Rating this T, though contains violence, bits of language due to how the characters speak, and references I'm not entirely sure about. There will never be anything even bordering on sexually explicit, though, ever. Let me know if you think the rating needs changed.
This fan fiction will combine elements from both the manga and the anime. It is AU from the start, and especially diverges from the canon around the time Goku returns to Earth after Namek. How it changes, you'll find out eventually. One way, as you already know, is that Bulma and Vegeta do not get together and have Trunks. I am a big Bulma/Vegeta fan, but I thought I'd do this differently. And all non-canon characters are my own invention.
I'll do what I can to keep Vegeta from getting too OOC. This is Vegeta/OC, but it's going to take a while to get there, I'll go ahead and warn you. I'm working on chapter fourteen as of this moment, and it still isn't there. :-P Please let me know what you think, and I hope this is as enjoyable to read as it is to write.
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Buryu Yokai
By Falcon's Hyperdrive
A.k.a., Fuzzy Slipper
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Part One:
The Woman From Another World
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Chapter One: World On Fire
When she awoke, the land was burning. Lavender grass blazed green and turquoise under the scorching blue sun of a late afternoon, filling the superheated air with acrid yellow smoke that burned her lungs and sent her back to the ground before she could push herself up properly. She fell into wracking coughs, curling up in the pain of the fit as a sleek black tail, matching the thick mane of her hair, spasmed once then lay limp on the ground.
As the coughing faded away, light brown eyes released a hard tension in the eyelids and brow and hung open, glazed and unseeing. Pink lips, marred by a dried scab of blood where some impact had split the skin, stayed parted to pull in air choked with the poisonous fumes. Her hands, laced with bloodied scratches and mottled bruises, twitched once before she stilled, opening from tightly balled fists where her fingernails, cut short, left crescent indents in the pale ivory flesh of her palms, one of which was crossed by an angry red cut where whatever she had been working on had slipped and bit into the epidermis with a jagged edge. Her arms could not be seen beneath the bloodstained grey fabric of her hooded sweatshirt, but her wrists―or what was visible of them―bore the same scratches and bruises as the hands connected to them, and were thin and bony. The sweatshirt hung loosely about her frame, as did the thick khaki pants which were three sizes too big, held in place by a sturdy black belt strung through the belt loops of the trousers. Her feet were bare, and the soles were caked with dried mud that did not match the surrounding soil, dribbling beige debris onto blackened red dust. Any blisters or calluses were concealed beneath the layer of filth, which coated the entirety of her feet and the cuffs of her pants which covered her heels and arches with their extra length. Her face, almost skeletal and sporting spectacular fading bruises on her split lip and around her left eye, fell lax as numbness set in, and her eyelids slowly lowered over the glassy orbs they were made to protect.
Consciousness was leaving her, though she wasn't sure if she even held it in her grasp at all when she saw the alien landscape. She watched, hardly registering the movements, as the blazing field around her and the abandoned village of mud huts and now ashen roofs spread their hungry fire in an ever-expanding circle. The hot wind, fed by the inferno and its currents, kicked a stand of burning embers into the air, leaving them to tumble, still glowing red-hot, down past the cracked and crumbling walls to land on the prone black appendage resting behind the battered and exhausted figure. A moment passed, then two, and the searing agony finally blasted past the encroaching darkness of her mind to her pain center and set it to blaze as hotly as the field around her. Arching her back with the onrush of energy, the woman let out a strangled but piercing scream, then surrendered to oblivion.
. . . . . . . . .
Three men were flying over a purple landscape with the attitude of bitter satisfaction. They moved without the aid of an air car or jet cycle, two giants trailing after a shorter form whose hair seemed to be making an attempt to make up for his lack of stature. It bent backward under the force of the figure's velocity, dark brown locks appearing almost black in the light. A matching band of fur wrapped around the waist of his white battle armor, under which he wore a bright blue suit of expandable fabric. His hands were clad in white gloves, his feet in white boots tipped in gold, and the shoulder guards of his armor stood as proud gold sentinels on either side of his head. His towering companions lacked the blue bodysuit, instead clad in black shorts beneath armor which served as dark shadows of their leader's. Where gold had been, tan replaced it; where white had reigned, dark blue or black took its place. White trimmed the sections of armor, with brown leather or rope coiled around the wrists of gauntlets and around the ankles of their boots. On the left figure, a black carpet of hair reached past his knees, an impressive feat especially when taking into account just how tall the man was. Matching him for height, his companion was completely bald but, while the other was clean shaven, sported a thin goatee complete with mustache. Both had broad chests which rivaled barrels, and thick arms and legs were almost like tree trunks attached to their torsos, built of muscle and impossible to attain for even the largest human bodybuilder. They, too, wrapped a belt of fur around their waists, and to an oblivious observer that might have been all they were, but a twitch of muscle betrayed to drifting plumes of smoke that the belts on the three were, in fact, thick tails tucked up and out of the way.
The foremost figure, though shorter than the two following, lost nothing in the way of bearing, his higher status screaming through his dress, his stance, and the way he regarded the two behind him. He was authority, and though he seemed a shrunken version of his towering subjects, the Prince of the Saiyans held an aura of power about him that almost crackled in the heated air, still loose and barely restrained after what couldn't even be considered a battle.
Carpet-hair let out a sharp laugh. "Pathetic creatures didn't even put up a fight. What a waste of time."
"Shut it, Raditz." Baldy scowled at the lower-class soldier, his already sour disposition worsened by the pitiful resistance and the denial of a challenge. "Your complaining is grating on my nerves."
