Chapter two :)

A big thanks to all reading~!

Also, because of this chapter and some weird remarks between myself and my beta reader, Tomta has been dubbed "Princess Space Accountant" xD

Disclaimer: Dbz belongs to Akira Toriyama, and all of those other people who aren't me~

Edit: my little marks to indicate a change of scene keep dissappearing. WTF. fixed it.

She had spoken to him twice that evening: once to inform, politely, him that he was kneeling on her tail, and a curt 'sleep well, General' before rolling herself over into her small corner of the bed and feigning sleep. Nappa was wrong, he supposed, to assume that this would put them on anything like a first-name basis.

Time was arbitrary in space, decided by an addled internal clock, and so it felt as though it were early morning as the Saiyan man stared at the low ceiling above him uneasily, the princess's still wakeful breathing keeping him from sleep. He turned towards the opposite wall, onto his side to make more room, straining his ears for any tiny sound of disapproval from the next room over. His stomach churned when he admitted to himself, reluctantly, that this was his charge's sister.

Besides that, the guilt stemmed from a social convention embedded to deeply into their culture to discard. A Saiyan princess was, without question, completely off limits. Any question to the paternity of her offspring would be catastrophic. Any man, outside of her decided partner, deemed to familiar with the princess could potentially upset the entire line for the throne. Not to mention that her intended would blast him to pieces. Leik hadn't been much of a soldier, but he was exceptionally powerful nonetheless.

He was also dead, so this was a moot point.

General, Princess, first class, second, third, what did it matter between the four of them? There was no reason for his gut to twist uneasily as he glanced down at the sleeping female. He was far stronger than she was, and she no longer had to power to have him court marshaled or executed. Social standings meant nothing now, except that, to him at least, they did.

Five living Saiyans or one, Vegeta would always be his prince; an ingrained reverence for the man who had united them all against a common enemy, whose blood flowed in Vegeta's veins, and yes, his sister's as well. That respect was more than a tiny thing like the apocalypse could shake.

Carrying on that bloodline should be an honor, not a chore, and he was quite literally the only man for the job. At least until Raditz matured. The Princess be passed to him at that time, of course, for the sake of genetic diversity, and also for this reason, finding genetically compatible females on other planets would always be a priority. He simply had to stop imagining the King rolling in his figurative grave. This offence certainly paled in comparison to letting their kind die out, and as a General, he was certainly qualified to father royal children.

He nodded resolutely, and felt his gut unknot with this conclusion. After all, he told himself, he was as good a candidate as Leik had ever been, if not better. The boy had been dying anyway. For all Nappa knew, he could very easily have been chosen by her father himself when the inevitable happened.

The young woman's breathing had steadied, save for the occasional, shuddering breath that he refused to acknowledge as a sob. With a heavy creak of the bed's frame, the hulking Saiyan turned, momentarily, to glance in her direction. The Princess was tiny for a Saiyan, and while her mother had been of small stature, it had not been to this extent. Nappa had seen similarly stunted growth in low level soldiers without the sense to stop training during a growth spurt. She'd barely come up to Leik's shoulder, and was smaller still beside the general. Their height difference was such that it was difficult to get a good look at the girl, and his insomnia had left him bored, and his boredom had left him curious. Her uncanny resemblance to her late mother (though he supposed everyone was late now), was unsettling, and so he set himself rather intently to scanning her face and tiny frame for something to distinguish her from Queen Tilen, and settle his still-guilty stomach. He found very little, and rolled away in disgust. The man quirked an eyebrow at the unnatural pile of her armor resting neatly against the wall.

She was lovely, but the woman was a machine. Nappa had known Saibamen with more personality. As difficult as this made him to deal with, Prince Vegeta's nerve at least made for interesting conversation.

