The next chapter is up and ready for your reading enjoyment. Thank you for the reviews so far and I hope you keep reading. I know this story is a little on the slow side, but things will pick up soon.

On, onward to the chapter.


Chapter 3: Gine


She regarded her new commander carefully. Despite their attempts to speak softly, she heard every word they spoke about her. If it was one thing she was pride herself on, it was that she had developed a better sense of hearing compared to other Saiyans. It was a necessary ability given how often people try to take advantage of her.

Despite being classified as a softhearted reject, she wasn't dumb. She would have been dead long ago if she was.

All her life she heard the whispers about her coming from an inferior, tainted bloodline. A bloodline that betrayed their kinsmen to the Truffles and didn't have the Saiyans' warrior spirit.

A child of a pacifist wasn't welcomed in a race who prided themselves on being the greatest fighters in the universe. She was an uncomfortable reminder that there used to be more to the Saiyan race than just bloodthirsty warriors. The beasts of death as they're known throughout the universe.

If she were born into an elite family, she would have been exiled to some far off world and forgotten. Although it seemed harsh, it was actually quite merciful. Despite the well-known brutal nature of their race, it was against their laws for a Saiyan to kill another Saiyan. Unless a Saiyan was a traitor, a danger to others, or a mercy kill, it was taboo to hurt a fellow Saiyan.

This taboo was put in placed by King Vegeta after they nearly drove themselves to extinction, yet again, with all the in-fighting. Any Saiyan who killed another Saiyan outside of these exceptions were summarily executed, no questions asked. What some would call overly harsh greatly drove down the death toll within just the first year. Now, almost no Saiyan committed murder among themselves.

That's not to say that no murders took place. They tended to happen on the battlefield where it was impossible to say if someone was killed by their own kinsmen or from an enemy's attack.

Which was why it was important for her to develop such good hearing. She needed to hear any murder plots or 'accidents' aimed at her, which happened with alarming frequency.

She could see her new commander staring at her, obviously sizing her.

She truly wished she were born into an elite or at least a medium class family. If she were, she would have been sent away to some frontier planet and be allowed to live her life in peace. She wouldn't have to pretend to be a warrior and constantly looking over her shoulder to ensure that her own comrades didn't kill her on the battlefield. She also wouldn't have to stomach this brutal, disgusting lifestyle.

"Well, looks like you're part of my crew from here on out," Bardock spoke, breaking the awkward silence. "I don't know what rules you went under with Pepper, but I run a different ship from him. You better adjust fast or you will be left behind."

"I already know that," Gine said with a note of impatience. "You and your crew are well known for taking the most dangerous and difficult assignments on the front lines. Most call you crazy for thinking that you're elites."

Bardock snorted. "Is that what they've been saying about me while I've been gone?"

Gine side-eyed him. "You and your crew are a popular gossiping subject. There is even a pool."

Bardock smirked in amusement. "Oh? What kind of pool?"

"About when you will get over your heads get yourselves killed, of course," Gine answered without restraint.

Instead of being insulted, he laughed out loud. "Didn't know I had so many people betting against me. I feel special."

"You shouldn't be surprise," Gine stated. "Some think you need to be reminded of your place. That you are all lower class warriors and will never be anything more."

Bardock stopped laughing. "Huh, let them say what they want. Unlike most of those fools, I have no intention of living my life as a measly low class, living off the scraps of the higher ups." He grinned. "I will climb my way up through the ranks and earn my right to become an elite. I will become the greatest warrior this world has ever seen, second only to King Vegeta himself."

"You have such lofty goals. I can see why you are so talked about," Gine noted.

Bardock turned his back on her. "You wouldn't understand."

She knew he wanted to add 'reject'.

He was partly wrong. She did understand. She understood the need to increase one's rank for a better life. The only different between them was what they wanted from that life. He wanted to become an elite for the glory and greater battles. She wanted to be an elite so she could leave this life of death and destruction, and be sent to the planet where the other banished Saiyans were placed. Only the king knew the location and he wouldn't let some lower class go there.

She supposed if she truly wanted to leave, she didn't need to go to that place. She could steal an attack ball and just leave. No one would care to follow her.

The problem was, there was really no place for a Saiyan to go. Their reputation has spread throughout the known universe. Unless she went to some far off uninhabitable world, she would be hunted and killed like a rabid dog by those who rightfully feared her kind. As unbearable as her existence could be at times, she found the idea living in isolation on some backwater planet to be even more unbearable.

