Credit where Credit is due:
Many thanks to MegaKat for giving me kind permission to use her Saiyan language throughout this story.
Phrases and words used in this chapter:
ja'ta -father
ji'ta ch - fighting team / unit
posh'ri - 'firewater', alcohol
tu'r - hammered, wasted
A/N: - This story would not exist without my co-author AngstCow. Blame them for it.
***Updated for spelling and formatting changes ... chapter four should be up within a few days. I promise.
"Tapa! Damn it, damn it, damn her, and good fucking riddance!" Bardock kicked the door back open and skulked back into Chiv's domain. His aura flared in response to his emotional state, and set off most of the patrons' scouters, causing them to glance up from their cups. He scowled at those who dared to look up as he passed them by and marched towards his team.
The large barkeep paused in wiping down the dented bar, and frowned at the touchy soldier's overdramatic entrance, angered by the overt display of power.
"Hey Dock, if you're looking for a fight, do me a favor and take it outside. I just got this place fixed up from the last time," Chiv reminded, only to earn a scowl for his troubles and a dismissive tail flick.
"Bite me," Bardock replied, then flipped the older man an obscene gesture.
"Original," Chiv called, then grunted once and returned to his cleaning.
He and Bardock went way back; they had grown up together in one of the orphanages. Even though Chiv and Bardock had history, he never quite knew what would set the other male off. Even as a child, Bardock was known to have a mean streak when aggravated. And right now, it looked like Bardock was searching for an excuse - any excuse - to vent his anger.
Perhaps that small female Bardock had been consorting with over the last few months had found out about all of his other 'friends' and had finally shown him the metaphorical door. Chiv had learned to like Gine well enough over the past year, as well as one Saiyan could like another, and had noticed her absence during the last month or so.
As Bardock marched back to his table, he was so damn distracted that he missed the admiring glances of several of his usual female partners. He was definitely off his game. His tail lashed in a violent arc and his eyes were dark as thunderclouds, dark as the internal conflict he felt. Like most Saiyan males, Bardock tended to solve his personal problems through action, not words; so the interaction with Gine not only left him with a sour taste in the back of his mouth, but unspent anger. His biggest problem had just solved itself, so why was he so unhappy?
"Well ... how did it go?" Fasha asked in a casual tone, as if they had not nearly come to blows just moments before. She leaned forward like a scavenger waiting for its next meal.
Bardock just picked up his glass - refilled by Toma in his absence - drained it without a word, then slammed it down on the worn surface and glared at his second in command. Sometimes he wanted to strangle her. He really did.
"Hey Dock, you look awful," Toma said. "What the hell happened? You were out there for a while." The tall man pulled on his ponytail as he spoke, then exchanged a glance with Fasha. The female turned away so that she did not have to meet Toma's dark eyes, and played with the shoulder strap of her breastplate instead.
"Oh, did you finally fire her?" Before Bardock could open his mouth to respond, Fasha pulled her stool up closer to him, invaded his personal space, and pushed the envelope. She tilted her head at a jaunty angle and licked her top lip with her tongue.
Fasha had a violent streak that matched his own, and she thrived on conflict too. It made her an effective second in command, but did not lend itself well to anything more .. well ... domestic. It was one of the reasons that a relationship between Bardock and her would not work out in the long run: too many bruises and too much aggression. "Please tell me you did it, Dock."
Annoyed and frustrated by Fasha's meddling, he just wanted to put an end to the subject before he lost his temper. He and Fasha could get into it later, when he was not so furious that they might actually hurt each other. He leaned in and narrowed his eyes, his hands curled into claws upon the tabletop, and his tail lashed. Bardock's aura had not diminished, and most Saiyans would know it was time to back down. "Yeah, I fired her ass. You happy now? Now shut the hell up about it and drink."
"Yes, I am happy." Fasha crossed her arms across her ample bosom, and allowed her trademark smirk to spread across her face. Next, she kicked out her feet in a pose of complete relaxation, to show that she was not intimidated by Bardock. "Tell me, Dock, did she cry?"