---

Books, he decided, made people boring. Or book learning, at least. It was difficult to come to another conclusion as he glanced over his tiny charge's tuft of spikey hair at the solitary figure bent over a table towards the back of the room, eyes on papers as the tray of food beside her went neglected. The food in question wasn't particularly appetizing, but watching a fellow Saiyan ignore a hot meal was bordering on the surreal. The prince hummed impatiently under his breath, and it was only as Nappa's attention was torn from the female that he realized that he'd left his own plate untouched. He shook his head as he shoveled a mouthful, brows still furrowed as he swallowed. "What is she doing?"

"Translations, no doubt," the boy replied with a smirk and a roll of his dark eyes. "The weakling can't fight. She has to be good for something or other."

The intervention of the Planet Trade Organization had provided the Saiyans with an unprecedented problem– diplomacy. The Kold empire introduced them to the true magnitude of the night's sky, and the countless other peoples with which they were now in contact. Occasionally, brute strength was not the desired approach. Perhaps a people were only useful alive, perhaps it was business, but for whatever reason, Tomta had been set to learning language and culture when her training efforts were deemed wasted. Freiza's diverse crew provided an ample supply of potential teachers, and she had supposedly tackled the page with all of the zeal she poured into a fight, albeit less happily.

"What'd she be translating, Vegeta?"

The Prince sniffed indignantly. "Messages from clients, I'd suppose. I don't trouble myself with her menial work."

"I don't understand," Nappa screwed his face into a scowl. "There's gotta be at least somebody on this ship who speaks whatever it is she's translating."

Vegeta stabbed viciously at a steamed root vegetable, popping the thing into his mouth. The subject was irking him, and Nappa knew better than to press it further. "Because," he snapped, "not just anyone can be trusted with the business arrangements."

Nappa nodded dumbly. His attention had been caught elsewhere.

He wasn't entirely sure what it was that had drawn her attention from her work, but the girl stood, and made her way across the crowded mess hall, and towards two contrasting figures by themselves in a corner. It was odd, he supposed, that Freiza's right and left hands were here with the rest of them, but this was where the food was, and where everyone but the lizard himself ate; however, this was not simple barracks politics– who sits where, who speaks to whom. This was suicide, and excusing himself with a hurried grunt, the General pushed himself to his feet.

"Excuse me." Her voice was level, gentle, and rather out of place among the elites. She bowed politely, sticking to the common tongue though Nappa had no doubt she could converse in either of their native languages. Neither seemed to notice her for a moment, until slowly, in a sort of disbelief, they turned their attention towards the offending Saiyan woman. She indicated something on Zarbon's tray with a slight inclination of her head. "Might I please have that? I would be more than willing to trade for it." The two looked bewildered, then vaguely amused as she began to plead her case.

He'd reached them, squeezing his way between irked soldiers and fixed tables, and could now see what she was so intent on retrieving. Bright, mottled blood red in places, a piece of fruit about the size of both of her tiny fists lay carelessly in the corner of his tray. They'd restocked the food stores from their home planet a long while back, and hadn't had time to again between their arrival in the area, and the calamity. He'd seen the cactus fruit out previously (it kept a good long time when frozen), but didn't think anything of it until now, after his return. He glanced both at the tables surrounding them, and at the counter to find no other bright points of red. This was the last of it.

A grin pulled at the corners of Dodoria's rubbery purple lips. "You want this?"

She nodded, oblivious or uncaring of the disdain saturating his voice. "Yes, please."

The massive alien's hand slowly crept to his companion's tray, and settled over the lumpy fruit. He took hold of the thing, fingernails leaving crescent marks into the waxy exterior as he moved to offer it to the Princess. Just as she moved graciously to accept it, the Commander shoved the thing unceremoniously into his mouth with a satisfied grin stretched around it's outline.

Nappa had reached them. "I wouldn't do that–" he began uneasily, stopping short beside the small woman, who watched unblinking as Dodoria messily devoured the last of her home planet, juice dribbling down his chin and bits of purple-white flesh. Zarbon eyed the other with revulsion, edging away and pushing his tray away and stood to leave.

