1. 2. Dumb luck
The girl inside the arena groaned through gritted teeth and brought her other hand up to the injured shoulder - only to drop it again when she apparently realised that touching the wound did not make any kind of improvement – her hand was probably dirty and it stung like hell. The man could faintly hear her curse under her breath as she let herself sink to the ground only to immediately push upward and across the field again to evade a possible attack. Luckily for her though, the third fighter, a short, stocky guy with hardly any armour left on his body (she had actually been the one to blast it off him earlier) had taken the chance to knock the large one into the energy field. It took him several seconds of keeping his opponent pressed into the buzzing barrier until he finally stopped moving. No one around the area did as much as flinch. They all watched intently, quite a few probably had bets riding on either one of them.
The man on the side-lines turned his attention back to the girl. Her shoulder looked awful, he thought, he would have to call in some favours to get her into a healing tank this time – if she survived. Still, she was down to one opponent now that had to count for something. He knew that technically, she was a better fighter than Leku – that was the short one's name – but then again he could still use all of his limbs. He also knew that Leku was not as exhausted as she was, having kept in the background of the brawl the entire time. No, she had been rash again, getting into the thick of it, throwing around energy attacks and taking down at least five other combatants. She was a talented fighter with sharp instincts, but strategizing was not her strong suit.
Not wanting to give the girl more time to recover, Leku turned fast and ambushed her from the side. Her injured side to be precise – he was a smart bastard, though the man. The girl tried to turn around to block the punch, but she didn't make it in time. The blow connected hard with her injured shoulder and sent her reeling to the ground head first. He immediately dove after her, foot held out for a kick. Again she tried to move out of the way, but again she was to slow. He buried his foot in her gut and caused her to cough blood, before she lost consciousness.
"Fuck!" the man cursed under his breath.
"Yeah, I don't think she'll make it this time Bardock", the guy next to him remarked matter-of-factly, as they watched Leku flip her around with his foot to kick her into the barrier. He was just drawing back his foot as the arena gave off an abrupt metallic shriek, before the barrier disengaged and vanished from sight. He kicked her in the general direction anyway.
"Fight terminated." An artificial voice announced from the speakers around the stadium as the girl's back connected hard with the now inactive barrier, before she dropped down face fist into the dirt.
Bright moving lights illuminated the arena, as the clearing-bots started rummaging around the dead fighters in the ring. They had hooks on long metal arms to grab the bodies and drag them out of sight and they were not very careful about what they hooked onto. Bardock had to hop over one of the machines that was dragging a body out of the way by a broken foot, as he started to move towards the girl.
The guy that had stood next to him snorted from behind Bardock.
"They do say that the dumb get lucky. Your brat's a lucky idiot."
"Yeah", Bardock grumbled, as he made his way to the broken figure on the ground.
As he entered the battlefield, he noticed Leku still standing in the same spot he had kicked her from, staring over at her. The man seemed to be contemplating something.
"Back off, Leku", he snapped and shot the short man a look. It clearly said don't dare challenge her, she's not for you. He was relieved when Leku retreated and left the ring, though this eyes betrayed nothing but silent warning. The last thing he needed was a man challenging the brat for mating when she was too weak to shut them down. So far, four men had challenged her since she had come of age, but she had been able to beat them all easily enough to decline their offers. Bardock hoped it would stay that way until he was able to carry out his plan. He didn't want to deal with the trouble of a potential mate.
He angled his head down to point his scouter at her and simultaneously tapped her side with his foot. She winced. The scouter barely read five, but at least she was alive. He grabbed her by the back of her ruined armour and threw her over his shoulder, ignoring her whimpers.
"Will you ever learn to use your head in a fight, Zukkini? You might have even won if you hadn't been so careless."
She didn't answer. Although he sincerely doubted that she would ever really win any of these brawls, he would appreciate if she came out with less expensive damage. Even calling in favours, renting a healing tank would cost a soldier of his rank a fortune. He briefly lamented that the elites didn't even have to pay to get healed but then again they were much harder to replace then third class soldiers like them.
Allowing himself and his charge to be swept along with the crowd of leaving spectators he entered the skyscraper from the top terrace. The inside was brightly lit and held a dining hall on the highest level. It was where most of the crowd was headed, pushing and shoving and getting into fights about who would be allowed to stuff their face first and would consequently get the most food. There were laws that dictated how many calories each soldier was due, according to his rank and successes, but tey were was not really upheld in low rank accommodations such as this one. Despite being so close to the palace, the skyscraper was actually an abyss full of worthless cannon fodder, kept close to the palace so they could be shot off to purging missions if needed - or if they were just getting to unruly to deal with. Those who could afford it lived either in the palace or not in the city at all.