"Enough," he roared, with more venom than he intended. He slammed one open palm down on the table and spilled everyone's drinks. "I didn't need your 'help' out there, Fasha. You just made it fucking worse!"
She shrugged, and gave him a sly grin. "Well, I'm just looking out for the welfare of the team. I am the second in command, after all."
The conversation ground to a sudden stop after that exchange; the team stared off in an awkward silence. No one had good conflict resolution skills that did not involve punching each other in the face.
Bardock lit up his last nicstick and smoked it in two long drags. He did not want to talk about Gine any more; he just wanted to get fucking blasted, then go home. He stared into his empty mug. "I've never needed to forget so bad in my life ... I need to get t'ur. Your turn to get the pitchers, Topato."
On celebration nights, the team took turns buying drinks, which guaranteed that they all went home lit. The first round was carefully tracked, but as the night wore on, they tended to forget whose turn it was to buy.
"Sure thing, Doc." Topato rumbled, extracted himself painfully from the chair he had perched on, and rolled up front. He towered over everyone in the bar by a foot or so, and most people gave him a wide berth. A few minutes later, he returned with four filled pitchers, each dripping sweat from the humidity. They looked like oversized mugs in his gigantic hands.
Each member of the ji'ta ch pulled a flagon towards themselves and refilled their own mugs. Bardock still stewed as he thought about Gine, about how terribly that had gone down. Right now that weak woman was wandering home, probably whining to her ja'ta about how unfair life was. Would he even have a job the next day, or would he and the team show up only to be told they were off assignment, or worse ... that Bardock was no longer in command. Fasha would love that; she would get control of the team that Bardock had worked so hard to create and meld into one. Maybe Gine would be reassigned, wouldn't that would serve Fasha right.
Ah shit. I can't be thinking like this. We're ji'ta ch, and I can't let that General's daughter continue to fuck us up when we've seen her backside. All right, Doc ... no more pissing and moaning about it. You never have to see her again, no more bailing her ass out.
Planet Mustara, Purge Hour 72
Bardock leapt back and dodged the incoming swipe. Sweat ran down his forehead, into his eyes and made them sting, but he did not have time to deal with it. The blow just missed his midsection; if he had been one second too slow in responding, he would have been eviscerated. With a twist of his lean body and a quick push of his Ki to get airborne, he leaped over and behind his foe, then unleashed a blue wave from his palm. The strike slammed into the exposed back of the native, knocked the beast down to the ground, and took him out of the fight for good.
The reek of singed hair and burnt flesh seared his nostrils, but Bardock was not repulsed. It was the smell of being alive when his enemies fell before him, of the war song of combat in his blood, of his imminent victory. He would win. He always won, it was just a matter of time.
He took the time to check his scouter, assess the current grouping of their enemies and decide where he needed to move his team, if in fact he did. They were a well trained and disciplined crew who moved as one, knowing how and when to act: to attack, to defend, to pull together as a whole to get the job done. They were the best for a reason.
Bardock's team made planetfall four days ago, and the Mustarajin had been utterly at their mercy. The Saiyans had descended like angels of death, transformed into their terrifying Oozaru forms, and slaughtered the populace in a bloodbath. They had not seen it coming and had fallen with minimal resistance. Well, most of them.
A small and lucky few managed to flee into an underground bunker where they had been holding off the purge team for over a day cycle. Without Oozaru, they were forced to break the fortress down piece by piece until nothing remained but a smoking crater. Only then did the survivors rush forth to their imminent doom, screaming in defiance to do battle face to face. The natives did not fight with Ki; they were tall, powerfully built, covered with a thick layer of fur, and sported nasty claws that they laced with potent toxins. Even if an opponent survived the initial blow, infection would set in fast, so the Saiyans had to be on their toes.
In the back of his mind, Bardock kept tabs on their newest member: General's Skallon's youngest daughter. This was her sixth mission with the team; no one wanted to take her along, and for good reason. Even after all of Bardock's efforts, she was slow on the uptake, the least powerful out of the group and poor in strategy. She had to be hand fed instructions prior to the assault, and seemed incapable of making on the spot decisions. It took up Bardock's precious time and energy to keep her in his sights; he had to babysit her more than not. After the job was complete, he was going to chew her out good for costing them their bonus for early completion.