"Oh, sorry, Nappa. I didn't realize you had switched personalities with Zarbon." Raditz's voice gushed sarcasm, and earned him the dirtiest look the older warrior could muster. Their short tempers, however, had nothing on their prince's.
The youngest of them didn't even turn when he snapped at his men. "Silence, both of you." Vegeta gazed straight ahead, sights fixed on the horizon where they had landed their pods. Regardless of how little he liked it on Frieza's ship, he had no desire to remain on the newly purged rock. The fires were beginning to spread from the villages, the grass extremely flammable and undesired by the planet's buyers. The flames would be allowed to continue unabated, and would either consume the thick, plum forests that stretched across the higher altitudes or the moisture in those regions would overpower the searing blaze. The smoke, thick and yellow, was starting to irritate his nostrils, and Vegeta saw no reason to stick around and bathe in the noxious fumes. He prepared himself to announce this, venting his own frustration with the situation, when the beeping of his scouter caught his attention, coupled with a faint scream at the edge of his range.
The three stopped and hovered in midair, each putting a finger to their scouters. "That was in the direction of the first village," Nappa announced. "I thought we wiped that one out completely."
"So did I," Vegeta agreed, frowning. "Perhaps we missed one, somehow. Whatever it is doesn't have much of a power level. Ten at most."
Raditz tapped his own scouter, green to Nappa's blue and Vegeta's red. "I thought it said a hundred, there, for a second."
"Your scouter must need repairing," Nappa said with a sneer. "Should we check it out, Vegeta?"
"We have to." Vegeta shot off toward the source of the mysterious power level, knowing that it had not been there a few minutes ago. "Come on, you two, I want to be off this planet before the smoke stains my armor."
. . . . . . . . .
They found her curled up around an object tucked well out of sight in the shelter of her body. She looked…wrong somehow, and Vegeta decided it was the strange clothes and the mud too yellow for this world. He had flown everywhere on the planet, dealing death to the inhabitants, and nowhere had he seen this color of dirt. Then, too, there was the conspicuous lack of any other vessels, not even a crashed ship. It was possible someone might have come and gone, but surely their scouters would have picked up on that.
Raditz knelt beside the prone form. "Where did she come from?" he wondered aloud, voicing the question that rattled in Vegeta's mind. "She looks like she's been a prisoner of some sort."
"Is she dead?" he asked, frowning at the inconclusive results his scanner was giving him. Raditz checked her pulse at her neck and shook his head, brow furrowed.
"She's alive, but probably won't be for long if she's not given medical care. What-" He broke off, shoulders going rigid, and stared in plain shock at the female scrunched up on the ground.
"What is it?" Nappa demanded.
"She's—" He took her shoulder and pulled gently, turning her onto her back. She flopped limply, all muscle control gone, but in that action she released what she had been holding. A tail, black as obsidian, curled through her legs, so still it might have been a stuffed sock. Vegeta knelt in awe beside her and reached out to touch it, gloved fingers grazing the warm limb. When she suddenly gasped and arched her back in reaction to the touch, he jerked his hand back as if burned.
"Holy shit, it's real." Nappa took a step back in his surprise, and Vegeta well understood the sentiment. He felt lost suddenly, unsure what to do. She was a Saiyan, a Saiyan female, and she was alive. How was she alive?
"Vegeta, the smoke is in her lungs. And if Frieza finds out about her, she'll be killed on the spot. What are we going to do?"
Killed? No, she couldn't be killed, not the only remaining Saiyan female left alive in the universe. The thought made him nauseous, and spurred him into action. He leaned forward, then tucked one arm under the woman's knees and the other under her upper back, and lifted. His subordinates followed silently as he took off for the pods, and he used the quiet moment to evaluate the creature in his arms. She was small, her eyes coming to the level of his nose if she were standing, he figured, and he felt a flash of male pride in being taller than her. But she was frail, unhealthily scrawny, and her skin cracked and leaked drops of blood in the dry heat. The first aid kit might be able to keep her from dying, though, and he knew he should try to get some nutrients into her before the hibernation cycle kicked in on the space pods.
They all touched down next to the pods and Nappa immediately fetched the kit and an oxygen tank. As the elder warrior prepared an injection of nutrients and a hydration drip, Vegeta took the mask attached to the tank and gingerly fitted it over her face. He didn't think she was severely injured anywhere other than her hand, as he couldn't spot any fresh blood spotting her clothes, and observed the way the cloth covering her torso concealed her form. It looked baggy enough to hide her tail, and with great care he maneuvered it to wrap around her waist with as little touching as possible. She didn't react this time, and then Vegeta spotted the small burn and grimaced at the thought that he might have touched that and caused her more pain earlier. Raditz also spotted the wound, and passed some burn cream and antiseptic out of the box to his prince.
Once the wounds were taken care of, Vegeta tucked the thick fabric down over the tail and into her trousers, trusting the belt to hold the garment in place without the tail escaping. His own tail ached at the thought of cutting hers off to hide its existence, and immediately he banished the consideration from his mind and busied himself with the drip that Nappa handed him.
All matters finally taken care of, Vegeta was satisfied that the female would live to reach Frieza's ship where they might provide better care. "There is more room in my pod, so she will ride with me back to base. When we return, we will claim a ship crashed as we were laying waste to the planet, and that we found her as the only survivor. I am going to ask for her as our slave, and pray that Frieza is generous."
His fellow Saiyans nodded their assent. He knew he wouldn't have to warn them not to touch her, for as prince it was only right that he take her as consort, should she permit it. He wasn't entirely sure what he would do if she did reject him, but decided to think on that later. The survival of the Saiyan race was not even plausible if she didn't even live through being brought before Frieza. All he could do, then, was hope and pray that this worked.
Edited 9/29/14