"There's no point to just standing here and talking," Bardock suddenly spoke as he turned around and got into a battle stance. "Show me what you got."

Gine blinked. "Pardon?"

"I want to see what I'm being force to work with," Bardock said with an air of impatience. "I need to know if you're even somewhat useful to me on the battlefield."

She sighed in resignation. She should have figured that he wanted to test her battle skills, or lacked thereof.

Gine took a stance and waited for Bardock to make the first move. She didn't have to wait long.

Within seconds, Bardock was on her and aiming for a vital area on her neck. He certainly didn't waste time; he was already trying to knock her out. On most species, this would have been a fatal blow.

Thankfully, her instincts took over and she evaded all of Bardock's attacks, just barely keeping ahead.

He was just as fierce as the rumors said. He wasn't like the other lower class fighters whose technique tended to be sloppy and relied on overwhelming their opponent with brute force. Each of his attacks was precisely aimed to ether disable or to kill.

She wondered if he trained with an elite or maybe a mid-tier Saiyan, or did he learn this on his own. Although vital spots were taught to them, outside of a few select occasions, most Saiyans never really took advantage of them, finding that they ended fights too quickly. They wanted to play with their prey for as long as possible. This kind of precision aiming was obviously ingrained into him from practice.

"You're good at evading, I'll give you that," Bardock observed, not ceasing his assault at all. "But you can't dodge forever. Eventually, you need to attack!"

He suddenly loosened his tail and attempted to hit her with it. She easily avoided it, but realized almost too late that it was only a distraction. Without warning, he thrust his hand forward and released a wave of energy.

She dodged and on reflex shot back at Bardock.

Bardock easily caught the sloppy energy blast with one hand and smashed it like a grapefruit in his palm. "Oh, so you can fight back."

Gine didn't countered as she backed away from Bardock, getting as much distance as possible from her commander.

This made him smile. "I see."

He charged after her, rapidly firing at her the entire time. Despite the aggressive assault, Gine dodged all the energy blasts, although there were some closed calls.

Just as she evaded the last ball of energy, Bardock suddenly increased his speed, seemingly teleporting to Gine's location. Before she could react, Bardock slammed his fist into her stomach, causing her to double over.

She gasped for air as her world went black for a moment. She managed to stay on her feet and glared daggers at her commander.

"Impressive, you managed to breath out just as I hit you. If you didn't, you would have passed out," Bardock noted with a small measure of admiration. He went back to a neutral stance as he checked his scouter. "Throughout the exercise your power level only registered a little over three-hundred at its highest. Far below even a lower class warrior. But, it's much higher than I expected from a reject. Guess you're not completely worthless."

"You...didn't need to test me...to know that. I would have...told you...that my power level...was only three-hundred and ten," Gine gasped as she attempted to catch her breath.

"Power levels only tell me so much," Bardock stated, not paying too much attention to her. "Power levels only tell me how much energy you're emitting at one time. It tells me nothing of your speed, skill level, technique, and more."

Gine tilted her head as she finally caught her breath. He was wiser than she thought. "You really put a lot of thought into this."

"I'm no fool. I learned a long time ago how fickle power levels can be," Bardock said, still checking his scouter's readings. "There are some races out there that can suppress their energy to the point that their power levels are completely undetectable even for the newest scouters. There are as also those species who have techniques that greatly increases their power in short bursts. There are also a number of skills and techniques out there that don't even rely on power levels and that's not even getting into different species natural defenses or transformations. Point is, if you over rely on your scouter, eventually you will get whack."

She couldn't deny it, she was impressed.

She went through lot of commanders over the years and this was the first one who ever criticized the limitations of the scouters. Almost everyone she worked under, including her own comrades, relied on the scouter to tell them how powerful and dangerous the enemy was.

In fairness to them, the scouters were correct the majority of the time and if the power different was too great, no amount of speed or technique could save you. An ant could never defeat a dinosaur, after all.

But, she had seen more than once one of her comrades or allies seriously injured or even killed because their scouters misled them. It was always best to side with caution and assumed that your opponent was much stronger than what the scouter read.

"Despite you low battle power, your speed and reflexes are quite good. Some of the best I've seen, actually. You also know how to take a punch well," Bardock said as he took his hand off his scouter and folded his arms. "However, you can't attack worth crap. Ducking and weaving will only get you so far, especially on the battlefield."

"I'm still alive," Gine said curtly.