"Between your eating and the monkeys, somehow I've lost my appetite," he muttered as he pushed past them.

Dodoria swallowed with an audible gulp, and spat the pit at Tomta's face. Unflinching, her hand closed around it before it met it's mark at her forehead. She turned on her heel and set back towards her papers. He turned his attention back to Nappa, voice menacing. "Were you threatening me?"

"Well, no," he replied wincing. "'S just that I've never seen anyone foreign eat the peel before. Takes a special kind of gut to handle that stuff... I mean, we were made to eat it, but...." He cocked his head to the side, and the ridges above Dodoria's eyes dipped as his brow furrowed, purple-rimmed eyes widening for a moment when he caught the implication. "You might wanna keep a bucket on hand," he added as he loped after the female.

"Are you insane?" his hissed when his longer strides met her head start.

"It's been suggested."

"What was that even about?" He caught himself, and tacked a hurried 'my lady' on to the blurted demand. She flicked her eyes in his direction, wearily.

"There's no need for that, General." His mouth twitched at the hypocrisy, but he held his tongue. "I have what I was after." She'd reached her table, and set the slimy, slobbery, seed down onto her untouched tray with a shudder, searching for something to wipe the revolting Dodoria drool from her hand. She had no pant-legs, and searched in quiet frenzy for something to clear the drying, sticky mess, and pursed her lips in disapproval when he offered her one of her papers. Desperation won, however, and she accepted a blank sheet and took her seat again, crumpling it into a ball. Nappa, for some reason, elected to take up the seats opposite her.

"Either of those guys would've been more than happy to end you. You know that, right?"

She glanced up at him momentarily, then returned to her work. "So you were trying to save me, then? I don't usually act on impulse. I apologize for inconveniencing you."

The conversation ground to a halt with that, and his eyes flickered uneasily back to the anchored table where the Prince continued to stab at vegetables, as content alone as not. Real food was important on the ship. One couldn't expect to live off of dried and salted mission rations for any length of time and expect to stay strong, and so the ship was loaded at every rare opportunity with things that could be well preserved on board for long stretches of time between planets. He eyed her scant tray of now tepid grains and a scant hunk of defrosted meat from some alien animal he couldn't identify. Only the murky glass of stale water had been touched. He frowned. She was a fraction of his size, but still, a Saiyan needed to consume more than most to account for their monstrously paced metabolism. It wasn't enough, and she wasn't eating it to begin with. She glanced up to find him eyeing her food. "You're welcome to it if you want it. I'm not really hungry."

Now there was a lie. After a month in cold sleep, she would be ravenous. The large man let it rest, and changed the subject to something more familiar. "You gonna plant that?"

"I'm certainly going to try."

"You're gonna need more than one if you want 'em to grow fruit," he cautioned, and she nodded, wryly, pushing an oddly shaped pile of papers to one side to reveal the precious thing she tucked carefully out of sight. It's bumps were more round than the square bolted fruit Dodoria had devoured, and more purple than red. Different plants, but the same species.

"I got it from a Basian soldier," she confessed. "He had no idea what to do with it, and was more than happy to take my bread in exchange."

"You could've just taken it."

"I told you, I'm not hungry," she repeated. There was a note of something melancholy in her placid voice. Perhaps sadness was weighing on her stomach as well as her mind. He knew it happened, but he'd never actually seen it.

"You should soak those seeds in water for about a week."

She sat up, alarmed by the comment. Uncertain, but perhaps amused, she blinked at him. "Is botany required in our military now?"

"Saibamen didn't always grow riht away. In my day, " he informed the Princess, suddenly very, and disquietingly, aware of just how young she was. Twenty, for a female, was certainly adult by their standards, but to think that this girl couldn't imagine a time before the Arcosians had introduced them to the Planet Trade Organization.... though he knew full well that she could picture life before Freiza. "In my day, it took 'bout a week, but only a couple a days if you looked after 'em right."