It was precisely this abyss that Barock drifted down now, making his way along the vertical tunnel that lead past hundreds of tiny apartments, stacked on top of each other, row upon row, upon row. Since it was mealtime now, he was basically the only one in the vicinity. As his stomach growled he cursed at the girl again, wishing he could just leave her to her own devices. She should not even be his business anymore – she was an adult now, fighting for her own wage. Yet she was the most important element in his plan and he could not let her die before he at least tried to carry it out. Hopefully she would not be pulled for another one of these fights for a while now.
While he scanned each floor he passed for a healing station, he once again wondered what was really behind these fights they were forced to take part in every once in a while. They had started about half a cycle after the New Dawn – or a he liked to call it: the Impossible Survival – the day they were supposed to have been annihilated by Frieza but instead awoke as if nothing had happened at all -only to find Frieza gone and new puppet master in his place who claimed to have saved them at the last minute. Bardock didn't believe him though, he had been there and he would still swear on his life that they had all died that day. Every single one of them and their planet with them. Yet, here they were, not questioning the lies they were fed, as long as they were provided with enough opportunities to fight and purge and wreak havoc on the universe. Critical thinking, he pondered, wasn't exactly a quality often found in Saiyans. They were decent at war strategy – at least the higher castes were - and were adept at finding ways to use the technology they stole, but they weren't intellectuals. Heck, Bardock himself hadn't been much of a contemplator for most of his life up until Kanassa, but then again, he hadn't been most things he was now before Kanassa at all.
Before Kanassa he had been an upstart warrior, third class and of particularly low birth, but had made it out of all of his fights alive (if barely) and stronger each time. His power level had distinguished him from his peers. Now he was once again as low has he could get, although he was still just as strong as before, if not stronger. His fall from grace, if you wanted to call it that, had little to do with his strength and skill as a warrior but everything to do with the fact that he was now known as a nutcase, for having accused Freeza of betraying the Saiyans and believing they had all died and somehow come back and even more to do with him being the father of Kakarott, who was now seen as the biggest traitor to their race. Saiyans were not a race inclined to believe in visions and foresight – they did not believe in much that could not be bashed over the head. Voicing his opinions had ultimately cost him his rank and with it much of his livelihood, which he had to share with a daughter that he needed to care for on his own and he strongly suspected he was being watched. Why he was even still alive in the first place was beyond him – they had had no trouble taking his mate from him, when they learned that she was Kakarotts mother. He scowled and forced his thoughts into another direction. The dead would not thank him for mourning them but maybe they would thank him for revenge. Thankfully, it was right then that he spotted a healing station and augmented his downward path to drift through the open entryway into the bowels of the building.
He landed on a small balcony, designed for exactly that purpose in front of a large, reddish alien with way too many arms to account for and oddly colourful veins running all across his fleshy body. Bardock refrained from studying the thing more in depth – it wasn't nice to look at.
"That's gonna cost you", it said in a barely audible, soft, gurgly voice and pointed at the backside of the girl across his shoulder, right at the tail that was broken in several places.
He scowled and prepared himself for an unpleasant negotiation when an idea hit him: The girl had been on an off-planet mission recently – she could pay for her own life. He told the alien her credit number instead of his own and waited for the check. An unpleasant pinging noise informed him that the she had indeed made money, almost enough to pay for the time in the chamber herself. He sighed and gave his own number as well, buying just enough time to get her crawling again. The rest would be up to her own healing power. Good thing they were Saiyans after all.
He was stretched out on his back on the overheated ground of the barren room and he was just so angry. Angry and frustrated and ashamed and angry that he was ashamed. It wasn't the kind of anger that made you stronger and gave you the motivation to fight back, the kind of anger that his father thrived on. It was the kind of anger that stifled you and frustrated you so much that you could barely move – mentally and physically. His psyche was in a deadlock just as much as his battered, unmovable body. All he could do was stare up at the barren white, domed ceiling. The oppressive nothingness of the room was broken only by the console in the centre, that reached up from the ground to the roof. Although the room was large, it was still an enclosed space with no windows and only a tiny double-locked gate. His father had let it fall shut behind him and the room had instantly switched back into its most oppressive characteristics. He had to find a way out of this situation, out of this life of being pushed around by them, with their clashing, unrelenting and complete opposite ideas of what his life was supposed to be. A way out of this world if he had to, off the god damn planet… a vague idea started to form in his mind.