"Which tells me nothing. You could be the type who hides behind your crew while they do all the fighting," Bardock said.

Gine puffed her cheeks and her face turned red. She prayed for patience. "I maybe a lousy fighter, but I'm no coward. I would never just hide behind others to save myself."

"We will see," Bardock said as he turned his back on her again, which really grinded on her nerves. "Let's go."

"And where are we going?" Gine asked, becoming quite annoyed with her new commander and his pompous attitude. She was beginning to understand why the other lower class Saiyans couldn't stand him.

"We're going to meet my crew. Those bums should be at one of the bars near here. They like to drink together before going onto their own business during shore leave. Hopefully we can meet them before they become too intoxicated. They're not...pleasant people when they're wasted," Bardock answered as he walked ahead.

This surprised Gine, causing her to lose her previous annoyance. Most crews went their separate ways once they returned home. After spending years together on far-off worlds, one would get tired of seeing the same faces.

She said none of this out loud as she followed Bardock. It only took a few minutes to locate the bar where the rest of the crew was relaxing. Apparently, this was their default hang out location.

The bar wasn't too crowded since it was still fairly early in the day. Still, the environment was loud since several people were already hammered.

"Bardock! Didn't expect to see you so soon!" someone on the furthest side of the bar yelled.

She looked up to see a fat Saiyan sitting with three others at one of the tables.

Bardock smiled. She realized that it was the first real smile that she has seen him give. "I see it didn't take you guys long to crawl your way here."

The fat Saiyan laughed. "Of course. After being away for so long, it's nice to have real beer again and not that crap the Frieza Force gives us."

One of the other Saiyans raised their glass. "I'll drink to that. I can't even get a buzz off of their stuff."

One of the crew members looked at her. Gine didn't expect there to be another female on the team. "Oh, is this our new member?"

They all turned to stare at her, making her feel very uncomfortable. She did her best to hide it. Being meek wasn't a good first impression.

"Yeah, this is Gine. She's been transferred over from Pepper's crew," Bardock answered. He glanced at Gine. "This is my crew. The big one is Shugesh. The one who hates to talk is Borgos. That's Fasha." He looked at the last Saiyan and smirked. "And the ugly fellow over there is Tora."

The one named Tora chuckled. "If I'm ugly, what does that make you?"

Fasha smiled at her, ignoring the current back and forward. "Welcome to the team. It's about time we got another woman. It gets depression being stuck with these guys for years on end."

Shugesh chuckled. "How do you think we feel being stuck with only one female on the crew? You're lucky that me and Borgos got our urges out of the way, otherwise, you would be working overtime."

Fasha rolled her eyes at him. "You couldn't pay me to sleep with either of you."

This just made Shugesh laughed harder.

Gine couldn't help but to smile. From the little she'd seen, this was a very closed knit group.

Granted, most Saiyans were extremely closed to their crews. It was the closest thing to a family that many of them had or knew. But this crew seemed especially closed. They were almost like siblings. That's probably why they were all still alive when she thought about it. They had to become extremely close given their tendency towards suicide missions.

From the rumors she heard about Bardock and his crew, they've been together for almost a decade, which was unheard of outside the elite circles. Most crews only stood together for a few years at most. This was mostly because members died off and the commander was eventually killed. The lifespan of an active Saiyan crew was only about two to three years among the lower to low class Saiyans. For medium class Saiyans, it was about five years.

If she played her cards right, maybe she could get out of this alive. She knew that the reason she was assigned to Bardock's crew was so she would get killed on one of their impossible missions. She had no intentions of letting that happened.

"We will begin training tomorrow so we can break in our newest member," Bardock said, getting right back to business.

This got Gine's attention. "Training?"

Tora leaned onto the table. "Yeah. We do train in-between missions. Can't let ourselves get rusty, even when we're resting. Besides, we need to see how you will work with us in a team environment. Better find out now how good you are instead of finding out in the middle of a fight."

"Most crews don't do that," Gine said, becoming more impressed by the small group.

"That's because most crews are incompetent morons," Bardock scoffed. "You're only as strong as your weakest link."

"And it's possible to be too strong for your own good," Tora stated. "I've known crews that got completely wiped out because some upstart hotshot had to showoff and got the entire team killed."

Fasha laughed. "Naturally, those are also the types that ends up having their own crews. But those are the elites for you."

Bardock and Gine took their seats and spent the rest of the afternoon talking.

Within an hour, Gine felt herself relaxing around them.