"I see." She'd perked up slightly, and took the intact fruit into one hand. Expert fingers found the seam running down it's side, and pried the thick outer shell neatly in half, and plucked the pit from its center, dropping it, and the one Dodoria had spat at her after cleaning it off, into the empty glass. She stared at the halves intently, before handing both to the General. "Please give this to my brother. I don't think he wants to see me." He opened his mouth to protest, but she frowned and repeated, "I'm not hungry." He stood, and leaving his half on the table, delivered the other to the younger royal.

"Nappa, what are you doing over there?" the boy hissed, and he found himself without a suitable answer. "Fine, whatever," he glared at the piece of fruit scathingly, "as long as your ready for training this afternoon, do as you like." Inexplicably, what he liked was to return to Tomta. He attributed it to the food waiting at that table, and tramped back over to her side of the mess hall.

"So what're you gonna plant it in?"

She sighed. "I haven't really thought that out yet. I'm not sure when I'll be permitted to leave this ship, let alone to somewhere with with a compatible soil composition–"

"I'll bring you some."

"Excuse me?"

"Er..." The General screwed up his face, scratching at what was left of his failing hair. "What I mean is, Prince Vegeta and Raditz and me'll probably be on missions way before they let you, so... You know. Next time I'm somewhere with good dirt, I'll bring you back a whole bunch, if I can."

"Really?"

He grinned. "Buckets of it."

"That's..." She paused, what might have been a flicker of a smile tugged at her lips. "Thank you, General."

A commotion behind her cut off his reply. Raditz had woken up, and wandered into the mess hall, carrying a tray with a heaping pile of food disproportionate to his size to all looking on– the boy had hit a growth spurt a few weeks before, gods all help the kitchen staff– was attempting to slide his plate into Nappa's former place across from the prince, only to be chased off with a whimper.

He skulked around, searching for a place to rest his tray and eat. Tomta called him over with a silent inclination of her head, scooting her papers into a neat pile to clear a space to her side. Nappa froze, the half of cactus between readied open jaws, when he caught the longing stare fixed on his prize. With a sigh, he snapped the thing in half, and it was snatched up immediately with enthusiastic thanks. The boy took his seat hurriedly and set to wolfing down as much as the fork would allow. "Watch you don't choke," the Princess cautioned absently, distracted by the disappearing plate.

The little liar was hungry.

"You've gotta eat something," he grumbled. "Really, you're making me nervous– you're gonna get faint. Here," he ripped his remaining half in half again. She shook her head, and he nudged her with the back of his hand until she finally accepted the thing held in it, and took a tentative, tiny bite.

It satisfied him more than it should have by any explanation when she began to nibble at it in earnest. Raditz beside her had engulfed his, and it occurred to the General with a pang of jealousy and an extreme sense of uneasiness that he would one day have to share more than food with this scrawny little brat. Though, he supposed the straggly boy wouldn't be for long. Saiyans grew in quick bursts, and in all likelihood he'd resemble a young man more than a boy after the next few months.

Vegeta got up to leave, and Nappa followed.

-----

He paused, to the woman's surprise, as something beyond instinct or a crippling fear of waking the boys sleeping next door popped into his head. "Princess?"

"Yes, General?" came the muffled reply, a warm puff of air against his chest.

"Can you breathe?"

"Not really," she admitted, and he could hear her voice straining. "You are sort of crushing me."

"Oops." He sat up. "Sorry," he grunted, and a careful motion pulled her on top of him. "'s that better?"

"Y-yes, thank you." Something in her hesitating tone didn't sit well with him, but he closed his eyes, settled his hands on her hips, and quickly pushed it from his mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, a fic about saving the species written by a girl who can't write smut. This is going to be boring xD

I hope you all enjoyed it anyway! Reviews are much appreciated :)