In the fraction of a second that his mind wandered from combat, Bardock ate someone's fist. A new aggressor had leapt into the fray while Bardock was distracted; stuck the Saiyan so hard that his vision blurred, and grabbed him by the throat during the confusion. The towering beast smashed Bardock into the ground so he laid belly up and vulnerable, then raised one dagger hand. The creature roared, his hot breath in Bardock's face, spittle sprayed in his eyes.
"Doc!" He heard Toma yell, and could sense his team reacting to their Captain's plight. But he could not and did not wait for help to arrive. Although downed and likely concussed, Bardock's fighting skill saved him from the next deadly swipe of talons that would have taken out his throat. He lashed out with his tail, wrapped it around the creature's wrist, and halted the blow. Then in an instant he pulled up his knees to his chest, placed his feet against the beast's abdomen and kicked out with all the force he could muster. Quick then, he fired off another Ki attack. It connected with the creature's head point blank, cut through the thick cranium and split it in half. The Mustarajin kept moving for a second until the body realized it was dead, then it fell forward, on top of Bardock.
He pushed the corpse off and jumped back to his feet, wiping the blood off his face with one hand as he turned to meet the next opponent. Everything seemed painfully slow in battle time. Bardock turned and caught the incoming strike with both his hands, twisted his body and threw the man. One blast to the back and another defender fell, a smoking hole where its vital organs used to be. His breath came in short pants, and the adrenaline rushed through his veins.
Bardock looked about for the locations of his teammates. He saw Toma in the air, providing aerial strikes. Fasha battled several giants in hand to hand, ducking and weaving, tearing through their numbers with quick strikes. Topato raged and smashed with his giant fists, back to back with Panbuken. Both were grinning and laughing, like most Saiyans, like Bardock himself, they lived for the battle.
And then ... there was Gine. The petite female stood in place, instead of moving about. A look of terror was on her face as a hairy behemoth rumbled towards her, fangs bared and claws extended. Her reactions were too slow, she would not be able to deflect the blow. To make matters worse, she hesitated.
"What the fuck are you doing, Private? Take the strike, now!" Bardock yelled. If he got the General's daughter dead, his career would be over faster than he could say 'nepotism.'
Gine's face was white with terror, her mouth a small moue, her eyes blank. She just froze, as if someone had put a bubble around her and stopped time. The combatant seemed to move in exquisite slow motion to Bardock's trained eye. It bared its teeth, lowered its head, and extended its claws to carve the petite female in half ... and then something strange happened. Seeing Gine in danger lit a fire in his chest.
She won't react in time, she's going to die ... I have to ... have to save her. The intensity of the emotion confused him, terrified him. ... but he did not have the time to think on it, just to act.
"Do it now, Private!" he howled, already moving in her direction; he hoped that Gine would snap out of it and respond.
He put on a burst of speed, and transported himself forward and into the line of fire. With one hand, he knocked the terrified Private out of harm's way; she crashed to the ground and rolled, and he heard something snap as her shoulder dislocated. She would be broken and bruised but alive. Bardock raised his right hand, pulled in Ki to act as a shield, and pushed the wave out in a concussive blast.
Crunch ... it was enough to prevent both strikes from cutting through him and Gine, but he did not have enough time to get out of harm's way entirely. The uppercut sliced into the left side of his face, tore open flesh, and cut into his left eye socket. Pain blossomed as he lost sight in that eye. But he knew he was damned lucky that was all that had happened.
Bardock screamed in battle rage and dodged the incoming bite. He did not see the attack so much as he sensed it from instincts honed over the years on the battlefield. Blood poured down his face, down his neck and into the front of his blue-black armor, and soaked him. He knew his eye was gone, and he would do the rest of the mission with half his vision missing. He had to end the fight fast. The toxins would set in quick and he needed to administer an antidote soon before he passed out.
