Hey all,
Welcome to Dragon Ball Eterna.
This is my first publication on Fan Fiction so please let me know if something seems weird or wrong. It probably is. Holla atcha boy and I will fix it.
I am very excited to be sharing this with everyone. Though I have only the first several installments written there should be enough material to get you hooked, keep you busy, and hopefully not bore. If you find a chapter or chapter section dry or boring, please power through. We're just charging up ki in these first couple chapters ;) The battle is just beginning.
I would love you all to share comments, questions and theories about DBE. The world of Dragon Ball Eterna follows a split timeline from the Dragon Ball Universe. This will become more apparent as the story goes on but you are welcome to guess where it splits and what is different (spoiler: no GT).
If Game of Thrones and Dragon Ball Z had a baby, that would be this story.
Enjoy, comment and increase those power levels,
RC
Chapter I
~Vandakir~
Two men walked in the shadows of the trees and the shadows behind them. The path was wide but simple; the great forest around them, quiet. Only their footsteps on the packed dirt and the occasional birdcall impeded the stillness of their thoughts.
"This is stupid."
When Vandakir spoke, he expected the knot behind his sternum to loosen. It did not. His escort, the lieutenant, the other, briefly closed his eyes.
"Did you hear me?"
Agghus said, "How could I not hear you, Lord Vandakir?"
"Then why did you not respond?"
"What was I supposed to say?"
Agghus had him at that. Vandakir shifted the strap of the satchel on his shoulder. Precious cargo, he had been told, entrusted only in the hands of a Nikin noble. Terms the Wolves would not accept. It was stupid.
"You could have said, 'yes.' Then at least I would have known you were aware."
Agghus opened his eyes again. He waved a finger at the woods.
"You know these Wolves, and the allies of their clan, do you know what they are best at?"
Agghus had an expression like glass, Vandakir thought—perfectly smooth and composed and ready to shatter.
"They draw their strength from the Forest, from life itself. It's a technique not unlike the spirit—"
"No." Agghus spoke like a drill master from the Agoge. "They are weak. Their trees are weak. It is their ability to move without sound in this place they are a part of, that is the only thing that makes them dangerous. Do you know what the best way to detect them is?"
Agghus paused for a half-step to lift his boot. The vibrations, Vandakir knew, through the trees, the roots, the ground. Agghus was keeping constantly vigilant. He closed his eyes.
Suddenly, despite the bodyguard beside him and the Wolf Clan assassins likely lurking in the towering canopy, Vandakir Rah III felt very, entirely alone.
~Zelli~
Patrizelli stretched out in her pod-cushion. She punched a few buttons and the screen rippled blue. Daan asked her what she would like to watch—a history, perhaps, of the Gilded Wars, or one of her favorite sitcoms. Daan's servers contained well over a billion unwatched hours, whatever his captain's tastes: humor, drama, something inspiring…
"A clear view, please," Patrizelli said.
The screen disappeared and, in an instant, Patrizelli found herself alone in the vacuum of space.
Specks of white, a vision of distant galaxies, hovered like dust as it settled on the ocean floor. Patrizelli lingered among them for a moment, just the lights and her. She closed her eyes and they swirled in her imagination.
"What do you think is out there?"
"I know what is out there," Daan replied. "Five hundred billion galaxies of on the order of one hundred thousand million stars—"
"Daan?"
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
The program purred in indignation. Patrizelli reflected on the need to meditate. It seemed all she did was meditate. And watch Sons of Icarus, her soap opera about hunks to hot for the sun. She let out a breath.
"Daan?"
"Yes, Captain Gaia?"
"I'm sorry I told you to shut up."
"That's okay, Zelli. I understand."
Zelli shifted her gaze, the asteroid's churning white body came into view, a hundred thousand klicks ahead of them. It all came back to this.
~Vandakir~
Vandakir was not a great warrior. Though his Saiyan bloodline was purer than most, he had never developed into the fighter he was promised to be. He felt out of place in his red-shell armor. In the Nikin court, at least he had the affection of a few. In the Great Forest of the Wolf Clan, not even his one ally could he call his friend.
"I am not a strong flier," Vandakir had confessed to Agghus when the mission was arranged. Vandakir has been sweating from his pits to his fingertips.
"The Wolf Clan forbids travel above the canopy. We will be on foot, nothing else."
If Agghus had meant the words to make Vandakir feel better, it had failed. And Vandakir knew, Agghus did not fail.
Above all, Vandakir felt weak beside his guard, the man singly entrusted with his life. Stupid, so, so stupid.
Everything that a Nikin warrior was supposed to be, everything Vandakir was not, Agghus was. A battle-hardened warrior; a slayer of enemies from every school, clan and temple; a true soldier, loyal to the core, decisive in action; a man with a diluted bloodline who had simply overworked his way to power. Every report Vandakir had read confirmed that this is the man Agghus was.
