a royal princess a daughter of the line of the Moon Empress Princess Noralena had to have first been a Queen."
Kurazon gave her a look, but Mirin continued without noticing it.
"The only way for our Princess to be recognized as a Queen is to marry a Prince of the moon, a Prince whose power source is the moon. All of our Princes were slain by the armies years ago. It should be impossible for her to be recognized as a Queen. A Saiyan, however, is gifted with powers from the moon. The moon gives Saiyans amazing powers like brute strength of energy and the ability to shapeshift. They are not so different from us, except we don't shapeshift and our powers are a little more showy. He is a royal with powers from the moon and that must make him fit to marry Princess Noralena. She must have married him and become Queen, maybe without even knowing it, and now they have sired a new Princess."
Kurazon looked pained, "But he's a Saiyan."
Mirin just smiled, "Well, I wouldn't point this out in front of Lady Serufey but it would not be the first time a full-blooded Saiyan joined our ranks."
"Mirin, that's different," Kurazon's expressive face shifted as quickly as a kalidescope from pained to mulish. "Seru is just... different. She doesn't even acknowledge that she is or ever was a Saiyan. You know the Princess would not have forced Seru to have her tail cut off in order to join us, no matter what the moonlight would have done to her. Seru did that herself, before she had even been accepted at the Queen's court. She burned those bridges a long time ago and she hasn't ever looked back."
"We don't know this man, this Prince Vegeta, so why don't we wait until we meet him before we decide whether he is like us or not," Mirin said, amused and as willing to be amicable as always.
"What if he is holding our Princess captive? What if there was a surviving Prince or another answer to what we've all been wondering about? He could be holding the Princess against her will? What if-" Kurazon would have gone on for some time but she was interrupted by another royal guard cutting into the communication.
"If the Princess is in danger we will rescue her and kill her enemies, Kura," Arame's image showed up on Mirin and Kurazon's screen a split second after her voice cut across Kurazon's tempest, "Assuming 'Lena doesn't beat us to it." Of the entire royal guard Arame and Serufey were probably the best at fighting. Serufey was especially good with blades while Arame preferred hand to hand combat. She liked the loud feeling of her fist connecting.
"Well met, Lady Arame," Mirin inclined her head. Mirin was the most charming and politically suave of the guards. She was also the most gifted in her abilities as a spy. There were many who saw Mirin's youthful, sweet appearance and suspected her of nothing more than being weak. The ones who had found her out as a spy were often very surprised to learn that she was also good with her knives. Kurazon was best among the guard at energy attacks; much to everyone surprise Kurazon had surpassed even Serufey in that area. All of the guards were powerful, though Kurazon and Serufey were the most powerful and best trained in combat.
"When Princess Noralena was fifteen the palace was destroyed and her Queen mother was murdered. Upon her death her Majesty passed on her soul-star to the Princess. The Moon Empress soul-star has been an unusable power ever since that terrible day. I am going to be happy about recent events until or unless we find out that it was some terrible trick," Mirin said.
"I hope it wasn't a trick, Mirin, I really do," Arame said with intensity, "but if we felt that child's birth then you can bet your bottom dollar that our enemies know about the infant."
"That's right," Mirin said, alarmed, "She feels it when a call goes out."
"She would have killed Princess Noralena long ago, the only reason the Princess has been able to live her life in peace is because she was able to hide by not calling to us," Kurazon remembered out loud, "We were able to scatter and draw attention to ourselves. If it wasn't for our distraction our Princess would have never had a good life."
"She deserves to have a good life," Mirin insisted, "There was nothing she could do that we knew about at the time. As far as we knew she could not have ever used the soul-star, it would have died with her and its light would have been lost to the universe. We are lucky that an heir has been born and the line can continue."
"Even if the line continues with this daughter we will have to find another young Prince with powers from the moon," Arame pointed out, "We'll have to ensure she can become Queen somehow, once she comes of age."
"But we now know that our Princes are not the only ones that can be recognized by the soul-star. We could look for a Prince," Kurazon reasoned, "It's better than constantly running, stopping to fight, and running again."
"Later," Arame told her, "After we protect our Queen-apparent and her infant. Her enemy's army will be coming for her. We have to hurry. I'll meet you two on Chikyuu. Goodbye, Ladies."
- . - . -