Out of the entire bunch, Bardock was the most high-strung and business like, despite also being somewhat lazy and uncaring. He only seemed to like to talk about fighting. The others had more personality, except for Borgos who didn't seemed to like to say more than five words at a time. She kept forgetting that he was even there.

Out of all of them, she liked Tora the most. He was definition the liveliest of the team; often cracking jokes, mostly at Bardock's expense. And Bardock actually showed a personality around Tora. The two have obviously known each other longer than the others.

"So, did Bardock give you the welcome treatment?" Fasha asked as the boys talked.

"Pardon?" Gine asked as she finished her ale.

"You know, when he attacks you and comes close to killing you," Fasha specified.

She nodded and rubbed her still sore stomach. She was certain it was going to bruised. "Yeah. He put me through the ringer."

"Yeah, he did the same thing to me. Nearly broke my neck and put me in the healing tank for two days," Fasha said. There was no anger in her voice. She actually sounded fond of the memory.

"That had to be around ten years ago, right? That's when this crew was formed," Gine observed.

Fasha nodded. "I was the last person to join. I was recruited about five years ago."

"Hard to believe that this team lasted so long given its...reputation," Gine said carefully.

Fasha leaned back into her chair. "Yeah, we've been through a lot. So many close calls and powerful enemies. There were times that I almost died." She smiled. "Wouldn't trade any of it for the world."

Gine into her empty glass. "So, it is true that you fight on the front lines with the other elite soldiers."

Fasha nodded. "Yeah. Despite our rank, we can get to the front lines because we take distress missions, otherwise we would be getting the scraps like everyone else. I bet your crew stayed within the inner sections, right."

"Yeah. I've only been to the front lines once. It was when the Frieza Force and us were taking down the Federal Alliance," Gine said.

"Oh yeah, I remember that entire mess. That was battle among battles," Fasha said with a warm smile. "Those guys put up one hell of a fight before going down. Too bad we can't fight foes like that more often. We were only allowed to come since they needed every soldier that they could get their hands on and couldn't be picky if you were a low class or not."

Gine chose not to say anything. The battle with the Federal Alliance may be a fond memory for Fasha, but it wasn't for her. She was scared half to death the entire time and she saw many good people slaughtered.

The sheer amount of death and destruction nearly drove her insane, especially the complete genocide of at least five races and the enslavement of dozens of others. She watched as her fellow Saiyans massacred children in front of their mothers and laughed gleefully as they did it. She could still hear their pleas, begging them to spare their kids in exchanged for their lives, while her comrades mocked them for being weak before killing them too.

It was in those moments that she wondered how they could call themselves a warrior race. How were they warriors when they murdered people who couldn't even fight back?

"Hey, are you okay?" Fasha asked, jolting Gine back to reality.

"Huh?" she asked dimly.

Fasha frowned. "You're trembling. And you look a little pale."

Gine attempted to stop her shaking. She was only half successful. "I...I was just remembering the excitement of that battle," she lied in her most controlled voice. "It's something that I will always remember."

Fasha stared at her. It was obvious that she didn't quite believe her, but didn't call her out on it, which Gine was grateful for.

"I need to get going," Gine excused herself as she stood up. "I guess I'll meet you guys at the training center."

"We meet at five. Don't be late," Bardock warned. "Otherwise, I'll have you flying lapses around this planet until you fall out of the sky."

She wasn't sure how serious he was being. Even for an elite, it took hours to fly around the planet. It was a big world, after all. Given her speed, it would take her days and that's if she didn't collapsed from exhaustion. Then again, Bardock didn't seem to be the type who would kid about something like this.

"Better listen to him," Tora spoke up as if reading her thoughts "Bardock doesn't exaggerate about stuff like that. He really will have you fly around the planet."

She paled when she heard that. "I'll...keep that in mind," she spoke softly as she made her way out of the now crowded bar.

It was probably best that she goes straight to bed. Something told her that she was in for a long day tomorrow. Especially since her new commander really was a nutcase.


We finally get some insight into Gine and how different she is compared to the other Saiyans. It is interesting to write her character since I want to portrayal her as a strong character, who is also physical weak and quite limited in a fight. Trying to walk that tightrope is tough. We also get more insight in Bardock and show he's more than just a battle loving meat head.

To my Guest Review, thank you for you feedback, but I do have a slight correction. Gine wasn't captured by the enemy, she always got in trouble doing fighting and Bardock saved her. The pod situation will be explained once we reached that point in the story.

With all that said, until next chapter.