They were night and day, Red and Blue, boy and man. Vandakir tried to find courage somewhere in the bottom of his lungs. Agghus might have been a great warrior, he might have been proud—so much the Nikin way—but Vandakir was Nikin, too, and he would make his bodyguard listen.
Vandakir spelled it out, "The Wolf Clan will not accept the treaty… So why send it with just two men? Why use some pathetic noble—a court loser—to deliver the message? What good am I?"
Agghus did not pause. He lowered his hood.
"Don't answer me; it's fine."
A rare break in the canopy allowed in a shaft of golden light. Fields of moss and ivy glistened like jade. Vandakir had studied up on the Great Forest before his departure. It's secrets. It's lore.
"It is sacred here," he murmured, agreeing with the Wolf Clan beliefs.
Agghus stopped. He looked strangely at Vandakir. A little reaction, in the glass face. Agghus removed a small parcel from his shoulder; he also carried one. Inside was a small roll of canvas. He unrolled the covering to reveal a metal dagger, wickedly jagged, polished to shine. Vandakir felt dizzy.
"Do you know what this is?"
Vandakir could not speak. Nikin warriors were forbidden from carrying weapons. They killed as their first Master had, with fists and ki alone.
"It is a Wolf Fang Dagger. It leaves a very distinct wound."
Agghus cupped his hand around the hilt.
"So when I return your body to New Vegeta, it will be clear that the Wolf Clan has killed you."
If only my body was as fast as my mind, thought Vandakir—a bowstring stretched in the shadows.
"They're here," Agghus said, and he thrust the dagger at Vandakir's heart.
~Zelli~
They were like dogs from Old Earth, forever chasing cars. Zelli's people, the last remnants of the human race, following after super-asteroids in the hope of finding life. Zelli had been tailing her own hunk of space matter for almost three years, and she was getting sick of it, promise of salvation or not.
Zelli's rock was even too small for a super-asteroid, too small to be one of the Halley's Creatures, intelligent beings that masqueraded as asteroids, laying earth-like eggs in their wake. But its movement had been uncanny, shifting in and out and back into light speeds, and Zelli's governors had made the call: a human needed to follow it.
I may die without never seeing another living face, Zelli thought from time to time. Her mind drifted back to the Icarus Hunks. She sighed. Sixteen was a tough time to be crossing the universe, alone.
"Zelli? May I show you something?"
Daan zoomed in on the screen, an unfathomable distance, to a fuzzy blue dot.
"What have you got here?"
Zelli sat up.
"We're still very far away… Veryyyy far. But its right on our trajectory. And initial readings suggest nitrogen and oxygen. Potentially hydrogen."
Zelli laced up her hi-tops. Not that there was anywhere to run, but it made her feel ready.
"Faint indicator of life—"
"ARE YOU SURE?!" she exploded.
"No!" Daan replied sternly. "I'm not sure. We're still much too far away for—"
Blah blah blah.
"Why didn't you tell me about this when you sighted it?!"
"I didn't want to get your hopes up, after last time…"
Zelli's mood darkened. The program had a point. They had run off course checking out a possible sign of life six months ago, and when the trailed turned up dust, Zelli had cried for a month. Only Daan's persistent cooing had stopped her from aborting her mission—or her life.
But that was old Zelli. Old Zelli was a little girl. New Zelli was a boss. She wore a backwards cap. She meditated—a lot. New Zelli took command. She zoomed in; she zoomed out. She zoomed in; she zoomed out on the faint blue speck of hope.
"Daan, are you thinking we should take a chance?"
"Zelli, the odds of finding life in this zone are—"
"NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!"
Zelli stomped her rubber sole on the screen.
"Ouch."
"I said, Daaaan… Are you ready… to take a chance?"
Blue ripples of thought.
"I am incapable of making such a decision," the program stated. "So I will simply tell you what you want to hear: Yes."
"YEEHAW!" Zelli bellowed, pointing to the dot. "Then let's go for it! Full speed ahead!"
"At once, Captain Gaia," the program replied, and it began to bend the fabric of space time around them.
~Vandakir~
Vandakir saw his death, but heard something else: metal striking metal. The dagger swung wide, missing his heart and throat and burying into the muscle of his shoulder. What a scar that will be, he thought. An arrow ricocheted into the forest.
Vandakir fell back. His blood filled the air. Now he felt the pain. Not pain, agony. At the very least, it would be short lived. Agghus would not miss a second time. But the Wolves were too fast.
Arrows, riding bolts of ki, rained down around them. Agghus knocked two away with his dagger; a third painted a thin red stripe across his cheek. He clenched his fists, dug in his heels and roared as he released the power within him.