"Dooooock!" Toma howled. Toma, his oldest ge'tah, always there when Bardock needed him. A blast from the tall man's extended palm ended the fight, and the creature fell smoking at Bardock's feet. His body had already started to shake. He squatted down, pulled an ampule from his left waist cover pouch and slammed it into his thigh. He injected the antitoxin and felt the cool liquid bite into his muscle.
Toma rushed up, offered him a hand. "You okay, Dock?"
"Never better." Bardock ignored the help. He ripped off a section of cloth from his blue leggings, then wrapped it around his marred face to quell the bleeding. Immediately, it soaked through. "I had 'em where I wanted him."
"I know you did," the lean man stated. "Just doing my job." He continued to fire at the incoming combatants while Bardock tended to his wounds. Bardock did not need to ask, Toma just knew what to do.
Bardock then looked for the reason he had gotten fucked up in the first place: that damned weak female.
Gine sat upright, her armor covered in gore and blood. Her large eyes stared off, and her breath came in short bursts. She was unresponsive when Bardock waved a hand in front of her face. What the ever living hell was wrong with her? A quick visual inspection revealed no obvious injuries, outside of the dislocated shoulder, so why wasn't she responding? He'd had enough of her cowardice, of her nonsense. Her father was a war hero, how was she so fucking weak?
"Private Gine! Wake the fuck up!"
Gine blinked, and her face became animated, as if she had just woken up from a dream. Moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes as she noticed Bardock staring down at her, a scowl on his face. "What - I'm so sorry, Captain ... oh gods, I froze. Didn't I?"
"No shit. Get up and fight. We're in active combat! And the next time you freeze in battle I'll kill you myself." Bardock did not wait for her to stand. He grabbed her by the arm, hauled her to her feet and flung her screaming back into the midst of the fight.
"... round ... Hey Dock, you in there? Vegetasai to Dock ..."
Bardock came out of his reverie with a snap. Toma and Topato stared at him with drunken concern. One finger traced the jagged scar on his left cheek that served as a continual reminder of how much Gine had cost him. He had sat still for so long that that beads of condensation on the outside of his glass had run down and formed a growing puddle.
"Yeah ... just - um - thinking about that purge, the one where I got this scar." Bardock sighed, and took a long swig from his now warm beverage. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, but posh'ri was posh'ri, no matter how flat or warm it had become, and one did not waste alcohol.
"What a cluster fuck that was," Toma echoed Bardock's thoughts. "Glad we're rid of her. She was holding us back."
"I know," Bardock said, but without much conviction.
The battle on Mustara had been won, but it had cost the team their respect and Bardock his pride. It had been the turning point where Bardock started to realize that, in spite of how he felt about her, she had to go; he had not wanted to admit it then. Instead of manning up, he kept compromising the team, gods help him, all for one female (her arms around his waist, her body pressed against his) because they could not afford to be on Skallon's bad side.
In truth, that was not the reason he kept Gine on ... not really, if he had stopped to look at the situation with unbiased eyes. His team always knew, but he had refused to listen. And now, the decision was made and there was no going back. Not that he wanted to. Of course.
They drank until they could not see straight, then they drank some more until one by one, they began to drift off into the humid night.
A/N: A big thank you to all who have faved, followed, commented and otherwise shown their love. I appreciate it more than I can tell you. As always, thank you for reading.
Guest: Thank you for choosing to exercise your First Amendment rights. I am curious to see what your take on Saiyan culture is. Also note that, although I am using MegaKat's language, that the culture and ideas in this story are my own. If you have an issue, please feel free to PM me and we can discuss it. Also ... are you sure that this child is Goku?
Rose1991: I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's a great encouragement to know that people are reading and getting involved. In regards to Gine's child: she does already have one, as stated in chapter one. I'll leave you to guess, though more will be revealed soon. Stick around!
PixyMisa87: Thanks for reading and commenting again, glad you're liking it. Bardock can be a real ass, can't he?
Vegebulluv: That Fasha ... she just loves to meddle. I strive to make each scene both dramatic and believable, so I'm glad that it's working. Thanks for the kind words, and as always, enjoy the update.