A Super Saiyan, thought the woozy Vandakir, never failed to impress, even when they were trying to kill you. The air pulsed with photon waves; the dirt road cracked and rippled. The glass expression shattered and Agghus took one more look at the war-bait royal flub, laying at his feet. Furious pride.
The Wolves enveloped them like a cloud.
Just before Vanadkir blacked out from loss of blood, he felt two of the Wolves scoop him up by the shoulders and dash away int the brush. They were fast, not as fast as a Nikin soldier in flight, but silent, too. The leaves and brush seemed to part around them. Explosions shook the forest and mighty trees toppled as Agghus blasted his enemies. But even though the Wolves were weak, there were hundreds.
I've been saved by my enemies, Vandakir thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And he smiled as he passed into darkness.
~Agghus~
In the sky, beyond the blue, there is black. Nikin warriors had seen it. Back when the blood was pure, great Nikin warriors traveled all the way up to the moon, and held their breath for a minute or two.
Agghus was not one of those masters. Few alive are. Still, he believes someday it could be like that again—the Nikin covering the globe, ruling even to the moon in space. He launched from the forest below and halts a klick above the forest. He glows gold, a star, winking to life against the blue.
He does not admire his handiwork—the acres of ancient forest he has already leveled. The worm—the boy—was right. There is something sacred in the forest. And its ancient wood should be used to raise temples to the God of War, and to expand the student barracks in the Agoge, and to raise the cities of the descendants of Vegeta, not be splintered and burned.
Smoke covers the Great Forest now. Agghus casts his gaze through the haze and the canopy, he senses with his ki. Nothing. Not even that Wolves that had been assaulting him. He felt only trees. He couldn't have killed them all, not yet. The boy is gone. If only he had been a hair faster.
There is only one thing to do. Agghus plummets back towards earth.
~Zelli~
Zelli doesn't dream in hyperspace. But, somehow, her mind moves. She explained it to Daan—who has no mind—what it's like:
Imagine that you live in a regular world, filled with air. Suddenly, you blink, and you realize that the air is actually red jello. You're still moving at the same speed, but now you realize why you are so slow.
It is the same thing with the mind in the hyperspace jump. In that instant, the sparks leap across one singular neural bridge—and the thought is as slow as gelatin.
"Jello?" Daan had said.
Daan had searched his databanks.
"Ohhh… Jello… The Icarus hunk loves jello."
Zelli thought, the Earth was our mother, once, and her pod shifted out of hyperspace.
~Agghus~
Agghus made landfall—and a hundred trees, each ten thousand years old, were ripped from their roots.
If he had been a Saiyan of old, like the War God, Prince Vegeta, or his brethren, the forest would be flat for a hundred miles, and Vandakir, the scapegoat Vandakir, would be ashes and smoke. But Agghus was a product of this twilight age, all human but for a few drops of saiyan blood. Only a few hundred trees. There was only one thing to do.
The royal emissary must be killed.
His sacrifice must remain a secret.
His whereabouts and direction were unknown.
Agghus could not return to his nation a failure.
The warrior planted his feet, drew in a breath and ascended to the Second Level of Super Saiyan. A feat he had not dared for years. He prepared to blow himself up.
In one of the ancient legends, the War God had also destroyed himself to destroy an alien demon. He had been reborn.
So would Agghus be reborn after his victorious sacrifice, in the next universe, as a true saiyan, a full Saiyan, on their homeworld.
His skin began to glow. Splinters in the crater at his feet vaporized to ash.
~Zelli~
The orb filled Zelli's command screen with colors she had only dreamed of: blue and green. Red, yellow, gray, white, yes, but blue and green. The orb glowed with it.
"Captain Gaia…"
She did not need to be told. She could see, with her very own eyes.
"Captain Gaia…"
She felt like a child again, coming home for lunch.
"Zelli!"
"WHAT!" Zelli shrieked. "In the moon-loving home of Bamba, what?!"
"The life readings…"
Zelli's heart flickered. Minerals could be green. Copper oxide was green.
"Yes?"
"They're off the charts."
She felt redeemed. Calm, graceful, a true interstellar pilot. Perhaps she would meditate, center herself around this victory. No, definitely not. She punched the ceiling with joy.
"Let's take her in for a closer look!"
~Agghus~
Agghus felt the full force of his life, on the verge of release. His ki would rip apart the forest for a hundred square miles. Not bad, for a weak bloodline.
Someone appeared behind him, too fast for a Wolf. Too fast for… anyone. A dagger pricked his jugular vein. Another covered his mouth.
"Not today, my friend."
Ki rushed the poison into Agghus's brain and darkness followed.